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7970 vs 480 SLI

dave_beast said:
Lighten up pal, one minute your on your high horse preaching one way, then, when it suits you you're preaching the other way, make your mind up, and learn to relax and enjoy the funny things in life, like yourself.

There are 101 480 cooking images, like this one

geforce_gtx_480_egg_cooking.jpg


and this

Nvidia_grill.jpg
Click to expand...

So you spotted that they get hot.... Stick them under water then! The beauty with 480's is that only reference models were made, so getting a water block to fit shouldn't be too difficult, and then you can expect to hit 52C MAX like me....

when folding....

24/7....
 
psychodil said:
Andy what are your load temps on the cards compared to the 7970? Are you noticing extra heat/ noise?
Click to expand...

The 7970 used to top out at around 76c with the fan on 70%. It was audible.

If you read the thread properly you will note that on auto profile the top card hit 96c in BF3. Once I set manual profiles (the same, only in here they hit 80% as opposed to the 70% of the 7970) the top card maxed out at 86c after a complete playthrough of BF3 (hence the benchmarks on near on every level of the game).

Can I hear them? yes I can. But, I could hear my 7970 also. The extra heat? I don't care. As long as the cards do not go wrong I couldn't care how hot they get. Mostly because I have a three year warranty. So they can do what the heck they want to.

What I will say is my GTX 280 was hotter and louder. It hit 107c and never worked again.

And I can tell you now the hottest card I ever owned was a 3870x2. It was 2c hotter than the 4870x2 I had which was also a thermal nuclear power plant. Both cards ran hotter than a 480 and consumed far more power.

And of course, the 480 pales in comparison with the 5970 which too was a nuclear reactor.

Fact of the matter is no one cares. If the 680 had come out and guzzled down power and got really hot but was as fast as it is? it would have still sold by the bucketload.

This whole heat argument is only brought on because some one else has a card that doesn't get as hot.

Whoopee do. Fact is (and I have said this countless times too) the 79 series are AMD's Fermi. For 28nm they are too hot, too loud and use too much power for the performance they give. And that's why Nvidia got lucky with their rebranded mid ranged card that manages to be where it is in the market.

BTW if you want to know about power usage and heat? here.

cardsin-1.jpg


I used to put my feet behind the rig during winter and it made a cracking foot warmer. But, thermally the setup was safe and core 1 used to top out around 89c. Well within spec.

Compared to those the 480s are as cool as it comes.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh1HQ64HcmE

2:15 and onward. Couldn't have put it better myself. Infact, I did, right in the thread where the EVGA GTX 480 was launched for £184.99.

Cracks me up how some people are banging on about the heat, when they probably and likely owned a card such as the 3870/4870x2 or 5970 and have now been converted into some green hippy wannabe moaning about power usage.
 
Lol yeah i know what you mean, if the heat doesnt bother you its a non issue. Just for me my computer is on the top floor of my house, the hottst room in the house so my ambients are quite high and fan noise can annoy me.

Lol at the footwarmer though :-)

Interesting comparison by the way, its well known that crossfire/sli ing older cards can get better bang for buck than current generation cards if you dont have compatibility/driver problems.

I wish gibbo would put his 2gb 6850,s on special offer.
 
dave_beast said:
And yet, you still haven't answered about how you used to put down Fermi compared to 79** cards?
Click to expand...

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18379874&highlight=EVGA+GTX+480

Now scurry along troll and have a good read.

Oh, and stop lying your'e really not very good at it.

There I am, two months ago nearly sticking up for the 480 and saying how it's a very fast card.

You = fail. Seriously man, run along and bother some one else because you're just failing at everything you attempt.
 
psychodil said:
Lol yeah i know what you mean, if the heat doesnt bother you its a non issue. Just for me my computer is on the top floor of my house, the hottst room in the house so my ambients are quite high and fan noise can annoy me.

Lol at the footwarmer though :-)

Interesting comparison by the way, its well known that crossfire/sli ing older cards can get better bang for buck than current generation cards if you dont have compatibility/driver problems.

I wish gibbo would put his 2gb 6850,s on special offer.
Click to expand...

I have no doubt that if the last of the 7970 drivers had worked on my system the benchmarks would have been far closer and more impressive from the AMD card.

But, they're not. Whose fault is that? AMD's.

I mean, **** off Kepler as I do at least Nvidia took their time to make sure everything was right and actually working before they released it.

I can tell you now dude, the 6970 with the stock huge blower fan is just as hot and loud as a 480 Fermi. Infact, I would bet on it given that my 6970 Lightning with that massive TFIII hit mid 70s under load and some have reported 80s.

Hottest card ever? 6990. Yet if you have one around here you have a very fast card and no one cares about the heat or noise or power usage (it's the world record holder for all three).
 
I'll put a couple of posts in here from the 480 thread. That way it clears it up.

Firstly this one on the 2nd March. 6 weeks before I got my 480s and still owned my 7970.

morguk said:
How well do these handle BF3? What current cards do they compare too? Does anyone have a BF3 benchmark?
Click to expand...

Don't have BF3 benchmarks.

But they score just under 10k in 3dm11 (P) at stock with a stock 950.

They score 30,000 3dmarks in Vantage in the same rig.

So when compared to a 7950, say, they are waaay faster. Basically at stock they are 20% faster than my 7970 @ 1000mhz in the same spec rig in 3dm11.

Just make sure you can space them out properly.

~>Dg<~ said:
between 6950/6970 performance
Click to expand...

Hmm. Don't think so ! The 480 is right around bang on a 570, only it has more vram. Overclock a 480? tada.


And then this one.

Meaker said:
You say overclock, I hope you have your own generator and ear muffs.
Click to expand...

At stock they use 4w more than a 580. And the 580 has a TDP throttle.

Fermi got a lot of bad press due to heat and noise and so on. Most of it though? well, was the way forward. No one batted and eyelid when the 6950 and 6970 came out and were also red hot, loud and guzzled power.

So IMO? they're no worse than any other DX11 card. Sure the 5870 and 5850 used a fair chunk less power but ATI couldn't keep things at those levels. Even the 79xx cards pig down watts when you overclock them.

Nvidia's adaptive performance driver took care of most of the heat issues. My friend's SLI idle at 41 and 42c. That was another trick that ATI had used with the 5 series. They clocked down. As soon as Nvidia cottoned on to that they did the same.

-------------------------------

Oddly enough it seems to be pretty much the same thing this thread has said all along. Funny that eh?


dave_beast said:
Not beating an 1174mv on 12.4 drivers 7970 you're not, but agree you're close. But I won't be trading in mine for some old oil burners just yet.
Click to expand...

So you are actually saying that your 7970 is faster than 480 SLI when the whole world, facts and all disagree with you?

As for me being close? if I replaced my CPU with a spangly new one and ran the tests again they would be exactly the same. Simply because no matter what scenario they are in the 7970 simply isn't as fast as 480 SLI.

And, I have been quite tame with the clocks too. I read that a 480 @ 840mhz is bang level with a GTX 580. Don't tell us though Dave ! a single 7970 is faster than SLI 580s.
 
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There is one flaw in your argument andy. You dont care about power,heat or noise now so why were you only running your 7970 at 1125. From all i have seen you had a good one as it was low voltage at stock. Your card was probably a good candidate for 1300mhz core yet you have replaced it with 2 cards that are at the top of the all time list of power,heat and noise. You have also said that sli and crossfire drivers are not to your liking but you have moved to a dual card solution over a fast single card.

Most people would call you mad as you have gained nothing bar having to deal with dual gpu over a card that can keep up. The main thing though is you seem happy but to me your logic is flawed.
 
TheRealDeal said:
There is one flaw in your argument andy. You dont care about power,heat or noise now so why were you only running your 7970 at 1125. From all i have seen you had a good one as it was low voltage at stock. Your card was probably a good candidate for 1300mhz core yet you have replaced it with 2 cards that are at the top of the all time list of power,heat and noise. You have also said that sli and crossfire drivers are not to your liking but you have moved to a dual card solution over a fast single card.

Most people would call you mad as you have gained nothing bar having to deal with dual gpu over a card that can keep up. The main thing though is you seem happy but to me your logic is flawed.
Click to expand...

Firstly the card would not clock any higher no matter what the voltage. I tried Trixx, which seems to set the voltage itself for the 7970 to 1174.

I have read that cards with a low stock voltage and high Asic quality sometimes do not clock as well as others.

As for the 480 being at the top of the list? that's a joke yes?
7950GX2
9800GX2
GTX 295
GTX 295
3850X2
3870x2
4870x2
5970
6990

480 uses 4w more at idle than a 580 and around 20w more at load. About ten pence a year.

So as far as I am concerned there are no flaws in my "argument" if you want to call it that. I have repeatedly put those straight who want to go on about power, infact I even sat down and did some lengthy maths using kwph showing that a 7970 saves you about £5 a year over a 6970.

Nothing in what I say or do has changed, and reading through my history on this forum you will not see any changes other than the ones people accuse me of.

Sadly though they are wrong. I let Dave stew for a couple of pages before posting a link to the 480 thread where I vehemently stuck up for it.

And that was long before I had mine. If I am to be honest though? as soon as they released I was looking to pick up a pair. You may also remember the thread I posted where I said I was so sick of the drivers on the 7970 that I wanted to take it outside and cut it in half with a set of power tools?

That's because, you know, even though I paid £439 for it and it was a very fast card it annoyed the **** out of me.

My opinions do not change. I have, ever since I was born, been very objective with pretty much everything in this world equally and fairly.
 
Don't really understand what the arguing is about.

We know from the benches we have posted on this forum that the 7970, even when highly overclocked is not as quick as a cooking 480 SLI setup.

For some of the benches I was at 1320/1950 on a single 7970@40-50C.

I suppose it depends what you want to with your rig.

What the 7970/680 setups give you, is the ability to go to 1080p/120fps minimum, 1440p/60fps minimum frame-rates. Unless you want to compromise with settings, that is something the 480 cannot give you, nor the 580's/6970s, unless you want to stick 4 cards in.
 
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ALXAndy said:
Firstly the card would not clock any higher no matter what the voltage. I tried Trixx, which seems to set the voltage itself for the 7970 to 1174.

I have read that cards with a low stock voltage and high Asic quality sometimes do not clock as well as others.

As for the 480 being at the top of the list? that's a joke yes?
7950GX2
9800GX2
GTX 295
GTX 295
3850X2
3870x2
4870x2
5970
6990

480 uses 4w more at idle than a 580 and around 20w more at load. About ten pence a year.

So as far as I am concerned there are no flaws in my "argument" if you want to call it that. I have repeatedly put those straight who want to go on about power, infact I even sat down and did some lengthy maths using kwph showing that a 7970 saves you about £5 a year over a 6970.

Nothing in what I say or do has changed, and reading through my history on this forum you will not see any changes other than the ones people accuse me of.

Sadly though they are wrong. I let Dave stew for a couple of pages before posting a link to the 480 thread where I vehemently stuck up for it.

And that was long before I had mine. If I am to be honest though? as soon as they released I was looking to pick up a pair. You may also remember the thread I posted where I said I was so sick of the drivers on the 7970 that I wanted to take it outside and cut it in half with a set of power tools?

That's because, you know, even though I paid £439 for it and it was a very fast card it annoyed the **** out of me.

My opinions do not change. I have, ever since I was born, been very objective with pretty much everything in this world equally and fairly.
Click to expand...

You do seem competent enough but on the drivers i was playing 4 different games on my mates 7970 rig last night and the experience was flawless. I really dont get why you seem to have more problems than the majority as from release there does not appear to be many driver problems with the 7970. I do agree that cf is a different story but even then its not been as bad as other releases. We all have differing experiences but you seem to have a lot of problems that from my own experiences i hardly ever run into.
 
You were going on about the stock 7970 not being loud in the VTX thread but here you are saying it's too loud...???

Can I hear them? yes I can. But, I could hear my 7970 also.
Click to expand...

The 7970 used to top out at around 76c with the fan on 70%. It was audible.
Click to expand...

the 79 series are AMD's Fermi. For 28nm they are too hot, too loud and use too much power for the performance they give.
Click to expand...

From the VTX thread.....

Well I can tell you from first hand experience that the stock cooler on a 7970 isn't loud. At all.
Click to expand...

My "stock" cooler on the 7970 I had was perfectly adequate.
Click to expand...

???????

You contradict yourself quite a bit...
 
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MOOGLEYS said:
You were going on about the stock 7970 not being loud in the VTX thread but here you are saying it's too loud...???







From the VTX thread.....





???????

You contradict yourself quite a bit...
Click to expand...

Where did I ever complain the 7970 was loud? I actually recommended it because IMO it's just as good as the VTX one. That was my whole point in posting there IIRC.

I said that in here it was audible. I also said that the 480s were also.

Noise doesn't bother me as much as it bothers some it would seem. It wouldn't, I used to run this as a set up for a laugh.

lol-2-2.jpg


Seriously, do you people really have nothing better to do than try and pick holes in everything I say?

That ^ was a Turkish bath. No joke, within about twenty minutes the room was steamy and I was dripping with sweat.

So now that we have covered the fact that noise and heat (well, 86c on the hottest core) do not bother me can we please move onto something else?

Because I get tired of going around in circles with people constantly taking digs at me and then digging up posts and doing some schooling.

The fact is (and it is fact) is that I rate the 480 quite highly. Highly enough to tell my closest friend to put two in his rig. He has, and he is rightly delighted with them. As am I.
 
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