NVIDIA GTX 480 makes benchmarking debut, matches ATI HD 5870 performance (video)

richb93 · 6 Mar 2010 at 14:44

We're still not happy with NVIDIA's failure to publish anything on its site alerting users about the doom that may befall them if they switched to the 196.75 drivers, but the company's making an effort to get back into our good books with the first official video of its forthcoming GeForce GTX 480 and even a benchmark run against ATI's flagship single-GPU card, the HD 5870. It looks like you'll need to jack in a pair of auxiliary power connectors -- one 8-pin and one 6-pin -- to power the first Fermi card, as well as plenty of clearance in your case to accommodate its full length (stop giggling!). NVIDIA's benchmarking stressed the GTX 480's superior tesselation performance over the HD 5870, but it was level pegging between the two cards during the more conventional moments. It's all well and good being able to handle extreme amounts of tesselation, but it'll only matter to the end user if game designers use it as extensively as this benchmark did. As ever, wait for the real benchmarks (i.e. games) before deciding who wins, but we're slightly disappointed that NVIDIA's latest and greatest didn't just blow ATI's six-month old right out of the water. Benchmarking result awaits after the break, along with video of the new graphics card and a quick look at NVIDIA's 3D Vision Surround setup. Go fill your eyes.

Via Engadget

Pretty funny considering a quite a few people were kicking up a fuss over the GTX480 pretty much saying it'd obliterate the 5 series.

Looks like I'll be going ATi then...

Princey · 6 Mar 2010 at 14:50

Very very early drivers I'm guessing too?

rhys216 · 6 Mar 2010 at 14:53

^^^
Very early but VERY well optimised for that single benchmark...

mmj_uk · 6 Mar 2010 at 14:53

Like I said in another thread based on that performance graph it looks brilliant to me:

The GTX480 is consistently over 35fps with a single small dip to 32fps, whilst the 5870 spends most of its time in the 17-30fps region

So 5870 level performance without any massive hit when using tesselation, isn't that what we want in a DX11 card?

rhys216 · 6 Mar 2010 at 14:55

^^^
Yes when using unrealistic levels of tessellation... and only tessellation!
Guess synthetics are more important than real-world huh?

richb93 · 6 Mar 2010 at 14:58

Princey said:
Very very early drivers I'm guessing too?

Fair enough but I'm guessing it won't be very competitive price wise. Either that or I'm convincing myself to go ATi for a change as I have Crossfire on my board and I haven't used it yet

mmj_uk · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:02

rhys216 said:
^^^
Yes when using unrealistic levels of tessellation... and only tessellation!
Guess synthetics are more important than real-world huh?

"NVIDIA's benchmarking stressed the GTX 480's superior tesselation performance over the HD 5870, but it was level pegging between the two cards during the more conventional moments."

Tesselation is one of the key DX11 features and it will become real-world sooner or later so why scoff at a card that handles it much better?

rhys216 · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:03

^^^
Yeh but it doesn't look like Nvidia can do that in REAL games!
Check out Dirt2

There has also been rumours that Nv reduced the IQ a bit to get the figures they wanted...

HAz · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:28

rhys216 said:
^^^
Yes when using unrealistic levels of tessellation... and only tessellation!
Guess synthetics are more important than real-world huh?

I think its funny all the fan boys holding out saying its gunna own the 5 series! lol keep waiting boys!

deuse · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:31

Looking good so far

Can't wait to see some bechies in games.

rhys216 · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:35

^^^
That's when FPS REALLY takes a nose dive...

deuse · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:42

rhys216 said:
^^^
That's when FPS REALLY takes a nose dive...

Why? in that vid were both cards have to work hard the NV is 30fps faster.

As I say we will see when someone gets it and does some real life tests.

mmj_uk · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:43

rhys216 said:
^^^
Yeh but it doesn't look like Nvidia can do that in REAL games!
Check out Dirt2

Dirt2 hardly uses tesselation and seeing as ATI helped add the DX11 features to it we can now see why.

What this synthetic benchmark shows is that Fermi handles large amounts of tesselation much better, which is exactly what you would want in a DX11 card.

The funny thing is that most 5xxx owners (including me) were salivating at tesselation when the Heaven benchmark first hit the scene, there was talk about how ATI were leading the way as they had some form of tesselation in previous cards etc and now suddenly it's being played down as a feature.

rhys216 · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:48

^^^
The thing is no DX11 game will have that much tessellation (Atleast not before the next gen or 2).
Not even TWIMTBP titles because the GTX470 only matches (synthetically) the 5870 performance...

TheRealDeal · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:52

Ati most likely know that tesselation in games won't be used anywhere near at this level in games so they used a tesselator thats up to the job for games when comparing to fermi as other leaked benchmarks would suggest when comparing a gtx480 v a 5870.

buttkinz · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:57

the way nvidia have held back any benchmarks reminds mre of the 2900xt lol, ati only released 3dmark06 results where it looked good, we all know what happened in real games, same tactics from nvidia, same result lol, this card was supposed to go head to head with 5970, convenient everyone now is comparing it to the 5870.

real shame to be honest, im always looking to find a time to sell the 5770's and get a upgrade to 5850's when the prices drop, with no competition this isnt going to happen :|

PermaBanned · 6 Mar 2010 at 17:16

I want to see OpenGL 3.2 benchmarks!

chaosquall · 6 Mar 2010 at 17:33

why didnt they compare it to the 5970 ati flagship? funny that

Greebo · 6 Mar 2010 at 17:46

mmj_uk said:
Like I said in another thread based on that performance graph it looks brilliant to me:

So 5870 level performance without any massive hit when using tesselation, isn't that what we want in a DX11 card?

I do actually agree with you and after I ran the same settings benchmark with my 5850 at 1000/1300 I can agree with the low fps in those scenes.

The only problems are as follows:

My peak is 90fps and happens quite a lot yet in Nvidia's result the 5870 gets close to 70 just once.

Why on earth do it with no aa and af? Does this mean that with 16xaf and reasonable aa of say 4xaa the gap between the 5870 and fermi shrinks?

That's the worry. A card which offers the same speed as the 5870 with no slow down in dx11 is the ideal (assuming it's priced the same) but if that only works when you have no aa and af then no thanks.

rhys216 · 6 Mar 2010 at 17:50

^^^
Good point.
They obviously displayed the best case scenario for them.