NVIDIA officially launches GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 graphic processors

Hot off the heels of PAX East, the consumer gaming show held this past weekend
in Boston, NVIDIA today officially launched its new flagship graphics
processors, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX
470.

The top-of-the line in a new family of enthusiast-class GPUs, the GeForce GTX
480 was designed from the ground up to deliver the industry’s most potent
tessellation performance, which is the key component of Microsoft’s DirectX 11
development platform for PC games. Tessellation allows game developers to take
advantage of the GeForce GTX 480 GPU’s ability to increase the geometric
complexity of models and characters to deliver far more realistic and visually
compelling gaming environments.

The GeForce GTX 480 is joined by the GeForce GTX 470 as the first products in
NVIDIA’s Fermi line of consumer products. They will be available in mid-April,
from the world’s leading add-in card partners and PC system builders. The
remainder of the GeForce 400-series lineup will be announced in the coming
months, filling out additional performance and price segments.

The GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 GPUs bring a host of new gaming features
never before offered for the PC – including support for real-time ray tracing
and NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround for truly immersive widescreen, stereoscopic 3D
gaming.

Facts about NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480:

• Tear it up. Gamers want the fastest GPU on the market and GeForce
  GTX 480 sets the new standard. Its next-generation architecture delivers
  unprecedented gaming performance at maximum resolution and quality settings,
  even on the latest DirectX 11 titles.
  • On average, 27 percent faster performance than any GPU on the market in
    newer DX11 applications. At 19×12 4xAA/16xAF
    resolution, the GTX 480 is 61 percent faster in Metro 2033, 89 percent
    faster in Unigine Heaven v2, and 29 percent faster in Battleforge
    than the closest competitive product.

• Dial it up. The new NVIDIA PolyMorph Engine, a scalable
  geometry processing engine built from the ground up for DirectX 11 tessellation,
  enables incredibly detailed game characters and terrain with blazing
  performance. In addition, high-speed 32x anti-aliasing smoothes edges for
  top-notch visual quality.

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  • The GTX 480 is also the world’s first consumer GPU to enable interactive ray
    tracing for ultra photo-realistic scenes.
• Scale it up. New NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround technology expands the
  gaming real estate across three monitors in full stereoscopic 3D – making for a
  truly immersive gaming experience.

•  
  • Combined with NVIDIA 3D Vision wireless active shutter glasses, 3D Vision
    Surround technology lets you feel like you’re in the game
  • Capable of rendering more than 746M pixels/second at full HD 1080p for a
    mind-blowing, 5760×1080 gaming experience.
  • Advanced NVIDIA software automatically converts more than 400 games to
    stereoscopic 3D without the need for special game patches.
    • Get a complete view of the battlefield in real-time strategy games.
    • Manage inventory windows and quest logs, and track your party in your
      favorite MMORPGs.
    • See your enemy’s movement quicker and react first in first-person-shooters.
    • Buckle yourself into the driver seat of your favorite racing game and be
      immersed in the action.
  • Watch Blu-ray 3D movies, view 3D photographs, or stream 3D content over the
    Web.

• Blow it up. NVIDIA PhysX technology brings games to
  life with dynamic, interactive environments.
  • Two times the PhysX technology performance over prior generation GPUs for
    dynamic game effects, such as turbulence, fluids and smoke.
  • New NVIDIA GigaThread scheduler allows up to 10-times faster
    switching between graphics and physics processing, enabling more complex effects
    to be rendered in real time.

• Open it up. Next-generation CUDA architecture unleashes the
  computational power of the GPU to tackle the most intensive multimedia
  applications
  • World’s most open computing platform, with complete language and API
    support, including CUDA C/C++, DirectCompute, OpenCL, Java, Python, and Fortran
    for the broadest compatibility with GPU-accelerated applications.
  • Full support for GPU computing under Microsoft Windows 7.

“The of GeForce GTX 480 is something we’ve been eagerly anticipating,” said
Mike Angiulo, general manager of Windows planning and PC ecosystem at Microsoft
Corp. “Microsoft designed Direct X11 for Windows 7 with native support for
GPGPU, tessellation, and improved multi-threading. NVIDIA clearly embraced this
and designed the GTX 480 with a scalable tessellation architecture in a
multi-core environment to bring game development to a new level. And, we think
developers will be impressed to see how they can truly take advantage of the
power of DX11 to create compelling games, as well as multimedia
applications.”