Yeah it's not THAT much bigger in size from the GT200, but the GT200 also thought to be huge at the time. If you compare it to the 5870 die, then you realize that it is indeed relatively large. Keep in mind, the 8800GTX die was considered a monstrosity at 484 square millimeters.
Easy, Nvidia faked Fermi already, nothing stoping them from doing it again. And no im not bashing you or Nvidia, I'm just answering your question.
Should I try to sell my car to pay for this and have a 220 hookup run to my computer's 2000watt power supply???
The 8800GTX was 80nm while this is 40nm. The fact it is nearly 600mm^2 is just crazy on that manufacturing process. There's only so much room on a wafer and the larger the chips the fewer that can fit, and the greater the chance for a higher failure rate. Plus they just become insane to cool as should be obvious from the cooler design there.
i had a HDD cage there but choped it also did the cable management holes (all the cables are in place in that photo) the best thing is the 120mm fan blows straight on to the gpus to cool them so if the 470/480 is a hot card at least it will get some good air flow
again, not that much bigger then GT200, so it's not that big of a "change" All in all, everyone should have expected it to be bigger then it actually is, with everything it comes with
I've already checked my Raven It should fit even 2-GPU version if they release it. This PCB doesn't look that huge... I only hope that they don't forget about VRM's cooling. Regarding die size, it's bigger by 76% than RV870, so it's expected to deliver much more performance. With so huge die, 480 may be as expensive to make as 5970.
The GTX 480 is about as long as a GTX 280 they say, so anyone with a case that could fit a GTX 200/HD4870X2/5870/5970 should be able to accomodate that thing.
