Six months have passed since the first DirectX 11 accelerator seeing the light of day. ATI’s Radeon HD 5870 was presented on 23rd September 2009. After its appearance and the graduate fading of the media appraisal of the new standards and models, all eyes turned to NVIDIA, impatiently waiting for a competitor. Unfortunately, as time went by with no response, NVIDIA started to gather attention by some rather strange ways. First of all, an overblown secrecy surrounding the development of the new GPU which was supposedly on its way, supported by a “fishy” model of a supposed Fermi card by NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun himself. A premature leak of “white paper” material followed, which is a rather awkward move in itself, although NVIDIA isn’t exactly new to the concept of “paper launch”.

Since a tremendous (by IT industry standards) amount of time passed, all the hype surrounding the card slowly ebbed away, until CeBIT, when NVIDIA was expected to finally present the final product. However, the famed Hannover fair also failed to introduce the final Fermi specs. Still, a few demos were shown, and the press had the possibility to see the completed final version of the GTX480. Speculations were seething again, the media were guessing, estimating and predicting a lot based on the photos of the product, but even if the things were becoming clearer, nothing crucial had been revealed. Finally, 26th March is here and the NDA lifted, and since we’re among the chosen few to receive the card for testing a few days before D-day, here’s GeForce GTX480 in the flesh.

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• READ MORE (Source): InsideHW – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480: Has The Waiting Paid Off?