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***THE OFFICIAL GTX480/470 END USER REVIEW THREAD***

bee said:
yup forced in afterburner, its not noisy at all to me and i can't hear it anyway even on 100% cos i use in ear headphones. use almost exactly the same fan profiles as on my gtx 260 and it hits almost exactly the same load temps but idles 15c lower
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You must be deaf if you can't hear it at 50%, I keep my GPU at 20% idle and 40% load.
 
Razor Time said:
Cheers for the info mate, I have been trying to find out if the bios was slightly different and if the Asus cards were in fact slightly better than the rest of the fermi cards. So it seems it was all marketing on Asus behalf if the caps and bios is the same as all the other cards. MSI are advertising that they are offering better caps with their cards, I was hoping Asus was doing the same due to the 50% statement.
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The first batch of GTX 4XX series are all identical PCB wise, as well as cooling, except the EVGA Hydro-Copper series. They got the vanilla cards from Nvidia, flashed custom BIOS with vendor ID and default/OC clockspeeds which may include a slight voltage bump, and are then stickered and boxed.

The components used on the vanilla cards might very well fall into MSI's "Military Grade" specs, and so can conveniently run with their marketing on the box. If you think how hot the GTX 480 has to run for years on air cooling, you'd think they will not use cheap components on the reference PCB design, or they'd have some serious RMA problem. :D
 
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Raikiri said:
You must be deaf if you can't hear it at 50%, I keep my GPU at 20% idle and 40% load.
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good for you, as for me i can't notice it at 50% without headphones on and i can't hear it even at 100% with headphones on, its not something that's ever bothered me and my hearings fine

on a different note, i've started to notice the improvement in image quality these cards have over my previous gtx 260, left4dead2 in 3D looks noticeably sharper especially the gun models
 
Installed my 980X today this is the first run with it :D Cooling is also better now as the Intel 980X HSF means I can use a case fan to cool the GTX480 directly to lower temps slightly ;) Noise is non existent @ 50% on mine even 60% is hard to hear unless you have the case open.
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bee said:
on a different note, i've started to notice the improvement in image quality these cards have over my previous gtx 260, left4dead2 in 3D looks noticeably sharper especially the gun models
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I believe such things to be fuelled by placebo or the amount of money you've spent in all honesty.

Better colour quality, maybe, sharper clearer textures at sharp angles, yeah.
 
kylew said:
I believe such things to be fuelled by placebo or the amount of money you've spent in all honesty.

Better colour quality, maybe, sharper clearer textures at sharp angles, yeah.
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believe what you like and keep trying to put a dampener on it all you will, maybe its just the 3D driver was improved or something but certainly image quality improves from generation to generation with better aa/af routines etc. money has nothing to do with it £430 isn't a great deal of money to me and i don't need to justify my purchase at all, extremely happy with it as its doing almost all i asked of it, only real thing that's not great so far is bbfc2 framerates in 3D are a little lower than i expected
 
bee said:
good for you, as for me i can't notice it at 50% without headphones on and i can't hear it even at 100% with headphones on, its not something that's ever bothered me and my hearings fine
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Sorry, but if you can't hear something that's 40+ db then I would actually get it checked out. :p

Every card I've owned (without after market cooling) has been loud at 50% fan speed, it isn't a dig at the 480.
 
bee said:
believe what you like and keep trying to put a dampener on it all you will, maybe its just the 3D driver was improved or something but certainly image quality improves from generation to generation with better aa/af routines etc. money has nothing to do with it £430 isn't a great deal of money to me and i don't need to justify my purchase at all, extremely happy with it as its doing almost all i asked of it, only real thing that's not great so far is bbfc2 framerates in 3D are a little lower than i expected
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Yea you're right. I think it's the st3c texture compression that's a bit better. I've noticed that in L4D too while going from gtx280 to gtx470 - whether it's hw or driver related I don't know, but the texture markings are sharper.
 
Raikiri said:
Sorry, but if you can't hear something that's 40+ db then I would actually get it checked out. :p

Every card I've owned (without after market cooling) has been loud at 50% fan speed, it isn't a dig at the 480.
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He uses in ear plugs... that's why it doesn't bother him. I'm not even paying attention to mine before they hit 80% fan speed.
The only silent PC is a PC turned off. Even leaves rustling in a breeze I don't consider silent... quiet but not silent.

I've owned around 90 cards, and 50% fanspeed on radial/blower and ordinary fans isn't making the same noise..also regardless of size.
 
bee said:
bbfc2 framerates in 3D are a little lower than i expected
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Interesting.
What res you running @ bee ?
Do you have BLOOM And HSAO on ?
I'm running a 5850 @1920 x 1200, 4 x aa / 16 x af.
bloom off and hsao off. But everything else max.
And with them settings, it runs smooth. part from when it gets nuts.

Can't use 8 x aa or have hsao on, (hsao take away the smoothnes) as this kills my performance. :mad:
 
Don't notice the fan below 60%, its not too bad up till 70%, fairly loud but fine when gaming up till 80%, anything over 80% is too loud. I've lowered my overclock to 750mhz so that the fan doesn't have to go above 80%. this is with 2 apache blacks blowing down on the card too :) Shame that sound is what is limiting the overclock, needs water bad.
 
up2nogooduk said:
Interesting.
What res you running @ bee ?
Do you have BLOOM And HSAO on ?
I'm running a 5850 @1920 x 1200, 4 x aa / 16 x af.
bloom off and hsao off. But everything else max.
And with them settings, it runs smooth. part from when it gets nuts.

Can't use 8 x aa or have hsao on, (hsao take away the smoothnes) as this kills my performance. :mad:
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oh the frames are fine in normal playing , i only checked it once it was like 70+, the reason they're not that great is cos i use 3D vision which basically halves framerates. running it 1680x1050, dx11, 4xaa, all high , hbao off and probably averaging about 35fps dependant on map and what's going on of course.

i guess its because before i was playing it in dx9 with medium shadows and of course no aa, think i'll go try dx9 now but the lack off aa means i couldn't play it like that for long

Mr Fujisawa said:
Don't notice the fan below 60%, its not too bad up till 70%, fairly loud but fine when gaming up till 80%, anything over 80% is too loud. I've lowered my overclock to 750mhz so that the fan doesn't have to go above 80%. this is with 2 apache blacks blowing down on the card too :) Shame that sound is what is limiting the overclock, needs water bad.
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got my fan to goto 70%@65c and its never gone above 78c using that now
 
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bee said:
we must both be deaf i guess
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Or using really loud case fans, I 'spose.

Gripen90 said:
He uses in ear plugs... that's why it doesn't bother him.
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bee said:
i can't notice it at 50% without headphones on
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:)

Gripen90 said:
I'm not even paying attention to mine before they hit 80% fan speed.
The only silent PC is a PC turned off. Even leaves rustling in a breeze I don't consider silent... quiet but not silent.
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I never said mine was silent, I said that 40db+ is loud :confused:

Gripen90 said:
I've owned around 90 cards, and 50% fanspeed on radial/blower and ordinary fans isn't making the same noise..also regardless of size.
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Again, I never said they did. Just that every stock cooler I've ever used has been 'loud' at 50% speed, some louder than others but none of them were quiet. (9200, 9800pro, 6800NU, 6200, x800gto, 7800GT, 9600GT, 8800GT, 5750 and 5870 iirc.)
 
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