I recently acquired some neat relics from the development of GF100. But first, some history.
nVidia had a few different design phases for the GTX 480. The one we saw come to market is the
relatively plain all-black plastic shroud with a small screen printed
GeForce logo on top, the shroud encompassing an exposed grill-inspired plate. Some people at the time noticed; I'm sure some people still today remember, that the press material and reviewer cards for the GTX 480 always shows a
cooler shroud with a thin green stripe along the rear facing edge of the exposed grill plate. Some may have not noticed in the reviews showing teardowns that there is also
a small 2-pin LED header right behind the fan, under the 6-pin power input. This is a feature brought forward from the e
arlier development of the GTX 480 where the shroud included a bright light up
GeForce logo instead of the cheap printed-on one. The press cards also received some extra flair with a second
GeForce logo printed onto the grill, but that's a different story.
That brings us to what I acquired: a box of unused shrouds, built and shipped to nVidia in March 2010 and set aside in a store room for several years before being sold off.
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They make the cards look pretty spiffy. Now to find those early grills with the extra logo, complete the look.
The way it's meant to look.