GTX480 / GTX470 Reviews and Discussion

[shrapnel_indie]

Worse fail than I ever imagined.

I truly believed that the gtx480 would be 20% faster, but loud and hot. But it's just loud and hot?

Ah, tbh if you were 'lucky' enough to get one then you got the worlds fastest single gpu card. If you are deaf then you got a bit luckier still 😀

It is a pig of a card, but it's a fast pig so it's not a complete disaster. My hope is more Nvidia fanboys realise their futility in supporting this company, and ATI get many more buyers because of it. That way, we all win - except Nvidia, but they don't deserve anything.

You REALLY don't want that. No other companies can compete at the performance levels of ATI and NVidia. If one goes under, we're at the mercy of the other, and a potential rape of the wallet.

 

[AMW1011]

What does the final clocks have to do with it? Are you telling me that ATi has to re-write drivers anytime and OEM or end-user overclocks/underclocks their card?
C'mon, nV has had working silicon in hand (not just held aloft) since October, now that it's a handful then and then a few dozen in Novemeber means they've had a solid 4 months to develop drivers. It's not like they just came to the game. Sure They launched 7 months after ATi, but ATi only had working silicon boards 3-4 months before them in July/August (with similar production volumes issue with TSMCs), so it's not like the lead in driver development is anywhere near the difference people make it out to be, and especially not in a new game, where they both have had equal time to develop for it.

You realize that ATI has had a 7 month lead in drivers on top of the driver writing being done in June/July. nVidia has had the ability to write drivers since then end of November, that is half the time..

I'm not sure how people are figuring that the GTX 4xx series is even close to being as driver mature as the twice as old 5xxx series.

Look here:

The time difference between the release of the GTX 295 and the 5870 are about the same as that of the 5870 and GTX 4xx.

Look at the difference, the GTX 295's lead went down from 12-13% to 6%. Both cards were getting driver updates regularly, but the 5870 simply matured in time.

The 5870 is based off of a modified version of the R7xx architecture in the 4xxx series, which is a variation of the R600 architecture in the HD2000 and HD3000 series. It is an architectural evolution, not revolution like the GTX 4xx series' G100 architecture which is almost a complete departure from the GT200 architecture.

Since the G100 architecture is new and the R8xx series is a polish on an old architecture, it is only logical to expect a far greater need for driver maturity.

 

[frozendarkness]

No doubt you are right, but I just got to wonder who are making your graphs. Completely hides the point of having comparison graphs don't it? it's much too simplistic.

 

[strangestranger]

Those graphs should be banned from this forums.

They are dragged out time and time again with their useless percentages and those with relative percentages over all resolutions are the worst. They offer ABSOLUTELY GOD DAMN ALL to the discussion as one card in one game that does really well at 16 x 10 but crumbles at 19 x12 + can skew the results to no end.

Why people use them I don't know.

 

[builderbobftw]

Wait, can you do a 3 screen Eyefinity setup of of 1 5870?

 

[strangestranger]

Yes, of course. That was pretty much the point in them bringing it to market.

 

[builderbobftw]

So a noraml 5870 can run a 3 screen setup?

 

[strangestranger]

Again, that was the point of them being brought to market, AFAIK all 5xxx series can support 3 monitors.

 

[builderbobftw]

Oh, Ok.

Can 2 48xx seris cards support 3 moniters?

If i had a 4870 and a 4870X2, could I use 3 moniter Eyefinity?

 

[AMW1011]

Those graphs should be banned from this forums.

They are dragged out time and time again with their useless percentages and those with relative percentages over all resolutions are the worst. They offer ABSOLUTELY GOD DAMN ALL to the discussion as one card in one game that does really well at 16 x 10 but crumbles at 19 x12 + can skew the results to no end.

Why people use them I don't know.

Because Techpowerup is a good review site. Because I am not talking about a specific resolution. But if you want to make such a big deal out of it, I will prove that there are no "one game that does really well at 16 x 10 but crumbles at 19 x12 + can skew the results to no end" *** going on.

I would not have posted the overall scores if there were such inconsistencies.

 

[firebird]

All this talk about who had the most time to develop drivers. Who cares? If company A brings a product to market with immature drivers after 6 months of actual board time and company B brings a product to market after 9 months with mature drivers does that make one better than the other? I think not.

If you buy product A at launch but are really waiting for the potential of the product from increased efficiency of software, or increased after market support, why not wait for the mature product? Cost will prolly be lower anyway.

 

[welshmousepk]

i have to admit i dont like people suing the 'immature driver' excuse. not to bash on fermi (it actually turned out better than i had expected, though still not justifiable against a 5 series card at the current pricing) but all that matters is drivers right now, at the time you plan on buying, and at the time the cards are benchmarked.

anyone spending that sort of money on a video card will be looking at performance reviews, and it would be silly to buy an inferior card on the hopes of driver improvements that may never come. you should be looking at actual performance, right now, and buy the card that best fits into your budget.

if you want to spend the extra money, and don't care about the power/heat issues of fermi, then thats all fine. but don't do it on the basis that the drivers will 'mature', when its impossible to know if they will develop any faster than ATIs drivers.

 

[Dekasav]

i have to admit i dont like people suing the 'immature driver' excuse. not to bash on fermi (it actually turned out better than i had expected, though still not justifiable against a 5 series card at the current pricing) but all that matters is drivers right now, at the time you plan on buying, and at the time the cards are benchmarked.

anyone spending that sort of money on a video card will be looking at performance reviews, and it would be silly to buy an inferior card on the hopes of driver improvements that may never come. you should be looking at actual performance, right now, and buy the card that best fits into your budget.

if you want to spend the extra money, and don't care about the power/heat issues of fermi, then thats all fine. but don't do it on the basis that the drivers will 'mature', when its impossible to know if they will develop any faster than ATIs drivers.

I concur.

 

[builderbobftw]

i have to admit i dont like people suing the 'immature driver' excuse. not to bash on fermi (it actually turned out better than i had expected, though still not justifiable against a 5 series card at the current pricing) but all that matters is drivers right now, at the time you plan on buying, and at the time the cards are benchmarked.

anyone spending that sort of money on a video card will be looking at performance reviews, and it would be silly to buy an inferior card on the hopes of driver improvements that may never come. you should be looking at actual performance, right now, and buy the card that best fits into your budget.

if you want to spend the extra money, and don't care about the power/heat issues of fermi, then thats all fine. but don't do it on the basis that the drivers will 'mature', when its impossible to know if they will develop any faster than ATIs drivers.

I concur.

 

[OvrClkr]

i have to admit i dont like people suing the 'immature driver' excuse. not to bash on fermi (it actually turned out better than i had expected, though still not justifiable against a 5 series card at the current pricing) but all that matters is drivers right now, at the time you plan on buying, and at the time the cards are benchmarked.

anyone spending that sort of money on a video card will be looking at performance reviews, and it would be silly to buy an inferior card on the hopes of driver improvements that may never come. you should be looking at actual performance, right now, and buy the card that best fits into your budget.

if you want to spend the extra money, and don't care about the power/heat issues of fermi, then thats all fine. but don't do it on the basis that the drivers will 'mature', when its impossible to know if they will develop any faster than ATIs drivers.

I also concur 😀

Mature drivers will eventually help both cards in the long-run, Same goes for AMD, it should not be used as an excuse but when you have Beta drivers for a card that has yet to be released you can rest assured that the drivers are nowhere where they should be. Same goes for AMD, for the past 4 months all I have see are fanboys getting all excited about the "new" driver, well there is a reason behind all that. Sometimes a current driver is not working properly and needs a fix ASAP, this has been an ongoing issue with AMD. There are more than 500 threads since the 5 series came out that have to do with crappy drivers/screen flickering, gsod, etc..

As far as Fermi goes, before we had the benchies there were boatloads of AMD fanboys saying that Fermi would fail, fermi is not going to sell because it's too hot, fermi will need a 1k PSU, fermi is going to cost 650.00$ so I am going with the 5970, fermi this, fermi that... AHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then the benchies came out and when the AMD fanboys saw the pricetag and performance they came up with another excuse and so on (its still to hot, pulls to much power), well some people can care less, there are users that ONLY use NV products and can care less what other think of them. If it did not meet AMD fans expectations then they have a problem because we already knew beforehand that NV was not going to pull a rabbit out of the hat 😉

 

[notty22]

I also concur 😀

Mature drivers will eventually help both cards in the long-run, Same goes for AMD, it should not be used as an excuse but when you have Beta drivers for a card that has yet to be released you can rest assured that the drivers are nowhere where they should be. Same goes for AMD, for the past 4 months all I have see are fanboys getting all excited about the "new" driver, well there is a reason behind all that. Sometimes a current driver is not working properly and needs a fix ASAP, this has been an ongoing issue with AMD. There are more than 500 threads since the 5 series came out that have to do with crappy drivers/screen flickering, gsod, etc..

As far as Fermi goes, before we had the benchies there were boatloads of AMD fanboys saying that Fermi would fail, fermi is not going to sell because it's too hot, fermi will need a 1k PSU, fermi is going to cost 650.00$ so I am going with the 5970, fermi this, fermi that... AHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then the benchies came out and when the AMD fanboys saw the pricetag and performance they came up with another excuse and so on (its still to hot, pulls to much power), well some people can care less, there are users that ONLY use NV products and can care less what other think of them. If it did not meet AMD fans expectations then they have a problem because we already knew beforehand that NV was not going to pull a rabbit out of the hat 😉

I concur. Muawah!

 

[OvrClkr]

hehe, in other words AMD fans should be more than happy that Fermi actually made it out the door, if it werent for Fermi and the headlines AMD would have started to jack up the prices due to not having competition, something similar to Intel vs. AMD =)

 

[notty22]

hehe, in other words AMD fans should be more than happy that Fermi actually made it out the door, if it werent for Fermi and the headlines AMD would have started to jack up the prices due to not having competition, something similar to Intel vs. AMD =)

I concur, and Nvidia will probably get faster, ATI 5 series has peaked, there won't be any more driver gains, may even be scaled back trying to fix the problems you mentioned. The ones everyone forgets about, I wonder how many have been rma'ed because of grey screening, flickering ? I've heard everything from its shoddy memory, 2dclocks, low voltage, drivers. Theres reasons why some choose one company over another and its not always based on fps or saving 5%.

 

[OvrClkr]

I concur, and Nvidia will probably get faster, ATI 5 series has peaked, there won't be any more driver gains, may even be scaled back trying to fix the problems you mentioned. The ones everyone forgets about, I wonder how many have been rma'ed because of grey screening, flickering ? I've heard everything from its shoddy memory, 2dclocks, low voltage, drivers. Theres reasons why some choose one company over another and its not always based on fps or saving 5%.

Yep, so to sum it all up NV screwed up big-time, AMD has been rocking and rolling since the 5 series launched. NV is still in the game due to the finally coming up with something that is not priced at what we all expected. We have better options than before, we should all be happy [:thegreatgrapeape]

 

[IzzyCraft]

Psh nvidia cant get anything right, doesn't even cook eggs all that hype for nothing
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1264/1/

 

[welshmousepk]

I concur, and Nvidia will probably get faster, ATI 5 series has peaked, there won't be any more driver gains, may even be scaled back trying to fix the problems you mentioned. The ones everyone forgets about, I wonder how many have been rma'ed because of grey screening, flickering ? I've heard everything from its shoddy memory, 2dclocks, low voltage, drivers. Theres reasons why some choose one company over another and its not always based on fps or saving 5%.

i don't think thats a fair assessment.
the 4 series cards continued to improve right up until, well now. the last catalyst driver increased 4890 performance by 5 percent. so i imageine both ATI and nvidia have a ways to go on the driver front.

 

[Guest]

hehe, in other words AMD fans should be more than happy that Fermi actually made it out the door, if it werent for Fermi and the headlines AMD would have started to jack up the prices due to not having competition, something similar to Intel vs. AMD =)

Yes, only if they had brought it before 6 months, everything would be cheaper now ,

Factor that caused Fermis deception (the 480 more precisely) = TIME and its nVidias own fault to bring it late.

We cant say that the 58xx are at their end concerning FPS boost from drivers that's completely wrong and more wrong with new titles. New drivers will continue to improve the 58xx series until the 6xxx comes out or the 5xxx refresh if there is a need.

Time is the most important aspect of Technology.

 

[OvrClkr]

Yes, only if they had brought it before 6 months, everything would be cheaper now ,

Factor that caused Fermis deception (the 480 more precisely) = TIME and its nVidias own fault to bring it late.

We cant say that the 58xx are at their end concerning FPS boost from drivers that's completely wrong and more wrong with new titles. New drivers will continue to improve the 58xx series until the 6xxx comes out or the 5xxx refresh if there is a need.

Time is the most important aspect of Technology.

Agreed, but we can't keep on complaining about the whole NV issue, we just have to work with what we have.

I could only imagine what the 6 series will bring to the table, by then the 5 series will have flawless drivers.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

You realize that ATI has had a 7 month lead in drivers on top of the driver writing being done in June/July. nVidia has had the ability to write drivers since then end of November, that is half the time..

What are you talking about, Cypress didn't tape-out in 2008 let alone offer product to test drivers on.
If you're talking about emulation, then both had just as long, so I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm not sure how people are figuring that the GTX 4xx series is even close to being as driver mature as the twice as old 5xxx series.

Who said it is, once again, you're missing the point. They BOTH had just as long to work on this new game, therefore the discussion of the lead is a moot point.

Since the G100 architecture is new and the R8xx series is a polish on an old architecture, it is only logical to expect a far greater need for driver maturity.

You're kinda missing the point again, for new titles, are you still going to go back on that? 2 years from now we have to wait an extra 3 months for nVidia 'because they are revolutionary'?

Old titles, fine; new titles, no excuses. Level playing field.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Sometimes a current driver is not working properly and needs a fix ASAP, this has been an ongoing issue with AMD. There are more than 500 threads since the 5 series came out that have to do with crappy drivers/screen flickering, gsod, etc..

I wonder how many have been rma'ed because of grey screening, flickering ?

Like nV's mature drivers that killed cards? [:jaydeejohn]

Fermi isn't even out yet, so it's a little early to be talking about what problems it doesn't have yet. Heck even Anand doesn't trust the lifespan of them. :lol:

Drivers will improve performance, but in new games both GPUs have untapped performance, not just one.

before we had the benchies there were boatloads of AMD fanboys saying that Fermi would fail, fermi is not going to sell because it's too hot, fermi will need a 1k PSU, fermi is going to cost 650.00$...

Then the benchies came out and when the AMD fanboys saw the pricetag and performance they came up with another excuse and so on (its still to hot, pulls to much power),

These are 'other excuses' ? Seems to be exactly what people were talking about. Too Hot and Too Power Hungry... AND that's on a crippled core. Wanna show me the power draw of a 700Mhz 512-core GTX-Fermi? Wanna sell me one for the $499? How about even the $650?

You wanna go back to that Charlie thread about yields and show me how everything we discussed didn't come to fruition?

The reason it doesn't cost $650 is because you didn't get what we said would cost $650.
It's also why you didn't get anywhere near the BS performance numbers mentioned at the time (even with 6% more shader those #s were way off).

Fermi is out, but don't pretend nVidia delivered anywhere near what it was talking about earlier in the year, let alone last year.