It's pretty evident that the strongest GeForce up to now, GTX480, isn't too successful of a product. Yes, NVIDIA made the fastest single-GPU product, but the price of that feat was considerable. Firstly, the card was utterly late, since expectations had grown considerably in the six months that preceded what would be the final release of Fermi. Performance demonstrated by GTX480 was excellent, although somewhat lower than expected, since all the hype around the card caused everyone to expect a perfect card. Since the American company was struggling with the 40 nm lithography at the time, the fact that they had designed the most complex graphics chip ever, with three billion transistors, was hardly a helpful one. Simply put, a few major problems surfaced. First of all, the low starting yield, i.e. a low percentage of fully functional chips per wafer automatically launched the price into the heavens. Consumption was another problem, surpassing even the limits imposed by NVIDIA. High consumption also means high levels of heat. NVIDIA did manage to conceal this fact considerably, though, by installing a referent cooler with such mass, number of heatpipes and fan size, that it would make even certain hair dryers shy away…



Link: InsideHW