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

[Guest]

I Have to agree with Rage Machine on this one. I have used nvidia since the Riva TNT and I always avoided ATI because of a lot of driver problems they had back then. I was hoping that this new GTX 480 would be able to replace the 18 month old GTX285 SLI setup I have...I am greatly disappointed that nvidia cannot deliver anymore...they have been slipping more and more ever since the Radeon 9800....I am sure a lot of you remember the vacuum cleaner on the GeforceFX 5800

 

[Guest]

the theorical architecture is impressive, it surprised the first day they unveiled it.
however, the big fail is because somehow the technology to build this type of GPU is not ready yet.... 2% to 5% success on 512 core GPUS is almost to none.
i guess ill keep my 9800gtx+ and wait for the 28nm generation of GPUs that should come end of this year.

 

[DarkMantle]

Thank Tom's for another great review, and Chris, you need to write articles more often man, i always enjoy reading your reviews but we don't see them to often lately, only when something big hits the market.

 

[plasmastorm]

got my crossfire 5850's after having a 8800gtx for 2 years. Shame to loose PhysX but after seeing what Fermi has to offer my inner geek is now rolling around on the floor inside my head.

I do like the 'extra's that Nvidia puts out but the actual cards since the 8800gtx have just been underwhelming to say the least.

3 reiterations of the same GPU (so ok, it had a die shrink.....wow) and now they come out with this junk.

All i can say is Game over.

 

[edilee]

To the author of this article...great in depth review! Also the retail Dirt 2 DOES in fact have a built in benchmark...it is in the "options" section outside the trailer in the graphics section at the bottom. In fact I ran the benchy a couple nights ago before and after I did a CPU swap. I do not recall the benchmark being in the demo...seems to me it was greyed out if I remember correctly but I could be mistaken but it is in the retail version for sure.

Interestingly enough the Nvidia cards hit right in the margin of performance vs. ATI's card I though it would except for the marks where the 480 was extrmely close to the 5970...this should trouble ATI and I say this because the fermi cards are not fully functional cards yet with the first 2 debut cards.

And for all the LOL comments from the ATI fanboys I have one question...in a few months when all cores are active on the Nvidia cards what name will be topping all the benchmark charts? Nvidia, Nvidia, Nvidia. Remember all the really good cards come towards the end of a series...and where do you think a Fermi X2 card is going to place on the charts? The top with much ease.

Aside from that this Nvidia card series release will hopefully drive card prices down for all ATI and Nvidia fans alike...once the manafacturing yields improve for both companies.

To the author of this article...great in depth review! Also the retail Dirt 2 DOES in fact have a built in benchmark...it is in the "options" section outside the trailer in the graphics section at the bottom. In fact I ran the benchy a couple nights ago before and after I did a CPU swap

 

[Zinosys]

After all this hype, the 5870 still gets more 3DMarks than the 480? Too little, too late.

I'll stick with my 5770s, which provide just about the same performance as one 480, except for $200 cheaper.

 

[Gin Fushicho]

Six months.. SIX MONTHS..... and this is it?! I'm sad. =( I've loved Nvidia for so long, but now... I don't know.

 

[Guest]

The Best and most Complete Review around, 2nd is AnandTech.

 

[newxmatrix]

GTX 295 vs GTX 480 Who wins?

 

[brisingamen]

this being the third tap out of the chip known as the a3 stepping
the only fermi i would buy would be a A5 stepping with full 512 cores and much cooler, and some overclocking headroom,
i appreciate the effort in making consistent frame rates but, you have to have high enough frame rate to begin with to start worrying about minimums,

i can honestly say what i feel to be the optimal upcomming setup is a set of watercooled 5870 2gb variants, the healthy scaling overclocks and scaling of the 5870 are legendary. . .

i see nvidia basically using the same strategy that has given them success with the 8800, 9800, gts 250, you can see how in 3 years fermi will be a great 100 dollar card.

 

[khubani]

That looks amazing. Wow. I don't purchase graphic cards often. Maybe every 3 years, so this would be a HUGE jump for anyone that's been playing it conservative. Great job!

 

[nottheking]

A note for Mr. Angelini and the rest of the crew: there's 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte. Hence, all the article's reporting of the memory size of non-power-of-two buffers is wrong. The GTX 480 has 1.5GB, not 1.53, since 1.5GB is what 1536MB is equal to. Conversely, the 470's 1280MB is equal to 1.25GB, not 1.28, and the 295's 1792MB equals 1.75GB.

 

[salem80]

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-470-480-review/21

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]newxmatrix[/nom]GTX 295 vs GTX 480 Who wins?[/citation]
Depends on whether you use anti-aliasing or not. If you don't use AA, usually last generation's dual-GPU card (or dual-card setup) will usually work you better in the long run; the same applied to the previous round, where in non-AA gaming, the 9800GX2 stomped not just the 4870, but the GTX 280 (and later 285) as well. 'Course, you still have to contend with the potential space/TDP issues that the dual-GPU card would have.

 

[burpnrun]

A few things that Tom's didn't mention, although it's an excellent and unbiased (and even very kind to Nvidia) review based on real-world usage:

1. These are the creme-de-la-creme cards that are in reviewers' hands, each especially hand-selected and pre-tested by Nvidia. What will be on the shelves, whenever, will be less performing at worst, or a lottery at best as to what you get.

2. Nvidia can't overclock these chips, so neither will users be able to. In fact, they had to disable shaders, etc, just to get enough to test and ready for sale, and to keep thermals and power draw down. That's why there is no 512 shader model ... it would be welcome at a Texas BBQ fest, if it worked at all for more than 5 minutes.

3. ATI 5xxx series boards have huge potential for overclocking, as users have found out. These were stock ATI boards that Tom's tested. Even ATI board partners are introducing considerably-overclocked models, and with 2 gig of memory (the Radeons are really constrained by their "measley" 1 gig of DDR5). Overclocked, the ATI cards equal or demolish the Fermis.

4. With Fermis being so close to their voltage and thermal limits already, expect to see much higher than normal failure rates once the cards are in users hands. More worrisome, if widespread rumours are to believed, this paper launch may only have 6,000 - 8,000 chips available worldwide, so getting a replacement may be difficult (or a heck of a long wait) if your Fermi crisps up, as it may well do.

No, Fermi = MAJOR FAIL. Nothing here, nothing to see, move along. And I will now start searching to order a pair of 5870's for my gaming rig. Thanks, Nvidia, I wasted 6 months waiting for these dogs to appear????

 

[edilee]

Ok...wait just a darn minute. I read this benchmark article a little bit ago then went to another tech site name FiringSquad and its performance benchmarks pain the 480 and 470 in a completely different light. Why is this? On their site the 480 in SLI tops all the charts and a single 480 is the top single GPU card in almost every test as well even beating out the 275 and 280 in SLI in one test I saw before coming back here.

Tom's and Firingsquad are the only 2 sites I check benchmarks on and they have almost totally different results for this launch. According to the marks here the 480 is not as impressive as it should be and there it is absolutely smoking ATI's wig off. Read both reviews before you draw your conclusions as I did...not that Tom's testing has ever steered me wrong but when I am seeing world domination by the 480 on one site and quite the opposite on the other....leads me to wonder if the Nvidia cards were tested to their full potential.

 

[falchard]

By the time nVidia fixes the issues with Fermi, it will be December and ATI would have released the HD6870 with 4 Billion transistors months earlier. I am definetly going with a poor showing from nVidia. As a business man, I wouldn't have even shown Fermi. There is no way they can profitably sell the GTX480 and GTX470 chips. I would have opted for a weaker performing card that features a new architecture and is more acceptable in other areas. It would be more profitable, and it wouldn't have a lasting bad impression.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Talk about the Holy Grail to convert gamers to ... ATI. Is there any more money left over for an Nvidia bailout? GM made made big powerful machines that on the surface looked like a good thing. But it's all about the sales. I expect these cards to drop in price 30% in 3 months.

 

[t0r012]

I've a couple concerns.
1. these are passed out handpicked by nvidia not retail cards.
2. They draw more power than a 5970's 295w TDP but labeled as a 250wTDP part? am I missing something here?

Side note , that is one darn fine looking card. I have to give it to them for that. I would have to give up my intention to never by a case with clear side if I owned own of these just so i could look at it. But then again I'm a value shopper so it is very unlikely I would ever own one.

 

[vaughn2k]

So can we now go back to the boxes then?

 

[Emperus]

THE WAY ITS MEANT TO BE PLAYED.!! Yeah right.. They better sought out quickly their analogy behind their motto or else They'll be alone left playing this way.. For the same manufacturing process and almost the same level of performance, i really am not able to figure out those power consumption levels.. I guess ATI cards wont even require a price drop to maintain their lead.. Feel sorry for all those who kept their faiths on nvidia.. Anyway, now the wait begins for the availability (if someone interested) and the re-branding stuff which will follow soon enough..

 

[aneasytarget]

How much more performance can Nvidia squeeze out after they have tweaked the drivers? 10-15% extra?

 

[climber]

I think each time ATI or Nvidia does a complete architecture redesign from the ground up, which is a completely different way of doing business than it's previous generation, the first iteration of that architecture is really sketchy, it will improve the next iteration based on this architecture. It's also far more geared towards HPC than gaming.

 

[saint19]

That was disappointed, $350 for the GTX470, and with that you can buy a 5850 that is better in some benchmarks that the GTX470. 1236MB of not power, because the GTX295 can defeat it, even, defeat the GTX480.

Will see with the 512 SP at full (another 6 months?), but maybe when nVidia release that ATI comes with the 6xxx series. All my life I prefer nVidia until now, with this review I'm planning re-sell my GTX260 and buy a 5870, or two 5850 for Crossfire.

Again, sorry for nVidia he lost the 1st place as the better GPU manufacturer.

 

[madass]

In a nutshell-
HD5870=Aston Martin.
GTX480=Humvee.
In short, FAIL.