***Nvidia GTX480 & 470 reviews & discussion***

[Duran]

so it is basically 5850 > 480 if u want to play bad company 2

i dont think so anandtech and [H] are known for their weird pro ati benchmarks sometimes. bit tech, tomshardware and most of other sites show the gtx 480 ahead of the 5870 in bad company 2 which is normal of course.

 

[Mr Fujisawa]

I've been holding out so long to get one and it DOES perform well, just really a case of putting up with the noise. Thing is, I'm running a gtx280 and on one of the reviews it said my card was louder at load, if that's the case then I'm not too bothered as it's not a problem when gaming with the speakers turned up.

The price is what i expected, but isn't ideal knowing that a similar performing card(5870) is much, much cheaper. However, I have the 120hz monitor and the 3D vision goggles, something ATI cannot provide at this moment, so it makes sense to stick with nvidia for these reasons. I just hope I don't get bumbed in the gob by a massive price cut after a couple of weeks.

 

[TaKeN]

'Which is normal ofcourse' Honestly Duran.. you're having a giraffe. Clutching at straws now :\

 

[Vertigo]

It's the GTX280 all over again - a bit faster than the competing Radeon of the time (4870) but massive die, huge heat output and sounds like a jet engine. Unfortunately whilst the 65nm GTX280 was shrunk to the 55nm GTX285, curing a lot of the heat and noise problems, no such shrink will be forthcoming for the GTX280.

As for the reviews, it's annoying to see so many comparing the GTX480 to the 5870 and GTX470 to the 5850 when, at current pricing, the GTX470 is obviously competing with the 5870, which crucifies it.

 

[Mr Fujisawa]

so it is basically 5850 > 480 if u want to play bad company 2

[H]'s review use 'best playable' options. They uses TrSS AA on the gtx480 with is broken at the moment, seriously cutting performance but this is due to be fixed in a upcoming driver. As for ATs review, god knows what's going on the there, really behing in some areas and then really in front in others?? would be interesting to find out the settings used.

 

[wuyanxu]

i dont think so anandtech and [H] are known for their weird pro ati benchmarks sometimes. bit tech, tomshardware and most of other sites show the gtx 480 ahead of the 5870 in bad company 2 which is normal of course.

bit-tech had HBAO turned off for some reason.


tessellation is where this card shines, all 58x0 users will have to upgrade when tessellation heavy games come out. gtx480 will be like 8800GTX, will last a long time due to its forward thinking.

i hope i am wrong as i own 5870 myself, but the fact that tessellation kills 5000 series is really depressing.

 

[L0rdMike]

NM

 

[Duran]

'Which is normal ofcourse' Honestly Duran.. you're having a giraffe. Clutching at straws now :\

why is that? the gtx 480 is overall about 15% faster than the 5870 so its normal to be faster in bad company 2 as well. however 15% faster is very dissappointing and nvidia failed badly with fermi.

 

[Hodge]

Think i will stick with my 295 for now.

 

[CraigN]

if nvidia can sort out the manufacturing process and get the chip right without having to cut the cores from 512 to 480 then the performance increase would have been higher.

I feel they have had to rush this card out. Due to manufacturing issues already being 6 months behind ATi who probably have a new card in the pipeline for this year.

When they do get the process right and we see 512 cored GTX 480s that produce less heat etc im sure they will fly.

Im also annoyed that you need to run SLi to use more than 2 monitors.

I have 3 monitors now and should i wish to switch to nvidia i would have to buy two cards shelling out nearly a grand.

Not going to happen when i can have 5870 crossfire for £600, clearly the tri monitor was an afterthought added when they saw the 5xxx series could do it.

 

[Duran]

Think i will stick with my 295 for now.

oh yeah me too. awesome gpu

 

[reflux]

if nvidia can sort out the manufacturing process and get the chip right without having to cut the cores from 512 to 480 then the performance increase would have been higher.

I feel they have had to rush this card out. Due to manufacturing issues already being 6 months behind ATi who probably have a new card in the pipeline for this year.

When they do get the process right and we see 512 cored GTX 480s that produce less heat etc im sure they will fly.

Yeah, totally agree. The GTX 485 will probably be much more suitable performance and they might do a die shrink too.

 

[Mr Fujisawa]

Yeah, totally agree. The GTX 485 will probably be much more suitable performance and they might do a die shrink too.

Same here, but I needs it now for my 3D

 

[MR.B]

The ATI can do more than just play games, although NV is ahead in the software area when it comes to such things the simple fact remains is that it is a graphics card and as that it hasn't done well enough.

You're completely missing the point, the 480 is many times more powerful at certain compute tasks. NV are tapping more into the science/business/server markets, ATI are not. Theres areas are very profitable and as i said, thats where all the extra transitors and power go.

NVs drivers recently got worse, esp when you take in to account a total failure on the fan side in one recent driver.

It should also be pointed out it turned into a fan assisted oven no matter what it is doing at full load.

One fault, in one driver release. Hardly compares to all the issues i've have to put up with since the 5870 release.

 

[mrh2019]

Same here, but I needs it now for my 3D

Get a GTX295, I have that monitor and card is great,, thats unless you want DX11..

 

[Deleted member 76686]

You're completely missing the point, the 480 is many times more powerful at certain compute tasks. NV are tapping more into the science/business/server markets, ATI are not. Theres areas are very profitable and as i said, thats where all the extra transitors and power go.



One fault, in one driver release. Hardly compares to all the issues i've have to put up with since the 5870 release.

Not missing the point at all, you seem to be missing the point that the 480 is a graphics card first and foremost and trying to over egg the other abilities that most people don't care enough about to base a buying decision. When it comes down to the science/business/server markets I think you'll find that NV has created a different individual product range for that any way (Tesla).

Drivers are always a personal perspective, they've both made stinkers although I've suffered problems with neither and as for hardware failures I've had one with ATI and one with NV. I also don't think trying to downplay that recent NV driver issue is going to cut much ice with many people.

You are clearly someone who has to buy the latest and greatest and I suspect you only bought the ATI cards because of that which is fine but please stop trying to justify the 480s to others or even perhaps yourself, overall they are generally good but a disappointment and needed to be better than what they've turned out to be.

 

[sturmtruppe]

The 470 only seems to perform 5-10% slower than 5870 in a lot of those benchmarks on guru3d, and in some cases better....

plus testing on the 5870 was done on the 10.3's. I reckon a mature driver release would put it on terms, if not more so.

Add that to the fact it is only 24cm long and will actually fit in my case and the 470 looks like it will be a good buy if they keep the price at or lower than the 5870.

Dissapointed that there are no offerings from bfg yet, even on their site. but I guess we have to wait a month for OC versions???

also, why are there no OC'd 58** cards at the moment?

 

[Deleted member 76686]

Someone did make a good point about the drivers some where else, they basically stated that you need to consider the NV drivers won't improve massively as it was actually the hardware that fell behind thus the drivers have been worked on for quite some time.

 

[Lemin]

Im now even ashamed of my CM Stacker 830 NVIDIA Edition case. Time for a paint job !

 

[MR.B]

You are clearly someone who has to buy the latest and greatest and I suspect you only bought the ATI cards because of that which is fine but please stop trying to justify the 480s to others or even perhaps yourself, overall they are generally good but a disappointment and needed to be better than what they've turned out to be.

I'm not trying to justify anything, i'm just pointing out why these cards use so much power. Thats it. Stop imagining things.
Not all them transistors are dedicated for gaming performance. Tesla cards or not, they use the same GPU architecture.

I do have to buy the latest and greatest, but not because of why you think. Unlike most people on here, i actually have work to do, and the type of work i do requires high end hardware, and time is money.

I agree that these cards should have been better though, but thats not really NV's fault, its TSMC's 40nm process which has caused trouble for both ATI and NV, it just hit NV harder because of the crazy size of their GPU which greatly increases the defective rate. The 480 was meant to have 520 cores and not 480, it also probably would have been clocked higher if not for the trouble with TSMC.