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480 SOC or 580 DirectCu

Torquar

Torquar

Torquar

Associate
Joined
24 Jan 2006
Posts
695
Hi folks, looking for upgrade advice.

I'm upgrading my gpu at the end of the month, trying to decide between...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-079-GI&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1750

and

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-249-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1812

Now, I know the 580 is generally better, but I'm wondering how much better.

The reason I'm torn is that if I go for the 480 SOC, I can also upgrade my aging but still good Q9550 (3.7ghz) to an I5 2500k setup.

In the long run, which would be the better choice? I use a 1920x1200 monitor, and the pc is pretty much a games machine.

Thanks for any advice.
 
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Trust me the 480 SOC is to much of a problem card to want to have
Get either the 580 you are looking at or the 480SE and Overclock it way past what the SOC will do

read through this forum about the soc they have been very rough running cards

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18252461

Hope this helps

Just for the record i have a 480 and it isnt stable at the gigabyte rated speeds so i had to up the volts and then its stable but it has no more overclocking potential imo
but others are not so lucky and when sending cards back they say there fine then when they get them back they are still artifacting and erroring

Get a 480 se gigabyte and the cpu upgrade that is a good buy
 
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I wouldn't bother upgrading from a Q9550 for gaming atm, i7/SB setups aren't significantly faster in 99% of games.
 
Yeah sadly the SE seems the better buy which is a shame gigabyte SoC cards in the past were rock solid. That MSI 580 is pretty nice too tho a tad pricey for the performance when compared to the 480 SE/SOC.
 
SOC is £240, 580 is £360, price diff is 50%, performance diff is 10%, warranty is the same.

The SOC seems to have a high (20%ish) failure rate, but if either card goes wrong within 3 years you can replace it.

Personally I would go for the cheapest reference 480 or 570 you can find, but if the extra £120 is burning a hole in your pocket the 580 is a great card. I have a reference ASUS 480 in my second system and with a custom fan profile (courtesy of Afterburner software) it runs as quiet as the 580 in my main rig. For games, I can barely tell the difference between them in terms of performance.
 
I had a similar decision about 3/4 weeks back and chose the 580GTX (gainward) due to not wanting the hassle of potentially RMA'ing the SOC 480 card or having the insane power draw and heat + noise of a reference design.

If your not bothered about the noise though you could go for 560 SLI for less than what a 580GTX costs, with vram being your only potential future limiter. Personally, if I was to do it again, I'd have thought long and hard about getting 6950 CF for slightly more than a 580GTX and trying to unlock both cards. However, massively depends on what res your gaming at and what settings you also want to use (like mentally high levels of AA etc?)
 
555BUK said:
The SOC seems to have a high (20%ish) failure rate, but if either card goes wrong within 3 years you can replace it.
Click to expand...

Failure rate (if you get one that works out the box) is no higher than any other card afaik. The problem is they seem to have pumped out a lot of cards that don't make the grade for SoC for some reason.
 
Thanks for the advice guys, I'll continue to think it over. Is there a review of the 580 Frozr II anywhere? I checked google but I can only find 560 Frozr II reviews, not 580.
 
I would personally NOT get the 480soc again i would get a stock 480 add volts and an arctic cooler (air) or a water block (as i have water cooling setup) and then have a good card

Put it this way i have a stock sparkle 480 that will clock @ 850clock 1700 shader and 2010 ram with 1.1v (arctic cooler fitted)and the top temp is 75c in games and the SOC will NOT clock as high withought errors and artifacts i managed to get it stable at advertised speeds with a volt bump but to high on heat and have no more head way to OC anymore

The 480 is the best bang for bucks if you go for a standard and overclock it.

"I think" BUT im not possative so you would have to check but the EVGA version allows you to fit a new cooler WITHOUGHT voiding any warentee
 
I would like to add that I have a 480 SOC and have had no problems. For the money, it was a great buy, especially compared to 580 prices. Currently the SE and SOC are the same price. I would like to see the stats on how many 480 SOCs Overclockers have sold compared to the number that have been RMA'd. I suspect most people are too busy playing games at awesome frame rates which leaves a small number on here moaning about them :) Always good to get 2 sides of a story though right :)
 
Theres definitely been some issues with the 480 SoC which is a shame as they are great cards especially at that price when you get a properly working one. What I find is odd is the stock voltage on many of them seems to be around ~1.03 even for cherry picked cores that seems low, I barely get 800MHz stable on my 470s at that let alone a 480 core with the extra cluster lit up, your not realistically gonna get 820MHz on a 480 core without atleast 1.05 in most cases and probably a little more on average.
 
Rroff said:
Theres definitely been some issues with the 480 SoC which is a shame as they are great cards especially at that price when you get a properly working one. What I find is odd is the stock voltage on many of them seems to be around ~1.03 even for cherry picked cores that seems low, I barely get 800MHz stable on my 470s at that let alone a 480 core with the extra cluster lit up, your not realistically gonna get 820MHz on a 480 core without atleast 1.05 in most cases and probably a little more on average.
Click to expand...

It all depends on the chip and the cooler IMO. My Asus 480 with Zalman cooler is rock solid (Kombustor inc) @ 840 core on stock volts!
 
Yeah the chip and cooler makes a difference - nVidia cores of late seem to get the best overclocking results with better cooling than pushing up the voltage - if you can keep them under 40C at load you can pretty much max out the MHz with little voltage adjustment over stock.

However from my experience the average GF100 core even with a decent air cooler typically needs more than 1.03 to be properly stable over 800MHz.

Whats stock volts out of interest? (I belive 1.038 is typical on those asus but theres a range they can use)
 
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