A Closer Look

The first step in disassembly is removing the black plastic fan shroud. It is a simple piece of plastic that protects the heatsink and creates an air channel for the fan's air to move out of the card.


You will find five heatpipes on the main heatsink that use DirectTouch technology to make optimum contact with the GPU core. Heat is then transferred to a large number of fins where it is dissipated.


The last piece that goes off is a big black metal heatsink that covers all the "minor" components of the graphics card, like memory and voltage regulation circuitry. This approach makes it easy for water cooling and extreme cooling to be attached to the GPU only without having to worry about cooling the rest of the components.


Dual six-pin power connectors are already a first hint that the power consumption of the GeForce GTX 470 isn't going to be as epic as that of the GTX 480.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung, and carry the model number K4G10325FE-HC05. They are specified to run at 2000 MHz (4000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


OnSemi's NCP5388 is a reasonable priced voltage regulator, unfortunately it does not have I2C voltage control.


NVIDIA's GeForce 100 graphics processor is made on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. It uses approximately 3.2 billion transistors which makes it the most complex GPU built to-date. Please note that the silvery metal surface you see is the heatspreader of the GPU which measures 42.3 x 42.3 mm. The actual GPU die is sitting under the heatspreader, its dimensions are not known. NVIDIA did not communicate a die size measurement to the press.