GTX480 / GTX470 Reviews and Discussion

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The data isn't contradictory, its just explaining the misconception produced by the other reviews whith figures like 70DBa and using a real world environment to show the noise levels, not just the difference.
 
I have no problem with a review site measuring the noise off of a card from up close... So long as they say so, and do it for the others as well.

70dB is still louder than 50dB... Obviously the attenuation through the cases will be different depending on frequency.. so there is no guarantee that pattern will hold... but it is still a metric to measure by. Just like light though if the 70dB is extremely high (or low) frequency we might not hear it as well as something 'quieter.' Hence randomizer's reference do A-weighting... But a fan is not going to make many noises we can't hear, dB is generally good enough.

The point is, I may find a certain noise annoying... many others may not hear it as well. Until a review comes out and says "Hey Dan, you're going to find this ah heck annoying" all we can really do is find out if it is loud and risk it if we want to.

The hardware Canucks review got a lower noise level because of their test, it still found the card louder than others. The fact that I have owned cards they rated as quieter (if only slightly) that I removed because of the noise during gaming makes me kind of question his opinion... perhaps he plays with super loud volume... perhaps a lot of things (The ramp up to 'zomg crazy noise' is also at a very high temp... not every review will be able to get there depending on their ambients (its still chilly in Canada 😉 ).

Certainly the cards are not 70dB at gaming distances... but noone claimed they were. Doesn't mean it is not louder though, or that it won't be damn annoying.
 


You can argue that, but it reduces the effective measure of the card itself because it adds too many other influences. They can measure in whatever way they want, but their criticism of other measurements is idiotic since they aren't using an industry standard or something which is deemed as universal, and their method for what is called for, sounds level produced by the card, is less accurate.

It's like the power consumption #s that measure at the wall socket instead of the draw of the card itself. It may be easier, it may be how most people do it, but it's less accurate. What people do with accurate numbers is another story, but pretending in some way that using a non-standard case at a random distance is a better judge is laughable. 75cm? So the case is either on the desktop or the person is hunched over doubled up to play? Most people are just over a meter away if their PC is under their desktop or on the floor, which is then often muffled by a desk and amplified by the reflection of a wall. So how is that a better illustration of the avg consumer?

They had an obvious goal in mind show that the card isn't another dustbuster, not just measure how loud it is but give perspective to what you should expect.
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That may be their goal (although why is that their goal instead of just reporting their own subjective view), however that's not something that's easy to replicate, so it's overall 'global' utility is somewhat limited just as much as those measuring right at the card, but at least at the card then you could use physics and sound dampening calculations to figure out your best method to isolate that noise, with their numbers I have no idea what isolation material is on the case, whether the other fans are sympathetic or cancelling in nature, so their information provides less for people to work with and just 'he said' personal opinion on "those people are crazy with their testing, sure it's noisy, it's noisier than the previous noisiest card, but it's not XXdb at 75cm". It's too bad they didn't include the girlfriend test and tell me if you can hear the card from the other room while American Idol or The Bachelor is on. :lol:
 


I agree that there is alot being made of it as if there is no way of dealing with the noise. Sure it exists and that shouldn't be glossed over, but it's not like an Enthusiast who would buy this is incapable of finding ways to deal with it. It's like the temperature of the chip on a poorly vented rig reaching 100+C it's not helpful, however understanding the load temp in an open or good airflow case with standard fan speed and without mods lets people know where they need to start from in order to best accommodate the card.

To me the thing that bothers me is that Guru3D's test is a dumbing down like the power tests, trying to simply remove any of the detail by adding in everything else. Just like power draw, it's not good, but true enthusiasts who REALLY want this card won't care they won't be scared off by that, they will simply deal with it, and knowing exactly what they have to deal with is better than some test that's only purpose is to reduce the numbers, not increase the efficacy of the testing. BTW people like Xbit (who do a great job with the power questions often pulling the numbers from just the card) usually measure both, next to the card (5cm) and at distance (1M) plus 2D & 3D numbers, so you get a better overall picture, not just a muffled one.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5670-hd5570-hd5450_6.html#sect0

You also get important insight as well, such as;
"The Gigabyte GV-R567OC-1GI is louder than the reference Radeon HD 5670 according to our noise-level meter, but the later is actually more irritating because of its small and high-speed fan. Gigabyte’s cooler, on the contrary, merges into the noise produced by the other system components. The reference Radeon HD 5570 is even more irritating but its cooling efficiency is higher than that of the Sapphire HD 5570 1GB DDR3 DP."

I expect they will have their Fermi review up once the card is in the public (they don't tend to get pr-launch cards).

I prefer a result like that than someone's subjective test especially if their main goal is simply to try and poke other reviewers' methods.
 

The thing I don't understand about hardwarecanucks (and I am a member there) is that they seem to have a major hard-on for nVidia and always have. :sol:
 


I wouldn't say major.... but they definitely have one, yes.

Than again there's some other sites who are the polar opposite. This is why I read as many reviews as I can find, including whatever google translate can do for me 😛. 'Cause the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. I like Xbit a lot like TGGA said, they are usually pretty objective and try to test a wide array of situations. I also like the Firing Squad guys, 'cause they are pretty objective and do SLI/X-fire comparisons often as well in their tests which is cool to look at sometimes, and they do AA scaling and such as well.

EDIT: Forgot Anand's 😛 I'm pretty fond of their reviews too, they like including min frame rates, which in the case of the 400 series seems to be a lot better than the 5800's.
 
I have never seen Hardware Canuks be very biased one way or another, regardless of company they tend to either like a product or not.

The only negative review they've given for ATI recently was the 5830 for obvious reasons.

The GTX 480 gets a slightly better score than with other reviews, but their it is a pretty fair review.

To be honest I don't think we have any real ability to say a site is biased towards nVidia when Tom's made a habit of including The Last Remnant in over 10 different reviews...
 


OH, But HEY! That's was a big BIG title in Europe and bound to become a global sensation that everyone would be playing, so it had to be included. :evil:
 

What site has a hard-on for ATi? I've never seen one but I'd like to just so I can laugh at them too. Please tell me.

PROOF THAT FERMI IS MUCH QUICKER THAN RADEON (click the link!)
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29594136&postcount=42

:sol:
 

You may not think so but RealityRush likes nVidia while I hate nVidia and we both see the bias. I'm sure we're not both seeing things. :sol:
 


Eh, I wear glasses though, maybe my old age is getting to me 😛

I've seen 1 or 2 reviews that despise the new cards, 1 or 2 that love them like a man-child, and everyone else seems kind of on the fence with a "well, they are pretty fast... but not really fast enough to warrant all that hype" sentiment.

I'm probably going to buy two 470s, SLI them, try to OC them as much as possible on air and tell you my results. I've got tons of side air-ventilation... so I think it'll work? lol

Unless you consider me biased 😛

And hey, if my cards don't melt and lava doesn't erupt from my computer, then I might actually be able to play some games on em and benchy them for ya lol.

I'm also gambling on the "there's gonna be more DX11 games in the near future" idea, 'cause DICE in Sweden said BF3 should be out sometime near the end of this year/beginning of next which would be awesome.

I'll be the Guinea Pig for you all, and then we can finally lay to rest whether or not it was a really... REALLY bad purchase... or a really awesome one....
 
Here we go:

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/261/22203.png

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/1870/22204.png

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/5369/22209.png

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783&p=19
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Since the paper launch Anand has no credibility in my book. They went from having accurate reviews to total biased BS.

Here is a perfect example :

anands_bullcrap.png


I can understand in-mature drivers but that ^^ up there is the most ridiculous graph I have seen in ages. I guess Anand is full of NV haters...


 
No.. anandtech is not biased, far from it.

If you look closer you will see that the GTX 480/470 do terrible in BC2 in all benchmarks, expect a patch or driver update to fix this.

Also they are showing something very important that many are overlooking, including me at first, that the GTX 470/480 get better minimum FPS across the board, which is the most important:

In the mean time it looks like we have two different outcomes: the Radeon 5000 series has the better average framerate (particularly at 1920), but it’s the GTX 400 series that has the better minimum framerate. If you absolutely can’t stand a choppy minimum framerate, then you may be better off with a GTX 400 card so that you can trade some overall performance for a better minimum framerate.
Click to expand...
 
Exactly^ Ppl dont understand that the ATI cards have around 6-7 months maturity and have ready for games drivers, while Nvidia, doesn't even have distributor VIdeo cards and proper drivers yet. Give it time.

THese are REFERANCE CARDS PPL, Wait until end of April and we'll see a change:)
 
The drivers won't do squat. The 480 has not just been finalised and released. They have had the design finalised for quite some time. Nothing has changed so they have had months to get drivers right.

Of course that is not to say that drivers will not make difference in some circumstances but this is not a new release, it is a x month old one that has been delayed.
 
I'm agreeing with strangesttranger. If nVidia's cards don't have issues after their initial market-release, odds are, they've been working on these drivers for quite some time to maximize released performance!
 

Wait since when? The new design wasn't finalized until a couple months ago, they've been rushing to get this stuff out the door.... that's hardly enough time to get their best drivers and gaming profiles ready..... look at what ATI has achieved through driver patches in the past 6-7 months. Lets say nVidia HAS been working on drivers for 3 months, ATI still has 3-4 months on them and they JUUUUUST released 10.3 which was a huge performance boost.

nVidia stuff is going to improve with drivers, likely significantly, I fail to see why anything else can be considered reasonable when ATI has done exactly that. Are nVidia driver engineers total idiots or something??

EDIT: Those BF:BC2 benches just prove they don't even have some gaming profiles ready yet, that is the ONLY benchy I've seen where the 400s lose THAT badly, that would seem to be an exception to the rule no?
 
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