Voltage adjustment has quickly become the “in” thing on the latest and greatest video cards from ATI, most brands offer it with the HD 5970 be it with their own voltage adjustment tool or the one that ATI supplied reviewers with at the launch of the model. We’ve also seen some companies make use of it on the top single GPU offering the HD 5870.

Well it seems it’s coming to the GTX 480 with NVIDIA offering the ability to adjust the core voltage via the PWM chip.

What will be interesting is how companies decide to attack this, will it be via their own software like Sapphire did with Redline and MSI have done with Afterburner or will NVIDIA actually “unofficially” release something like ATI did.

Time will tell; but if the voltage adjustment on the HD 5970 is anything to go by here in my review of the Sapphire version; then we could see some serious performance outside of initial reports from the model.

While the GTX 480 chip might have the power available, heat from the chip due to the stock cooler could prevent it’s full potential coming out; step in someone who straps a triple slot cooler onto the model, water cooling or even extreme cooling like LN2 and the lowered temperature gives us the ability to safely move the voltage north giving us even more potential performance.

It comes as no surprise that no one has confirmed if they’ll be offering this kind of ability due to the model still being a couple of weeks away; we’re sure that at least one if not a few will take advantage of it giving them a clear advantage over other companies.