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

[Dane Bouwer]

JD13, You have a point! but something that could either go fantastically magnificent, or drastically wrong!

 

[voltagetoe]

Too much heat. I have no use for this kinda bad design. looks like Nvidia went into panic this round.

 

[xophaser]

American engineered is getting the shaft from American customers on too much power and not being energy efficient. Nvidia=USA, ATI is Canada (AMD is US, but they are getting whoop by Intel) Sounds like Ford/GM cars in the 90 to the fuel efficient Japaneses cars.

 

[mbrayton]

I think I'll stick with my 4870x2

 

[mbrayton]

For NOW anyway!

 

[moonwave]

"Why do we keep seeing Nvidia's card using more system power?"

BECAUSE One of them were going to end up using more than the other, DUH! Unless they were the same piece of electronics! How much electric used is the LEAST IMPORTANT ISSUE! If you used the GTX over the 5970 for 4 hours a day, for a solid year the difference is like $5 to $8!! If you have to worry about that, then you should NOT be buying a fancy graphics card for #350+. If they gave away an exotic car in a giveaway, the winner wouldn't go in and say, "Gee, I heard the porsche got 2 mpg better than the Ferrari. Um, Yeah, Let me have the porsche because it's soooo economical". They'd have to be idiots! And when they design exotic motors the engineering team doesn't sit around and think, "Wow, that Lambo get 8.5 mpg, we need to match that precisely! Also our temps can't be one degree over theirs!"

The 450 is a DIFFERENT piece of hardware that gets roughly similar results to the 5970 and perhaps slightly faster. It gets slightly warmer, but when put in a typical gamers case with FANS the difference is not really a problem. Otherwise there wouldn't be people giving this card good reviews after having them a week on newegg. And that has nothing to do with being a fanboy. It's one thing to post "fanboy" comments, but no one is going to dish out $350 for a piece of junk just to be a fan boy in the review. Sure I can see how someone who has an ATI card might not be impressed with the Nvidia because they are so close, but it's not like there is something seriously wrong with it either. After watching mac fanboys fight for years, It's all too obvious that much of the hoopla on the net has been created by ATI fanboys just because Nvida was late. I seriously think the people who can't comprehend that are stupid.

 

[kcaclark]

I think this review is B.S. If you goto nvidia's website and checkout their demos of what there technolgy is capable of, such as tesslation, cuda, and physx it is incredible. You could have downloaded these demos and ran them on all the cards tested to really SEE which card has superior graphics, instead it focused on benchmarks, how hot it got, and power consumption. You had to disable physx and tesslation just to make it fair. I went to AMD's website the only thing they could show was they could use 6 montiors and could get really good frame rates. Who cares!!! If you are like Ricky Bobby and want to go fast buy an ATI card. If you want to look out the window and see the Grand Canyon in all its glory buy Nvidia.

 

[cewhidx]

[citation][nom]moonwave[/nom]"Why do we keep seeing Nvidia's card using more system power?"BECAUSE One of them were going to end up using more than the other, DUH! Unless they were the same piece of electronics! How much electric used is the LEAST IMPORTANT ISSUE! If you used the GTX over the 5970 for 4 hours a day, for a solid year the difference is like $5 to $8!! If you have to worry about that, then you should NOT be buying a fancy graphics card for #350+. If they gave away an exotic car in a giveaway, the winner wouldn't go in and say, "Gee, I heard the porsche got 2 mpg better than the Ferrari. Um, Yeah, Let me have the porsche because it's soooo economical". They'd have to be idiots! And when they design exotic motors the engineering team doesn't sit around and think, "Wow, that Lambo get 8.5 mpg, we need to match that precisely! Also our temps can't be one degree over theirs!" The 450 is a DIFFERENT piece of hardware that gets roughly similar results to the 5970 and perhaps slightly faster. It gets slightly warmer, but when put in a typical gamers case with FANS the difference is not really a problem. Otherwise there wouldn't be people giving this card good reviews after having them a week on newegg. And that has nothing to do with being a fanboy. It's one thing to post "fanboy" comments, but no one is going to dish out $350 for a piece of junk just to be a fan boy in the review. Sure I can see how someone who has an ATI card might not be impressed with the Nvidia because they are so close, but it's not like there is something seriously wrong with it either. After watching mac fanboys fight for years, It's all too obvious that much of the hoopla on the net has been created by ATI fanboys just because Nvida was late. I seriously think the people who can't comprehend that are stupid.[/citation]

Amen to that!!

 

[Tamz_msc]

The funny thing is that in Metro 2033, which is so proudly showcased by Nvidia in which its Fermi cards excel got walloped by the one and a half year old 4870X2.

 

[Dane Bouwer]

It is almost recommended that you sync AMD with ATI, and in a way, Nvidia want to sync their GPU's to the CPU (Fermi),allowing for a stronger GPU communication with the procedures run by the cpu! Doesn't anyone think that Intel should get together with Nvidia, co-working into allowing this to happen! the Gpu and Cpu are trying to do the same thing with two sets of heads!! result: over power usage,resulting in heat, lack of expected performance! they do have many more traits that ATI wishes they had! i personally think they only brought out the GTX 400 series to give ATI a little to brag and write about... we'll certainly see when nvidia comes back... and i can gaurantee it will be with a bang!! buying an ATI Card is like buying a cellphone, just when you think you've got the best and the strongest, two weeks later there's a newer one with one or two more functions that makes your card look like a cheese grater! Doesn't anyone think thats a bit frustrating!

if i want a card with all the functions that i need, i'll wait for it! and i'm counting on nvidia to deliver this time... with Fermi... with the new 512 CUDA core technology( which is astounding), and the ECC memory builds!! and nobody can talk about price vs power differences... if you can afford to buy one of these GPU's, then for heaven's sake...get yourself a decent PSU!!!

all ATI are worried about is their measely 3dMark scores and there performance points!!! has anyone compared the two companies when it comes to visuals!!??? what about Phyx?? 3d Vision? (which is out of this f*cking world!!) nvidia are doing what a graphics company need to do, and thats to make as if your shooting in a real jungle with branches and leaves and debri (phyx)... to make as if your enemy is popping out of your screen while you shoot his brains out (3d Vision)...

BUT... all ATI are worried about is how fast you can run through the jungle... where's the fun in that... thats not what graphics are... visuals are the most important part of any game (obviously besides story line and game play...uneffected by graphics!)

nvidia was the first company to bring out independent GPUs... i think with a little more time, we'll see what they have in store for us! and keep writing about the differences between the gtx 400 series and the HD5000 series...you'll soon get bored!

i'm waiting for better things!! and still i'm counting on nvidia!!

 

[WarDad]

$100 price difference, a few dollars difference in electic bill.
Hah! Have you priced the 1000w and higher PSUs? What about the reliability? Most of the big boys have spectacular blow ups. Even the good brand only get 4 out of 5 eggs.
A 3 card SLI system better have a dedicated wall socket. 15 amp circuit breakers are common, giving you a 1800w ceiling, less during brownouts. In my house one breaker feeds 3 sockets. You may need to cover the other 2, or pay for an electrician.

 

[hbk1]

man gtx 280 is a pretty good gpu.dont be disappointed the difference is that ati has 5970 which is a dual gpu.and nvidia has 480gtx a single gpu.so i can say here is that let's take a dual core processor of 1.6ghz and a pentium 4 3.2ghz.2 cores means 1.6 x2 and single core means 1 core.both companies have their best gpus here and jsut like that its jsut important to say that a dual core can beat a single core.just like that a pentium 4 3.2 ghz can beat all low pentiums.so ati radeon 5970 is a dual gpu.and nvidia 480gtx is single.because every body know that gtx 480 is the fastest single gpu on planet.

 

[xzap042]

cant wait for the prices to drop. think I'll get on the ATI wagon atlast

 

[bertimus]

Hardware canucks reviews of actual retail versions of the GTX 480 show that the heat and power usage were complete non-issues.

 

[vernoncougar]

I was using two HD5870's in crossfire mode, i have two GTX 480's in SLI mode now. Effects of AA and particularly mentioned that I can let a lot more open, nvidia optimized for success in the game more. GTX 480 overheating, but it seems when looking at measurements of HD 5000 series is not much difference.

 

[carios23]

I am confused as why people says the GTX 470 is not worth the price. Perfomance could be ranked, Radeon 5850, GTX 470, Radeon 5870, and they cost $330, $320 ,$400 respectively. Am I missing something?

 

[Guest]

I'm annoyed, not with Nvidia but with everyone who thinks they're a bloody expert. When the 5 series ati cards cames out they didn't even work across some models. Some people weren't even able to use them for the first 3 months, due to buggy bioses and dodgy drivers causing grey screens. Then I don't know how many bioses later they work fine apart from the drivers. I just moved to win7 64bit and none of the 3D overides work in catalyst, I have to use Radeon pro to force those functions and yet even that doesn't work for all games. All of the comments I see here are just misleading speculation with no actual facts and should be removed.
I've used both Nvidia and Ati cards over the years. When I upgraded from a 6600gt to an Ati 3850 I was immediately dissapointed with the weak HDR, Rendering and performance I thought was good but the image quality wasn't as crisp either and that is still the case.

Now taking cost into consideration. Nvidia's prices are very justifiable, Cuda for example has better particle simulation and Professional graphics programes utilize Cuda for processing rather than doing stuff on the cpu. Adobe software working with Raw HD Video Content, Pro 3D apps such as Maya, 3D Studio Max etc.
Then you have PhysX which is far superior to Havok in everyway. All in all it's more eye candy.
I'm buying a GTX 470 this week. I'm over my 5770 and Ati's garbage just got back from a 2 week holiday driver set. Now they want to rush out the 6xxx series cards just to be able to compete with Nvidia now that there's been a few revisions and the drivers have stablized out a bit. So yeah, looks like there could possibly be another round of buggy bioses and beta drivers.

AMD and ATI have always been bang for buck. Lower price = Sacrifice.
It's like if your looking for a cheap car, you'll end up with something like a Honda Civic not a V8.

And for the record if you are considering buying ATI, steer clear of Sapphire, Higher priced vapourX is a joke, no voltage control and bad customer support like most companies these days. They didn't even read the message I left on my support ticket, they just told me to update my bios to the latest version which was already on the card. The bios had nothing to do with my problem, pathetic.
Go with Asus, MSI, Gigabyte or XFX.

Or even better EVGA Nvidia, IMO they have the best offerings and warranty.
And that is exactly where I'm putting my money this week.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Or even better EVGA Nvidia, IMO they have the best offerings and warranty.
And that is exactly where I'm putting my money this week.

Good for you!

 

[eodeo]

Then you have PhysX which is far superior to Havok in everyway.

For reference, I teach 3d and havok is a professional physics simulator. Phisyx is a physics toy. Only good thing about it is that it can run on GPU, which happens to be a great thing. Some kind of physics simulation is far better than no kind. This happens to be the only reason it lived for as long as it has.

If only ati could get away from amd/intel and get havok running on GPU, contest would be over. As it is, we have what we have.

Dont get me wrong, my next card is going to be nvidia. Physics, while toylike is near real time, where is havok is... lets say not. Max 2011 subscribers just got a taste of Physix for realtime simulations. Realtime means a lot when you need to get the job done yesterday.

 

[mischieffrk]

Omw, i have a gtx 460 oced and im geting beter fps in dx11 than a 5870!!! Nvidia have won the dx11 battle, but for how long, amd are cheaper and perform beter but not with dx11 right now with all nvidias advantages like physx, 3d vision, sli scalling and better tessalation performance (although still not what i call great) i think we'd all prefer nvidia, but as many have said its too late and the only real impressive card being the gtx 460(oced)