GeForce GTX 480 And 470: From Fermi And GF100 To Actual Cards!

[bstm300]

The only thing I find mildly impressive is the 470's potential to directly compete with the 5870. According to newegg's prices, the price differential between the two cheapest models (5870 vs 470) is $62. Given they perform about the same in games like far cry 2, that is pretty good. The 480 is pointless for the mid-range price oriented gamers (way too many adjectives). So, I give nvidia 2 stars for providing decent competition to the 5870. Other than that, I could care less and look forward to their mid-range cards coming during summertime.

 

[Guest]

ah the time has come i can finally have a deep fryer in my bedroom without the girlfriend getting upset. all i need now is the mini fridge.

 

[Guest]

Started out in the Green camp, jumped ship when AMD bought ATI because I always rooted for the underdog, I strangely found myself secretly wanting Nvidia to do well this time.

Partly because this time, coming into this fight, Nvidia actually is the underdog, partly because my old 7800 GTX needs replacing, and being on a budget, I was hoping a good showing by the Green guys would mean some competition. Only have that much to spend, and was hoping even a 5770 or a 5830 might come down into my price range.

But after reading this... well... i guess the guys at semiaccurate were not too far off the mark after all.

If only "raw" performace matters. Yay! a Green victory! (albeit a small one).
Worth the money? Academical, since it I can't afford $350 or more.
But even if I could... the power draw of these beasts are bad, but would not bother me that much. What would, would be that dissipating power always (again, on a budget) means noise, and that I would not be able to live with.

So with only 6 months left before ATI's next model cycle, I guess I'm stuck waiting for that to help me out.

 

[Guest]

AND THIS IS THE REASON WHY I'M A FAN OF ATI!!! \m/

 

[builderbobftw]

grrrr.....Looks like no 300$ 5870 for me until the 5890 is realsed.

 

[obsidian86]

things to get before getting gtx 480
-get dedicated 3 phase line from power station
-convert aircon into custom case
-fireproof the house
-turn off heating
-move near airport to hide the noise

 

[Guest]

I didn't pay attention to heat part when I first read the review. But 97C ? I thought my g92 8800 gts too hot already which is around 72C. This takes the cake. I bet jury would be convinced if I burn down my house and sue nvidia that fermi is at fault.

 

[b7fLuid]

Hi folks,
I've got some questions /concerns for everyone and I'd like to hear some feedback...that's probably a given...please don't flame, it'll hurt my feelings.

1) Shouldn't we wait to find out the actual retail price of the video cards before we draw our conclusions about the worth of the release? Now this is a fat chance, but if the retail price actually turns out to be equal to or less than the price of the competing ATI cards, wouldn't it make the some of the power consumption and temperature concerns more palatable? Of course, other conclusions can still be drawn (i.e. this launch is way too late!) without knowing the retail price, but if I were in the market for a new video card now and I see one with 15% better performance at the same price as a competing product, I'm probably going to choose the better performing card.

2) At this point most sites are comparing the MSRP of the Nvidia cards to the current street price of the ATI cards. This can be a bit misleading since this is like comparing apples (MSRP) to oranges (Retail) isn't it? Wouldn't it be more logical to compare the performance of the competing products to the original MSRPs of the cards themselves? The MSRP for the ATI 5850 was $259 and compared to the $350 MSRP of the Nvidia 470, you're paying 35% more ($91) for approximately 10-15% increase in performance. I don't think it's fair to blame ATI for the supply issue that allowed retailers to raise the price of the ATI cards. The lack of a competive product from Nvidia didn't help either!

3) As a result of this artificially inflated retail price for ATI's video cards, is Nvidia thanking their lucky stars that they can charge at least 10-15% more of ATI's current prices instead of trying to compete with the original MSRPs? It's the silver lining to a bad situation for Nvidia isn't it, since they can now make a little more money on these late arriving cards? I wonder what MSRP Nvidia would be charging if there were no supply issues with ATI's cards, cause $350/$499 would be way overpriced compared to the $259/$380.

4) Will there actually be a price war anytime soon? The products are all nicely staggered in terms of performance so there is no incentive to force change which will allow both companies to keep prices high. Well, not unless we see a miracle from Nvidia and they make the MSRP competitive upon release. I have a sneaky suspicion that the prices will be artificially high until one of them releases their next card. Oh, and this whole thing about us wanting to buy the latest and greatest thing. That doesn't help lower the prices either or incite a war.

Btw, I currently run a 5850 which I bought for $299 CDN. Previously, I ran a 5770 Crossfire setup for $360 CDN ($330 including the $30 rebate I just got back recently). In another rig I have a Nvidia 9800GTX+ which replaced a 4850. In an older system I ran an Nvidia 6800GT OC.

I don't believe in fanboyism, just choosing the best product at the proper pricepoint for my tastes. Unfortunately, my tastes appear to be expensive, but not to the point where I'd spend $350 plus for a video card(s). I'll leave those cards for the insane gamers (my brother) and those people who need a workstation video card.

 

[brisingamen]

lcs 5890 2gb where art thou!!!!!!!!

 

[brisingamen]

if fermi is running at 97c under load and its not even spring, imagine summer time, i dont like cranking ac i have mad dry skin, id like to know the ambeint room tempurature of the test rooms, im guessing under 73f, in the summer i dont run ac because i also like fresh air, so hows fermi gonna do in my pc sucking in 90f + degree weather,

the only way i can run a gtx 480 all year around is if i watercool it. wich is too much of a hassle, i like moving my computer around alot.


temps matter to me,

even if i wanted a gtx 480 i cant buy a video card i cant trust to be snappy 365 days a year without worry.

the colder a chip is the better it performs, thats a fact no matter who makes the chip, the heat cannot be ignored!

 

[razercultmember1]

GTX 495 = 1024 cores

ETA?

 

[jeff77789]

[citation][nom]gamby[/nom]I didn't pay attention to heat part when I first read the review. But 97C ? I thought my g92 8800 gts too hot already which is around 72C. This takes the cake. I bet jury would be convinced if I burn down my house and sue nvidia that fermi is at fault.[/citation]

come on. My gtx 275 gets to around 100 degrees and it doesn't burn down anything cuz it doesnt hav anything to burn.[citation][nom]xyzionz[/nom]My GTX275 stays until next roundsince it still provide good frames for 1920x1080 with 4xaa with recent gamesDisappointed with the GTX4xx cards, my room is already hot enough, not anymore[/citation]

 

[obsidian86]

[citation][nom]razercultmember1[/nom]GTX 495 = 1024 cores ETA?[/citation]
when every house has a mini fusion power plant in the basement

 

[razercultmember1]

maybe fermi is just geared towards the professionals/scientists who need the raw power and can shell out that much? anyway, cheers to seeing gtx 285 sli'd for 500 i hope

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]pei-chen[/nom]Wow, it seems Nvidia actually went ahead and designed a DX11 card and found out how difficult it is to design. ATI/AMD just slapped a DX11 sticker on their DX10 card and sells it as DX11. In half a year HD 5000 will be so outdated that all it can play is DX10 games.[/citation]
ur the fkin dumbest nvidia fanboy i ever seen atis 5000s are dx11 cards that wer relesaed 6 months ago and nvidia just caem out with somethin shittier and more expensive

 

[gbwatson96]

Again, with CPU temps lowering and our economy going down the toilet, NVidia fails to deliver the goods. The GPU heat issue is retarded and the power consumption is just crazy. Again, the only thing NVidia has on ATI is drivers. That is it. ATI beats the pants off in value for the dollar. NVidia has failed to consider the fact that the people who may buy their products don't have a lot of money to throw at a video card. To me, if NVidia would make their prices more competitive, I could give them some credit here. But, that is not what has happened and the 200 series of video cards are over-priced, under-performing video cards. Is that the new offering again, from NVidia? I am not interested.

 

[obsidian86]

its hard to get the best view with all the fanboys

 

[st_wsz]

Why GTX480 has 386bit memory but score less on high resolution? So faking..... And if you try 8AA or 16AA, Fermi is definitely better. And GTX480 is better on DX11, with more DX11 putting into games, ATI cards will be not powerful enough to run.

 

[st_wsz]

[citation][nom]879[/nom]ur the fkin dumbest nvidia fanboy i ever seen atis 5000s are dx11 cards that wer relesaed 6 months ago and nvidia just caem out with somethin shittier and more expensive[/citation]
I strongly suggest you to run pure DX11 demo on ATI card, they are so shitty. You will see how performance decrease when you stress the card. With highest quality, HD 5970 cannot even reach 1/10 of the performance of GTX470. Fermi is now definitely a better solution for future than HD5000.

 

[brisingamen]

ati had to do alot of binning to get chips to make the cut to be put on the 5970, look at how much more energy efficient each 5870 core must be to be considered a hemlock, 30%? some lightning 5870's are reaching 1500mhz, ln2 sure but think about the capabilities of the yeilds of the past month let alone 3-4 months ago.

with the current stats of the gtx 480, nvidia has alot of work to do before they can even think of releasing a dual fermi part each with 512 shader cores, the heat, . . . the wattage, . . . getting two fermi chips with all of thier cores, . . . 3 massive hurdles, yeah they said they want to do it but how long,

i would be suprised to see such a card before december.

5xxx line is more than a 4xxx with a sticker its actually an evolved design.

also i cant state how meaningless i feel tech demo's are, first of all they are incredibly inefficient for how good they look, thier are plenty of games released, that not only look better than many 3d marks, but perform better, by the time games use the amount of tesselation as the dragon demo developers will be much more skilled than the first ever small team that made that poor demo, so in 6 months, a 5870 will still be playing games with dx11 features.

the 5870 in its stock 1gb form is currently held back more by memory and clock speeds not the actual architecture.

the current 5870 design loves higher memory clocks, the overclocking scalability is pretty much as good as it gets.

i see a 2gb 5870/5890 clocked at 1200mhz gpu 6000mhz memory not only an easy possibility but highly likely,

ati knew what it was doing when it was designing the 5870 gpu.

 

[youssef 2010]

One of the bad drawbacks about Nvidia's latest cards is the need for 2 cards to run 3 monitor configuration.As for 3d Vision,if its how I imagine it, it would be totally awesome.But,ATI has the lead with lower power consumption,lower teperatures & lower Prices(higher value).As for the METRO glitch, I think it's a driver issue for ATI & Nvidia altogether, as the game appears far too demanding for this to be ahardware issue.BTW, GREAT ARTICLE

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]Avro Arrow[/nom]You're wrong. How can you even THINK that after all the CRAP nVidia has pulled due to their arrogance? ATi made them eat crow and gave them a much-needed dose of humility (I hope). Now perhaps it won't just be ATi that's treating consumers with honesty. I'm glad ATi is in the driver's seat because nVidia had become complacent, dishonest and cocky.[/citation]
You're turning a blind eye to all but the most recent GPU generations if you think ATI isn't capable of doing the exact same.

 

[Guest]

If nvidia have a advanced technology enough to build card like Quadro FX 5800, so why it's 400 series can't beat AMD's 5xxx ?

 

[Guest]

Just like the PS3 was too little to late, and took years to become competitive, Fermi will follow the same path, however, the competition will release the next iteration by then. nVidia shares will probably knock off on monday (open lower). nVidia's yields must be really shocking for them to disable one of the shader clusters, when they know that the first impression benchmarks will be slightly better than 4870. I think nVidia was trumped this generation. The market is already saturated with ATI cards, and I'm guessing more will by ATI after these new reviews, so nVidia has really reduced their customer base by being so late, to slow, to expensive, and their cards are inefficient with respect to power usage. All I can say to nVidia is, "I'm very unimpressed by your latest offering - customer's voices aren't being heard!". nVidia seem to be focusing more on compute/server processing and more scared of Intel than anything else.LOL.

 

[knutjb]

[citation][nom]CaptainBib[/nom]Don't judge them too harshly now, it still beats the 5870, albeit not by much. These are crippled cards though, wait to see how the original Fermi card, a gtx 485, performs and then jump down Nvidia's throat.This isn't the card Nvidia hyped to the moon, TMSC killed that card.[/citation]
Why not judge them, all this time and all Nvidia can release is a crippled card? Really. So lets wait for 485 and blame it all on TMSC! ATI managed to figure out the 40nm process but Nvidia is still having problems. ATI was smarter by testing it out on a inexpensive card first, not a flagship product that attracts major attention. Don't blame TMSC, blame Nvidia its their card.

No I'm not an ATI fanboy, I just hate pathetic excuses.