Nvidia unveiled its first Fermi graphics cards last March, the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 were about six months late. Based on the GF100 architecture, both cards consumed a surprising amount of power and as a result ran extremely hot. It goes without saying that we were a bit disappointed in the launch, here's a snippet of what we had to say about the GTX 480 then…"By all accounts the GeForce GTX 480 is not the beast we were hoping it would be. It's main competitor, the Radeon HD 5870 is no slouch, so beating it in almost every test is a real accomplishment, however in many cases it wasn't a great deal faster which makes it harder to justify a price step up against the 6 month old Radeon."Nvidia was able to improve the performance of both, the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 over the following months, which did improve their position. But still the cooler, quieter, and cheaper Radeon HD 5870 made a very compelling case and we preferred it to the flagship Fermi offerings.