the load temperatures are very high- mid 90's seems very close to that 105 C threshold. if the card is running in an environment where the ambient temperature is 25-30 C could it run even hotter? or would the fan try and keep it working at around 95?
Considering that they use an extremly powerful fan (much higher Amperes then ATIs standard-Modell since the HD2900XTX) and that the card is far from it's maximum powerdraw in games, I would expect the cooling solution to have ample reserves for nearly any climate.
However, the eardrums of the user might not. extreme.pcgameshardware.d...
also, could there be some type of limited release 480 cards that have a full compliment of 512 cores later on?
Considering the abyssmal yield-rate of TSMCs 40nm process, I wouldn't expect any full compliment designs soon. If they get enough chips overall to satisfy the market, Nvidia might put fully functional ones in store to release an acceptable number of "GTX490" when ATIs HD6 series arrives. Powerdraw might also be an issue. I don't know, wether GF100 is fully powergated (the idle consumption suggest "no"), but if the non used cores are utilizing zero Watts at the moment, then enabling them should result in a noticeable increase of power consumption. Considering the rather low clocks Nvidia is currently using, this might not be the current aim.
However, as both Nvidia and ATI have issued numerous high-draw cards in the past, scoring positive reactions form buyers and with a dual-GF100 supposeldy in the pipeline, such not-to-high-power ambitions might crumble as soon as ATI presents something less efficient then there better-then-average HD58x0. (and a HD5890 or similiar is expected in reaction to GTX480. Considering the considerable higher clocks of current ATI cards, further overclocking should require an noticeable voltage increase, giving Nvidia the opportunity to relase high-powered GF100 without having a powerdraw "way higher" then ATI)