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GTX470 or 5870OC for minimums?

Dangerous_Dave

Dangerous_Dave

Dangerous_Dave

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21 Sep 2010
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455
I have a choice between a GTX470 with palit dual fan cooler and an HD5870 with one of those snazzy Zalman VF coolers on it. This means that, keeping within the realms of reasonable noise, the 5870 can be overclocked but the GTX470 really can't (even with the dual fan it's on the edge of acceptable).

However, I'm all about the minimums, and will be running AA, and will be running the latest games, for about the next year.

So bearing all that in mind, what card would you keep, and which card would you sell? (they can both be sold for about the same amount on ebay).

I should mention I'll be gaming at 1080P
 
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470.

Mainly because of drivers being mature now (and it performing almost as well as a 5870) but it has more Vram and physx and CUDA.
 
Well I had a 470. And I really, really liked it. Mind you mine was on a V3000 so I would heh.

But yeah, Vram is the most important commodity right now, and physx and CUDA are a fun gimmick.
 
Yeh mate, mine has a Gelid Icy Vision which I put on myself to keep it cool, I did a few Heaven benchmarks about six months ago and then.... nothing LOL I havn't overclocked it since, havn't needed to, runs everything I need it to at stock and needless to say, very cool. :D
 
Got two 470's here, actually pretty cool running compared to some cards ive owned. Absolute bargain as well for both, £260.00.
 
If power usage means anything to you or specifically your wallet then I do believe seeing the 5870 being much more power efficient. The Nvidia GTX4xx for some reason (perhaps more transistors than they actually need which was rectified in the 5xx line-up) soak up more electricity than necessary.
 
I would keep the 5870 if the gtx470 is a bad overclocker as the 5870 is a faster card overall. The gtx470 with a good overclock can usually overhaul a fully overclocked 5870 but only if its a good clocker. Personally the 5870 with that cooler is a really good card with no real drawbacks. Gaming wise theres probably nothing in it to notice.


With these facts in hand consider power draw, heat and noise the 5870 probably wins by a whisker.
 
TBH the real advantage in the 470 is its overclocking (and nVidia drivers but thats another story) if your not clocking it, then its not so clear cut which is better. You should really be able to get 750MHz on the core tho without touching voltages with very little if any increase in fan noise its only when you start pushing up the voltage the heat ramps up and the fans have to work harder.

EDIT: That said I've been quite glad I picked the 470s over the last year or so - seen random issues affecting 460s, the 5x0 cards and AMD cards over that time while the 470 has been pretty much problem free (for me).
 
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No problems here either. Infact the 460's in my other rig are more of a problem. They run a fair bit warmer than the 470's and theyre at stock. The 470's are at 750mhz on stock volts.
 
Moved from a 5870 to a 470 (now running with Zalman cooler @ 480 speeds) - No regrets although not much to choose between them.
470 +'s
Extra Ram
Physx
Cuda
Drivers - overall
BIG minus - Noise and heat levels until the Zalman was fitted
BUT the potential once cooled/silenced .....

5870 +'s
Noise levels at stock.
Minus - none. A good solid card.

For me the 470 was awful until I got it cooled and clocked - then it was/is the better gpu BUT if I had not been able to cool/clock it it would have been replaced by ,possibly, going back to the 5870.
 
It depends what your looking for really. A 5870 is faster at stock and uses less power then a 470 and benefited from 2 years of solid driver updates and you can get regular updates from AMD every month. The 470 is the potential to be faster if you want to overclock it but there is no hard rules to say that the chip you get will overclock beyond stock although having a 3rd party cooler on should help your cause just bear in mind overclocking will shortern its life span. As for the Nvidia drivers I can't really say it's been a few years since I've had a Nvidia card but driver updates weren't regular but I never had that many problems with them (apart from the fan incident.
 
The 470, simply because you'll get fisxy-x and more vram, it's not an option on the 5870, as they are both mature cards, the drivers are too(both of them).

Performance between them won't be much at all OC'd or not, but the extra vram is a deal clincher in the crazy days of BF3.
 
470, mainly for when applying AA, though overclocking will be better too. Minimums will be the same in some titles, but the 470 will more than likely win out there as well.
 
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I had originally thought 5870 would win hands down since I'm uncomfortable overclocking the 470 in the SFF environment and was expecting a good 1000Mhz from the 5870. But the minimums on the 470 actually seem stronger than the 5870 at stock so probably not a lot in it with the OC.

I just tried 700Mhz core on the 470 and it does get toasty using kombustor - by that I mean early 90s celcius. That's a bit worrying to me in terms of the card only lasting a few weeks :S
 
The 470 and 480 were actually very very good cards Dave.

Sadly they each had caveats.

See, when a card is too hot AND too loud AND uses loads of power? it's a bad card. If a card uses loads of power but is cool and quiet? it's a good card.

Everything was stacked against them when they were released.

They were late - nothing is worse than a reviewer scorned. Look at Duke Forever. Nothing really wrong with it, scored terribly.

They were also hot. This was addressed with the adaptive performance drivers (because that is ALL the 5870 was doing, down clocking when idle).

They were loud. Sadly that one wasn't fixable as stock, but the Zalman and coolers like your one took care of that.

The drivers were also pants, kicking a good 15% off the cards at launch that you can add on now.

The 470 and 480 were just victims of circumstance really.. Look what Nvidia accomplished with some time to sit down and address the issues.

Mind you, as I mentioned elsewhere.. World record holder for single GPU card is the 480 Lightning. Mostly because it clocks like a bat out of hell and isn't throttled.

The 5 series? pah. 4 series, with a better cooler, and a thermal throttle so you think it's using less power and not getting as hot. Remove that throttle? hello 104c shutdown.
 
I gotta laugh when i hear people complain about the power use of gtx 400 cards. Yes they use a bit of power, but the same people are running highly overclocked cpu's. Which obviously use more power. This aint the greenpeace forum.
 
Yeah they do hit 80s-90s in furmarks and kombuster type tests but they don't hit that in gaming (until like mine they have almost a couple of years of heavy gaming worth of dust in them). If I clean the dust out of my case mine hit 66C and 76C in gaming - around 76C in more normal I just happen to have one card that is either a good quality core or has a duff sensor.
 
@setter, normally I would agree, but with the case of the 47/80's at the time, there was the real possibility of factoring in the cost of buying a new psu to power it, rather than just use your existing psu with the 5870.

47/80 launch prices + a new psu wasn't something a lot of people were willing to pay.
 
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