Soldato
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**NVIDIA GTX 480 IS BACK - TRULY INCREDIBLE PRE-ORDER DEAL!**
- Thread starter Gibbo
- Start date
I did have a look around but the AnandTech comparison displays the results more succinctly.
The HD 6970 also comes out slightly ahead in the Guru3D review:
Radeon HD 6950 & 6970 review
Even in BFBC2 @ 1920x1200 with 8xAA.
And when did price come into this discussion?
Your original statement was about performance not price.
If you'd said that the GTX 480 at £185 offers better performance/£, or similar performance for a lower price, that would have been fair enough.
But that isn't what you said.
Associate
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I wonder if DX11.1 will be as succesful and useful as DX 10.1 was. 
I wonder if DX11.1 will be as succesful and useful as DX 10.1 was.
Haha !
All we've been doing for the past few years is trial running what M$ will be putting into their next console.
That's literally it.
Im not sure why your comparing the GTX 480 to the HD 6XXX series, you do know that the 7XXX series is out already?
You say that 28nm, DX 11.1, PCI-E 3.0 etc mean nothing.. Of course they mean something. being on 28nm process means less heat/power use. Better overclocking capabilitys. DX 11.1 means better support for future games. PCI-E 3.0 means a possible 5% performance on PCI-E 3.0 boards. You can't just say that it means nothing,it's all progress. Not to mention more memory on equivilant cards...
Im sure the majority would prefer a cooler running, better overclocking, newer feature set GPU, with more memory. i.e HD 7XXX or soon Kepler GTX 6XX
For those that are looking for a card with extreme power use, less memory, lots of heat and noise, less features than there is the GTX 480...
Im not sure why you would want to go backwards?
Like I say though, each to there own mate. take it easy
There are disadvantages for going backwards but at this price, the 480 is hard to beat.
I myself however would not have brought one if I wasn't going to water cool it.
They're no worse than a stock blower fan 6970. People seem to be forgetting that the 570 580 6950 and 6970 all have TDP throttles.
The 6970 and 50 make a lot of noise too and get quite hot on the stock coolers.
Heck, at least with a 480 there is no throttle which would be why they overclock so well.
Soldato
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Again it is with only average fps, no minimum frame rate. Have a look at the 1920 res 4xAA result here:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/12/15/ati-radeon-hd-6970-review/9
You can clearly see the 6950/6970 minimum frame rate are lower than Nvidia's counterparts.
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Associate
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You won't get a 6970 with warranty for anywhere near £185
Caporegime
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All of that ^
Most of this "new" stuff is just a bottle of snake oil.
DX11.1? FFS, they haven't even used DX10.1 properly yet
DX10 could do tessellation, yet it was never hyped or "sold".
PCIE 3.0? how many times, man. Nothing has maxed out the bandwidth of PCIE 2.0 yet for crying out loud, so you get about 3% over 2.0
And does any one have any concrete proof yet that existing DX11 cards can't run DX11.1? I would stick my neck out and say they can. DX10 cards ran DX10.1 when it was introduced.
And I will also vouch for the overclocking prowess of the 480. I can't see it being very different to the 470 and that went straight to 755mhz with linked shaders without batting an eyelid. The guy I sold mine to go it to 790 linked shaders without any voltage. I told him to stop there, as I wouldn't help him if he blew it up. I think he saw sense.
AMD Dx10.1 cards ran dx10.1 when it was introduced later, Nvida DX10 cards never, at all, in any way ran dx10.1. I'm actually unsure if the 2900xt could ever run dx10.1, I looked it up at some point but I could never find it out. 4870 was always a dx10.1 card, from launch, just dx10.1 wasn't out. 2900xt may/may not, this is only because again AMD designed for the "original" dx10 spec, Nvidia failed to hit it(or come even that close) and got MS to remove half the spec, of which a lot was put back in with dx10.1, so yes a lot was already there. But that isn't because DX specs in general are software added later, dx specs are usually hardware related and usually hardware shortcuts for things Dev's have done for a while but hugely slower with lots of work arounds and the like.
Dx10.1, 10, 11 have been used FULLY, using something, and using something badly or with little end effect are both using the feature. Same way I can play football badly and someone else can play brilliantly, both playing football, I'm just not doing it well. DX will rarely if ever affect how good a game looks, style, time, quality of people working on it are 99.8% of why a game looks good, or not.
Either way, the 480gtx is very last gen vs the 7970, 42% of the price apparently for 70% of the performance, overclock both and watch the 7970 kill it, badly. Also Circa 250W power usage in Crysis 2 for a 480gtx, 165W for the 7970 while also being a lot faster. If you could overclock both by 30%, the 480gtx would scale worse in power(requiring more of a voltage bump and more leaky to achieve a 30% overclock) while the 7970 would gain more performance so the power vs performance just gets worse and worse for a 480gtx.
5850's at £120 were insane value, 480gtx's at £185 aren't great, not terrible, just not great. I wouldn't bother anyway, Gk104 might not cost much more anyway for significantly more performance also, and more than likely 570gtx prices could be pretty epic once the GK104 launches, which would make a much better buy than a 480gtx.
And again you're moving away from your initial generalised statement and going into a specific set of circumstances.
And looking at your link, and based on the criteria you're now adopting, the GTX 480 is slower than the GTX 570 when you said it was faster.
If that's with reference to the discussion about which is faster then it's not relevant.
It's correct to say that a GTX 480 at £185 offers better performance/£, or similar performance for a lower price.
But that isn't how this started.
Because the GTX570 and HD6970 are the only cards at the moment that can compete with it performance-wise for less than £300?
I haven't seen a single reviewed or stocked 7870, not to mention that they most likely won't perform better than 6950s, if in that region at all. The 7900 cards are different technology and not in this price region at all.
But the 28nm really means nothing once you mention that the card produces less heat and uses less power under load. Some people don't care about these points at all, others will and I've already mentioned them. There's no proof of superior overclocking capabilities of these cards since they're not even released yet.
DirectX 11.1 means nothing, just like 10.1 did. There were almost none games developed using it as an API.
PCI-E 3.0 is not even argument when it comes to midrange cards, I don't know what you're trying to argue but:
a) it's not even 5%
b) it's the best case scenario on high-end cards.
So it's totally irrelevant in tthis case.
Stop with the "newer feature set GPU" argument that means nothing in reality.
It has more memory, the only feasible thing that I would take into consideration. How many gamers need more than 1.5GB VRAM though?
There's a reason why AMD is releasing a 1.5GB VRAM version of their high-end 7950 cards.
It's just a more powerful card, what else could a gamer want after all?
I think your thinking is backwards if you think that going from a GTX480 to a 7870/6970 would be a step up.
I would take a HD 7XXX or HD 6950/70 or GTX 560 Ti/570 over a GTX 480 anyday. Kepler is coming soon aswell, £200 could be spent on a newer card is what im trying to say.
Like I say though, each to there own mate. take it easy
There are justifiable choices and "choices".
There are reasons why one would choose lower cards over GTX480 but I think you're vastly exaggerating them.
EDIT: just one more point, it's GTX480 that is vastly underclocked compared to the 6970 or even GTX570, all because of the heat output that is.
I think power draw of the card would be my only concern but I appreciate that others might have other issues.
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Soldato
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I have mentioned in number of topics...AMD cards simply don't work well with the Frostbite/Frostbite2 engine when it comes to MSAA performance. And it is not specific set of circumstances...you simply won't be able to find result of 6970 with higher minimum frame rate than GTX480 at 1920 res 4xAA on BFBC2.
And I have said GTX570 is clocked higher than GTX480. Clock for clock it is no faster than the GTX480, but with consideration on the extra vram on the GTX480 and both cards having similar max core frequency on overclocking, the GTX480 is faster and will deliver smoother gameplay in that sense, since it is basically just a GTX570 with more vram, but with the disadvantage of higher power consumption and more heat that's all.
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I can't think of anything else, but didn't Clear Sky utilize 10.1?
I responded to your broad brush statement:
And I'm still happy with my broad brush answer:
Yep, I just googled it and there was a later patch which enabled 10.1
Edit:
Also aftyer seeing several forums on page 1 of Google, it appears that massive problems were had with it. I didn't look in depth but no need to.
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Was a terrible game at launch. Broken. I remember reading a review and it concluded -
STALKER Clear Sky is a mess. A broken one. But it's a very pretty mess.
They did patch it up later. Never did play that one.I just couldn't get my head around the completely unfair mechanics of Shadows of Chernobyl.
IE - every one else was a crack shot and would always hit you in battle and do loads of damage, yet your bullets may as well have been made out of jelly. Hunkering down behind a bus and spending more than an hour taking out four snipers grew old fast.
As for DX10.1 never working on Nvidia cards? Not sure on that one would have to check, but I do remember in Dirt 2 you could hack open loads of the DX11 features and run them in DX10. The shading and lighting for example.
Associate
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Depreciation of £7 in one year for a graphics card isnt bad at all!
This. It shows what an absoloutly stonking deal it was first time round