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

[dominatorix]

this is the Bottom line from hardocp :
"We see no reason to purchase a GeForce GTX 470. It provides no gameplay advantages compared to the competition, and will actually end up costing you more power and dollars for the exact same performance you can get with the Radeon HD 5850. Factor in the power consumption, and it doesn’t seem worth it. If you have an HD 5850, stick with it, the GTX 470 is not an upgrade. If you are contemplating a great performing graphics card, for a decent price, the HD 5850 is still the best choice.
The GeForce GTX 480 is more relevant in the market but it hasn’t exactly come out of the gate wowing us with performance either. There are some games where it is faster than the Radeon HD 5870, and there are some games where it is even with the Radeon HD 5870. Factor in the cost and power, and include the ability to run Eyefinity on a single GPU, the Radeon HD 5870, to us, seems like the better value for the gamer right now."

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I am not surprised by the results of the preliminary review.

 

[Hellbound]

About time we had some benchmarks. I read every word of it. And I tell you what. The GTX480 has a 10-15% performance increase over the 5870, but costs $100 more. Ontop of that draws as much power as the 5970. The only thing this benchmark assured me is that ATI should be my choice.

 

[Guest]

Am also disappointed. Sure, the GTX480 may be the fastest single GPU card out there but value-for-money it is not compared to the HD 5870. Alongside with lots of heat and noise generated, no to mentioned the high power consumption, I'll buy a Radeon any time.

 

[qwerty45]

Wow you would think that if they took HALF A YEAR MORE (which in computer time is a LONG TIME) and this is all they can get. Lets wait for ATI 6000 series at the end of this year or by early 2011

 

[nforce4max]

Nvidia has some what screwed its self with the 40nm process and this chip has a lot of potential when it gets a shrink.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

A great review Toms! Thanks yet again.

Unfortunately VERY disappointing power consumption and heat levels coming out of this new architecture. In these aspects the GTX 480 is eerily reminiscent of the Geforce FX5800 and Radeon HD2900 XT. I wouldn't be surprised if these significant heat levels prove detrimental to the performance efficiency and longevity of these cards (performance/efficiency decreases as temperature increases, a law governing all microprocessors). It's difficult to know at this point what the cause is, but if the high power consumption is inherent in Nvidia's gf100 architecture, well... then they've got some problems on their hands (forget high performing mobile/dual GPU gf100 derivatives). However if the issue is primarily yields, size (3 billion transistors), and leakage resulting from TSMC's yet immature 40nm process, then Nvidia could potentially alleviate some of the problem with a hardware revision.

On the other hand, gf100 has some impressive performance figures when it comes to DX11 features, and all in all seems more forward focused then the HD5000 series in terms of both gaming and GPGPU computing. In these more compute and graphically intensive scenarios (AA+AF/DX11) the GTX480 and 470 manage to outperform both the HD5870 and 5850 by a significant margin, and in some cases the GTX480 even manages to compete with the HD5970. Although the performance in current gen games isn't quite as impressive, the outlook for next gen games seems quite good. But again power consumption comes into play, and even in these best case scenarios there's just no getting around the fact that the GTX 400 series is less power efficient then the HD5000 series.

In addition gf100 looks to be a GPGPU performance beast, and I totally agree with the opinions of the article in this regard "The potential gains of parallelizing certain technical workloads are enormous, and Nvidia’s investment in software development means it has a formidable head start over AMD and Intel in this growing market." I'm eager to see the rendering capabilities of this card if CUDA or Direct Compute were made compatible with Maya and other 3D software suites (rendering on an Athlon 64 X2 is painful...)

 

[Guest]

hmm , got a 5770 and the next ugrade will be an 5870, i wont pay extra for huge temp and power cons. also got an 22" mon , so no diference for me, for invidia fans who consolate the fact that is a "cripled card and nvidia didnt show it all" wth , if this card is hot like hell , how will a full 512 one manage the heat.YES 470/480 gtx wins in terms of perf over ati , but is way to late , to expencive and to hot.Not many owners of vga cards will migrate on fermi , and those who wanted a dx11 card they alrdy own a hd5xxx so is less likely to get an fermi

 

[gullyfoyle]

So, just how much of your funding comes from nVidia?

 

[1898]

Your efficiency index is based on Heaven? lol.

 

[cyvader]

I was waiting the fermi release with bated breath. I made a top of the line computer over a year ago, which is still pretty close to top of the line. I skimped on cards, and I was hoping these could be the new hearts of that PC, replacing 2 4850s from ATI.

Unfortunately, I just placed an order for two 5870s, and await them next week. I hope nVidia can come back and put out an efficient and powerful card, hopefully one that supports more then 2 monitors per card.

 

[rooket]

$500 isn't competative enough for me. I won't be buying one. Disappointing benchmark results. $100 less you can join the ATI club which I don't plan on doing. I'm happy with $135 graphic cards. Geforce 260 core 216. I will be skipping everything between the current one that I own and the GTX 480 and also skipping all these silly i series intel cpus too. I don't need any of it. I'd be forking out maybe 2 grand to upgrade my rig just to get a few more FPS out of crysis. Big deal. total waste of cash. people in the industry should learn from these mistakes and price things down to where the enthusiast would enjoy spreading some wealth. Most of my friends can afford this stuff more than I can and they are all on low end computers now and plus they do IT work for a living.

 

[Zijn]

[citation][nom]LePhuronn[/nom]Did we honestly expect anything else?[/citation]

I was hoping the rumours wernt true...

 

[rambo117]

[citation][nom]pei-chen[/nom]Now I am really looking forward to DX11 gaming on GTX 400. ATI/AMD has a long way to go to get DX11 at acceptable performance.[/citation]
dude, which article were you reading? LOL
...
anyways, WOW, benchmarks at last. I must say, that was very disappointing. I was hoping that the GTX480 would drive the prices of the 5870 down to earth... Lost hope

 

[maynardman10]

I'm so happy I bought my 5870 4 months ago and didn't wait on this over priced turd.

 

[dbrooks08]

I hope this will wake Nvidia up and ATI get alot of momentum from this, so next GPU cycle will be really contested. Though, both GPU series are very close in performance already and that is only good for us, the consumer.

 

[Guest]

Has anyone noticed the coincidence of the availability date for the GTX480 and the official announcement date of the Adobe CS5 suite? Some of Adobe's GPU acceleration improvements ONLY work with high end CUDA processors.

 

[Ed Brown]

Yeah, also waiting to see the full 512 CUDA core model at the GTX 480 price to make a real decision here, (they're probably all 512 cores on die atm - yields should improve). We all NEED competition and this just isn't it yet.

I'd look to see 58xx prices go up as well for the short term. You guys who bought into 58xx should kick back and laugh now, lol, (just a 4850 here).

Thanks to Tom's for shedding the real light on this too-long ongoing-guessing grab-ass game.

 

[rodney_ws]

I paid $259 for an ATI 5850 back in October and it has given me 6 months of gaming bliss. How much Fermi could I buy now for that same $259? Thought so.

 

[Railgun1369]

I think this is just like anything else. Fan boys will have their hot headed subjective opinions on either side of the camp. It's all well and good, but really irrelevant. Over time, ATI could easily be the top dog for several years to come, just like AMD was over Intel in the earlier days of the Athlon. They had a good run, then Intel came back with a vengeance. In this case, nVidia has had a good run, but it seems the tides are turning. This is good for AMD/ATI to be sure and it seems they are well ahead of the game. So long as they can continue the momentum and stay on top, success should be assured for a while. That's not to say that nVidia will give up. Perhaps the GTx 5xx series will be better? Perhaps it won't be for another two or three generations of chip. Either way, it's all good for competition. The GPU market, not like the CPU market, seems to be pretty fierce so yay for us.

As far as this launch, yeah, it was definitely hyped to hell. So be it. I don't care one way or another and the numbers speak for themselves. I, like a great many of you I'd bet, was waiting for this review as I'm due to replace the 8800s I have. After this, I have no problem saying I'm once again a fan of AMD, but rest assured they'll have to work hard to keep my loyalty.

As a loyal fan of nVidia in terms of the past, it's too bad they couldn't come through, but I would be remiss to say nVidia won't be on top again. It's just the way things seem to be in this industry.

 

[Guest]

Well as i sit here im playing hawx @ 6000x1200 @ 50fps with $400 worth of 5870 using only 200watts to do so but more importantly ive been doing it for 4months now.

The GTX480? well its faster(just) but its much much hotter, uses way more power, still isnt even avaliable, has no triple monitor option (SLI 470's at a minimum for that) and is 6months late.

and ATI still has the single card crown, i think its pretty clear who wins this "round"

To me any benchmarks under 2560x1200 are pointless, as pretty much any of the high end cards from the last generation can do 40+ fps @ 1920x1200.

Eyefinity resolutions are what matter and anyone who thinks otherwise simply hasnt had the pleasure of playing on such a setup.

I went to a lan and took my eyefinity setup, had a croud over my shoulder all day, multimonitor gaming is the future, and only supporting 2monitors per card(like the last 5 generations) is a massive risk for nvidia.

Nvidia 6/10
ATI 9/10

Thats the plain hard truth of the matter

 

[tpi2007]

[citation][nom]tpi2007[/nom]Well, you see, the problem here is, they are not exactly touting this card as a mere gaming card, but also as the future of GPGPU. So, yes, I stand by what I said, it won't do brilliantly on Monday. I didn't say it was going to fall abruptly, but the cards do not live up to the hype. They're simply terribly inneficient. Will people buy it ? Sure, if they can get their hand on one to begin with. But have no doubts, this is the Pentium 4 Prescott v2.0. Too hot, too expensive, minor performance gains in comparison. As it is they live up more to the rumors leading to today's presentation than to the hype.[/citation]


Whoever voted me down surely hasn't read Nvidia's Fermi Compute Whitepaper: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/attach/3183943?type=support&primitive=0

 

[bugsplat]

The good: Truly competitive performance across the board, Promising new features (Tessellation potential, 3D vision, PhysX), Full DX11 support.

The bad: Hard to justify the price premium without a larger performance edge in current generation games. Tessellation and PhysX improvements will require developers to code for it in order to see any improvement (i.e., better eye candy). 3 displays require 2 cards due to lack of display port. 3d vision requires investment in expensive new 120hz monitors.

The Ugly: The high heat output probably means limited room for overclocking. The cards run to hot even at stock speeds IMO. Card will be labeled as "crippled" due to the disabled SP's (really bad for a flagship product).

The Verdict: Not at all disappointed I got a pair of 5870's this week, but I look forward to watching Nvidia's offerings mature over the next 6 months. I hope ATI commits to supporting 3D in it's current generation products or I may switch to Nvidia as more 120hz monitors hit the market.

 

[Guest]

epic fail maybe the mainstram segmet dx11 cards will be beter but anyways now it is to late for that ati has that market

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]daniel266[/nom]Can we have some 2d Benchmark??and can you test these cards on Photoshop and autocad to see if the nvidia cards and the new cuda beats ati versions ??[/citation]
+1, I'm actually very interested in this as well, especially considering the architectural GPGPU enhancements built into gf100.