GTX480 / GTX470 Reviews and Discussion

[shadow187]

First off, Kitguru is fail. There is no 512Fermi because they can't get good enough yields on it. There might be a select 100/1000 of them that they give to reviewers and hold in competitions so that they can 'claim' it exists, but that's it.

Second, a 512Fermi wouldn't beat a 5970, the fastest card right now. And we all know that a GTX480x2 is impossible, a GTX470x2 extremely improbable, and a GTX460x2 non-competitive.

Thirdly, notty needs to stop showing his fanboyishness. "Where's NI, who cares?" What the heck do you mean? This is a double-jump to a new process (28nm) that will offer so much more. WHO CARES? Obviously an nvidiot like you, but the rest of the tech world is waiting with baited breath.

Southern islands is coming in mid-late 2010, and it should offer better performance, but what I'm waiting to see is the efficiency, which is the main focus. Can they make an HD5850-performing card have a TDP of 130Watts? An HD5970 with 250? Maybe. But they're certainly the polar opposite from nVidia.

 

[shadow187]

I don't think they're doubling everything again like with 4K->5K. Performance increase won't be too great, because this is a stopgap between Evergreen and NI. 20% perf all around the board, 15-25% lower power consumption...they'll be able to make a 6990.

Also, notty, I'd like to put, against the power consumption of 2x GTX480....wait, oops. I'm sorry, a dual-GPU card doesn't seem capable of consuming that much power. My bad.

 

[AMW1011]

Southern islands is coming in mid-late 2010, and it should offer better performance, but what I'm waiting to see is the efficiency, which is the main focus. Can they make an HD5850-performing card have a TDP of 130Watts? An HD5970 with 250? Maybe. But they're certainly the polar opposite from nVidia.

I hope they keep similar or slightly greater power consumptions if it means a good bit more performance. I would love to see 2000 or 2400 shaders on one of those cards.

 

[AMW1011]

I don't think they're doubling everything again like with 4K->5K. Performance increase won't be too great, because this is a stopgap between Evergreen and NI. 20% perf all around the board, 15-25% lower power consumption...they'll be able to make a 6990.

Yeah I believe your right, but it doesn't mean I can't hope. Anyway, theoretically, a 20% increase would be 1920 SPs which is pretty good for me. I can't see them not increasing SPs a bit, clocks will be useless and even a 128-bit bandwidth with 1GB of GDDR5 isn't much of a bottleneck let alone the 256-bit bandwidth the current higher end cards have.

 

[shadow187]

I've read somewhere that the mid-range SI will get a 256-bit bus.

 

[notty22]

I don't think they're doubling everything again like with 4K->5K. Performance increase won't be too great, because this is a stopgap between Evergreen and NI. 20% perf all around the board, 15-25% lower power consumption...they'll be able to make a 6990.

Also, notty, I'd like to put, against the power consumption of 2x GTX480....wait, oops. I'm sorry, a dual-GPU card doesn't seem capable of consuming that much power. My bad.

Is this the self appointed ati post whore admitting defeat before ATI even releases their 2nd gen hardware ?

 

[RealityRush]

I think notty and shadow need to get a room....

 

[shadow187]

Admitting defeat from what? Congrats, a $1000 SLI build beats a $620 card. What are you talking about?

Also, I'm just pointing out...not idiocy..must be nice..ignorance. Yes, that's right.

Also, I never appointed myself the 'ATI post whore'.

 

[area61]

Which version do you want to pit against sli 480's the 700 dollar 2gb 5970 or the 1200 dollar 4gb ? The elegance of having the faster gpu is, you can always build a faster gaming rig around that part.

the simple matter of the fact is that, sli of the 480's are not the single fastest card in the planet are they? :lol: besides, as shadow said, why waste 1000 buck when you can get even with a piffy 700 bucks card which moves the planet equally as fast as the TWO 480 while costing a whopping a lot less.
Now notty, the question YOU need to answer is, will you spend 1000 bucks for those nuclear reactors?

 

[RealityRush]

the simple matter of the fact is that, sli of the 480's are not the single fastest card in the planet are they? :lol: besides, as shadow said, why waste 1000 buck when you can get even with a piffy 700 bucks card which moves the planet equally as fast as the TWO 480 while costing a whopping a lot less.
Now notty, the question YOU need to answer is, will you spend 1000 bucks for those nuclear reactors?

The 5970 is as fast as SLI 480s now?? That seems grossly distorted considering that a 480 beats a 5870 and a 5970 is two underclocked 5870s--and all the benchies showing SLI 480s beating a 5970--someone seems to be showing their true colours rather quickly...

Honestly people, stop arguing personal opinions. SLI 480s are indeed faster than a 5970; the question is, is it $300 faster?? And that depends on the buyer and what their goals are, it is a very subjective thing. The 5800/5900 series cards and the 400 series cards both have strengths and weaknesses, and the person that buys either will figure out how to use one and deal with the other appropriately. In either case both are solid buys (except for the 465/5830's which are actually kind of crap, the 465 might be decent if they drop the price on it to $250 or so... but less would be better).

Enough with the conjecture, personal slants and retarded "jokes" about either card, especially since it has been conclusively proven that you cannot, in fact, use a 480 to fry an egg 😛 (however anecdotal evidence seems to indicate they make good space heaters when you're benching Furmark, which is great for me cause my basement is freezing!! 😛).

As the old adage goes, "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all." Facts and civil convos or gtfo of the thread.

 

[Rustyy117]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rh-BjHgRWQ But you can cook steak? mmmmm..... 😛

Jokes aside, any news on the GTX460?

 

[area61]

The 5970 is as fast as SLI 480s now?? That seems grossly distorted considering that a 480 beats a 5870 and a 5970 is two underclocked 5870s--and all the benchies showing SLI 480s beating a 5970--someone seems to be showing their true colours rather quickly...

Honestly people, stop arguing personal opinions. SLI 480s are indeed faster than a 5970; the question is, is it $300 faster?? And that depends on the buyer and what their goals are, it is a very subjective thing. The 5800/5900 series cards and the 400 series cards both have strengths and weaknesses, and the person that buys either will figure out how to use one and deal with the other appropriately. In either case both are solid buys (except for the 465/5830's which are actually kind of crap, the 465 might be decent if they drop the price on it to $250 or so... but less would be better).

Enough with the conjecture, personal slants and retarded "jokes" about either card, especially since it has been conclusively proven that you cannot, in fact, use a 480 to fry an egg 😛 (however anecdotal evidence seems to indicate they make good space heaters when you're benching Furmark, which is great for me cause my basement is freezing!! 😛).

As the old adage goes, "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all." Facts and civil convos or gtfo of the thread.

Well, for one, I talk based on my research. There isnt such thing as know all, hence several mistakes I made. What my research shows that yes, the SLI GTX is faster than a 5970, but the 5970 is as fast as the gtx but aint faster than the gtx
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/4
I sense someone has an egg on the face and a shoe in the mouth

 

[AMW1011]

Well, for one, I talk based on my research. There isnt such thing as know all, hence several mistakes I made. What my research shows that yes, the SLI GTX is faster than a 5970, but the 5970 is as fast as the gtx but aint faster than the gtx
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/4
I sense someone has an egg on the face and a shoe in the mouth

The 5970 is benchmarked with a less demanding version of AA, and at a lower level at that. It shows the 5970 as being slower, not faster.

 

[shadow187]

There's no arguing that a 5970 is slower than 2x GTX480. But like I said, we're comparing $1000 to $620 ($380 price difference), 240Watts to 475Watts, 2 slots to 4 slots, 85c to 97c, the list goes on.
Some nVidian comedy;

As for the GTX460..I think the discussion is whether it's 256 shader, or 240.

Its likely a 256shader, 192bit, 768mb part with, meh, I've forgotten how many rops/tmu's are in with each 32shader cluster but I'd expect that to remain unchanged.

 

[Mousemonkey]

As for the GTX460..I think the discussion is whether it's 256 shader, or 240.

Its likely a 256shader, 192bit, 768mb part with, meh, I've forgotten how many rops/tmu's are in with each 32shader cluster but I'd expect that to remain unchanged.

Or even 336, although the rumours of a GTX485 with 512 shaders has surfaced again so lets wait and see.

 

[RealityRush]

Well, for one, I talk based on my research. There isnt such thing as know all, hence several mistakes I made. What my research shows that yes, the SLI GTX is faster than a 5970, but the 5970 is as fast as the gtx but aint faster than the gtx
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/4
I sense someone has an egg on the face and a shoe in the mouth

Yes... I am the one with my shoe in my mouth; wow, just... wow.

There's no arguing that a 5970 is slower than 2x GTX480. But like I said, we're comparing $1000 to $620 ($380 price difference), 240Watts to 475Watts, 2 slots to 4 slots, 85c to 97c, the list goes on.

$700, we're talking about commonly attainable things here, not stuff that is in stock for a brief period, 'cause otherwise I'll claim the 480's are $365 at Dell; and most in stock 5970s that I see are like $720-740, but most in stock 480s are like $520, so I just went with $1000 vs. $700 as a ball park and I would say is more than fair.

Also, the 5970 is rated on ATI's site itself for 294W, and the 480's are rated 250W on nVidia's site, so we're comparing roughly 300W to 500W. Accuracy man, accuracy 😛

And temps we've addressed hundreds of times already, 97C is if your case is a crapshoot Commodore 64 and stock fan profiles. With even moderate cooling and doing your own fan profile, you'll only ever see above 75Celsius during Furmark Burn-In. Most of my games don't break 65Celsius, and that's only during Crysis on max settings (it gets to 67 instead 😛).

And SLI 480s are about 20-40% faster than a 5970 depending on the game and level of AA, Drivers, DX9/10/11, Tesselation, etc. 40% faster would mean that two 480s should come in a roughly $980, so essentially $1000, which is what they are at. Now you may so, woa woa woa here, 20% is only $840, and you would be right, but nVidia has the fastest single gpu card, and will charge a premium for it, not to mention 20% is with minimal AA and Tesselation, so the nominal avg. is more like 30%.

Heck, $500 for a 480 is actually a decent price. They SHOULD be more like $450, but a $50 markup for the fastest single gpu solution isn't a terrible deal compared to when a 8800GTX was like what, $800, $900??

nVidia's cards do multi-monitor like ATIs, so that isn't even really a selling feature anymore when comparing a 5970 to SLI 480s (and yes, beta drivers have been leaked now so you CAN do it, unless you're picky and want to wait for officials for some strange reason). nVidia's cards handle AA and Tess better which is a huge DX11 selling point that ATI was ranting about when their 5800 cards came out and seemed to quiet down about after nVidia released theirs. There's actually a LOT of great things about the 400 series cards, but certain people chose to be selectively blind to them for some reason....

You can't go wrong with a 5850/5870/5970 or a 470/480, you really can't. They are all great choices and they are all priced appropriately around one another and based on current supply/demand. Can we all honestly take a step back and realize that having choice is what it is all about, and that it benefits all of us?

 

[area61]

Heck, $500 for a 480 is actually a decent price. They SHOULD be more like $450, but a $50 markup for the fastest single gpu solution isn't a terrible deal compared to when a 8800GTX was like what, $800, $900??

nVidia's cards do multi-monitor like ATIs, so that isn't even really a selling feature anymore when comparing a 5970 to SLI 480s (and yes, beta drivers have been leaked now so you CAN do it, unless you're picky and want to wait for officials for some strange reason). nVidia's cards handle AA and Tess better which is a huge DX11 selling point that ATI was ranting about when their 5800 cards came out and seemed to quiet down about after nVidia released theirs. There's actually a LOT of great things about the 400 series cards, but certain people chose to be selectively blind to them for some reason....

You can't go wrong with a 5850/5870/5970 or a 470/480, you really can't. They are all great choices and they are all priced appropriately around one another and based on current supply/demand. Can we all honestly take a step back and realize that having choice is what it is all about, and that it benefits all of us?

Honestly,I agree with you.The choces are good. but the prices certainly have to come down, atleast for the 5850 which should be more like $250 and the 480 at $450. Thats where they belong. The better card should be the one with the better price. If the Gtx 460 can match or beat the 5850, we will see the price drop.

Yes... I am the one with my shoe in my mouth; wow, just... wow.

Sorry about that 😛

 

[shadow187]

$700, we're talking about commonly attainable things here, not stuff that is in stock for a brief period, 'cause otherwise I'll claim the 480's are $365 at Dell; and most in stock 5970s that I see are like $720-740, but most in stock 480s are like $520, so I just went with $1000 vs. $700 as a ball park and I would say is more than fair.
I just use shopping on google. I foun a GTX480 for $489, and an HD5970 for $608, click on the site, Status "In Stock".
Also, the 5970 is rated on ATI's site itself for 294W, and the 480's are rated 250W on nVidia's site, so we're comparing roughly 300W to 500W. Accuracy man, accuracy 😛
We're talking real numbers, not TDP. The GTX480 consumes power than the 5970, yet the TDPs are very different.
And temps we've addressed hundreds of times already, 97C is if your case is a crapshoot Commodore 64 and stock fan profiles. With even moderate cooling and doing your own fan profile, you'll only ever see above 75Celsius during Furmark Burn-In. Most of my games don't break 65Celsius, and that's only during Crysis on max settings (it gets to 67 instead 😛).
Not necessarily. In a Stacker 310 case (well ventiled), temps were around 80c with 70% fanspeed. This was done on OCC.
And SLI 480s are about 20-40% faster than a 5970 depending on the game and level of AA, Drivers, DX9/10/11, Tesselation, etc. 40% faster would mean that two 480s should come in a roughly $980, so essentially $1000, which is what they are at. Now you may so, woa woa woa here, 20% is only $840, and you would be right, but nVidia has the fastest single gpu card, and will charge a premium for it, not to mention 20% is with minimal AA and Tesselation, so the nominal avg. is more like 30%.

Heck, $500 for a 480 is actually a decent price. They SHOULD be more like $450, but a $50 markup for the fastest single gpu solution isn't a terrible deal compared to when a 8800GTX was like what, $800, $900??

nVidia's cards do multi-monitor like ATIs, so that isn't even really a selling feature anymore when comparing a 5970 to SLI 480s (and yes, beta drivers have been leaked now so you CAN do it, unless you're picky and want to wait for officials for some strange reason). nVidia's cards handle AA and Tess better which is a huge DX11 selling point that ATI was ranting about when their 5800 cards came out and seemed to quiet down about after nVidia released theirs.You're talking about ATI ranting? I remember once or twice reading nVidia dogging down ATI saying Dx11 isn't important. There's actually a LOT of great things about the 400 series cards, but certain people chose to be selectively blind to them for some reason....
There's also a lot of bad things, too.
You can't go wrong with a 5850/5870/5970 or a 470/480, you really can't. They are all great choices and they are all priced appropriately around one another and based on current supply/demand. Can we all honestly take a step back and realize that having choice is what it is all about, and that it benefits all of us?
No benefit when prices aren't dropping! :lol

Or even 336, although the rumours of a GTX485 with 512 shaders has surfaced again so lets wait and see.

I thought they couldn't work out from any division not of 32?

And the 512-Fermi thing...I honestly don't see it coming. Unless they finally have enough chips to say it 'exists'..I doubt it'd be a mass-market.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The 5970 is benchmarked with a less demanding version of AA, and at a lower level at that. It shows the 5970 as being slower, not faster.

AMW, you fall into the typical trap of thinking that one company's AA #s are the same as the other company's.
It's a well known and long standing fact (especially at [H] who compared the two many times) that nV's basic CSAA is not as good # for # unlike their Quality setting for AA, and in this case where it says 16X CSAA vs 12X CFAA , in fact they are equal in result as mentioned in the article itself;

"The real question is what are the gameplay advantages between NVIDIA’s 16 X CSAA and AMD’s 12 X CFAA? The answer to that is nothing, we could tell no visual difference as we were playing the game between these two settings. Therefore, the gameplay experience was identical between GTX 480 SLI and Radeon HD 5970."

And if you look at the numbers (don't know which ones you were looking at), it clearly shows the HD5970 as being faster


Min 28 > 20
Max 76 > 75
Avg 50.1 > 48.4
HD5970 > GTX480SLI

Dunno where you got your #s for the HD5970 when replying and including his link, but it sure wasn't from there. Maybe you were confusing the HD5870 #s which would be strange as that would miss the point completely.

So while his overall premise may be a little off in general, the example he provided does exactly support that statement, even if most of us know it's the minority and not the norm.

It's kind of a pointless BS sidebar brought up by Notty about the single GPU vs Single card as if it has anything to do with SI or NI, other than piling-on the wild guesses of the unwashed masses. [:thegreatgrapeape:5]

 

[Mousemonkey]

I thought they couldn't work out from any division not of 32?

And the 512-Fermi thing...I honestly don't see it coming. Unless they finally have enough chips to say it 'exists'..I doubt it'd be a mass-market.

Again it's all just rumours and speculation, on both counts!

Bill Dally says that GTX 485 will come in autumn. The card will clock 20 MHz higher at chip frequency and so probably 40 MHz higher at shader frequency - a new cool system is used. Besides it is speculated that GTX 485 will use the whole 512 SPs and 64 TMUs.

Source.

Expreview are reporting that the upcoming GTX 460, rumoured to release in mid-July, is a 336 shader, 192-bit, 768MB product. Furthermore, the clocks are rumoured to be 675/1350/1800, core/shader/memory, respectively. At first glance, the GTX 460 looks more like yet another salvage part of GF100, rather than the rumoured GF104. The shaders (or CUDA cores) spec doesn't add up either.

Source.

 

[RealityRush]

Honestly,I agree with you.The choces are good. but the prices certainly have to come down, atleast for the 5850 which should be more like $250 and the 480 at $450. Thats where they belong. The better card should be the one with the better price. If the Gtx 460 can match or beat the 5850, we will see the price drop.

The prices wont drop for a while, and by the time they do, something better will be out, such is life in the tech industry 😛

I'm just happy current pricings aren't insane like the 8800 years.

Sorry about that 😛

All good, thank you.

I thought they couldn't work out from any division not of 32?

And the 512-Fermi thing...I honestly don't see it coming. Unless they finally have enough chips to say it 'exists'..I doubt it'd be a mass-market.

Dangit man, why'd you have to respond in my giant quote 😛, and I used shopbot/pricebat/google for prices, in stock doesn't always mean "in stock". Call that company and I guaruntee they are out 😛

And the real numbers aren't that much different from what I've seen. With every GPU fully loaded, their real world use reflects the specs better, at least that's what I've seen from people at EOCF.com that own the card (read: 2 people 😛). Not to mention the 5970 is a couple downclocked 5870s which were already more power efficient to begin with, so does it surprise anyone that its power usage is almost the same as a 480 at any point??? It has two GPUs, and can spread the load accross both rather than chugging each one to its limit and consuming more power as well. Clock the 5970 to stock 5870 speeds and tell me what the power consumption is then 😛 In any case, people that buy the cards will deal with power as they see fit, such is life. And if a hot computer really bothers you that much, buy a 5800 card.. 😛

And your Stalker 310 case example is during what? Full load? So Furmark or some such? 'Cause as I said, that's the only time it gets that hot. I'm telling you from personal experience, running these things OC'd to hell and back, on air, with a HAF 932 that I have been very sloppy with space management with, and they wont break 67Celsius for me gaming... ever, and that is with the fan at 65%. So at stock, there is noway the cards will get that hot, unless you have a POS case with no airflow, live in the Sahara, or run the cards full load without adjusting the auto-fan profile (and why are you running Furmark or some such at that point if you have no technical inclination?? Trying to kill your cards? 😛).

I'll give you that nVidia ranted that DX11 meant nothing, but that isn't my point. My point is that it DOES mean something. I said it meant a lot when nVidia didn't, and I'm sure most other people felt the same. Tesselation was huge. So ATI/nVidia are both tools for pretending like it wasn't at any point. But nVidia, even after ranting about it, delivered far better Tess performance, and ATI didn't, that is my point.

And no, there aren't a lot of bad things about the 400s, there's a couple, but there's a couple bad things about ATI's 5800s as well, it is a trade-off, but that's what having choice as a consumer is all about: you get to pick which trade-offs you want. Hot, power hungry cards that deliver more performance and better AA/Tess, or cooler, more power efficient cards that had a lot of driver issues (and still have some from what I've heard on EOCF users with 5970s) that don't perform as well and don't have as great of AA/Tess performance. It is all your choice 😛

There's a benefit to pricing right now actually. nVidia has kept their prices closer to MSRP 'cause of ATI, and ATI has dropped their prices slowly 'cause of nVidia 😛 (well, the manufacturers have, not ATI/nVidia, but you get the idea). And again, remember the 8800 days? Count your blessings man 😛

EDIT: Oh and I forgot during my rant... I see a 512 Fermi card coming. I saw JJH holding it at an nVidia conference remember..... the all of 1 cards that exist, cough cough. And some rich douche will purchase it for $250,000. CAD of course, the USD doesn't seem to be the dollar of choice for cash reserves anymore hehehe!

 

[shadow187]

So just in time for southern islands.

 

[RealityRush]

So just in time for southern islands.

I wonder if this will drive prices down on current tech or if the new stuff will just be priced above them.

 

[andrewcutter]

AMW, you fall into the typical trap of thinking that one company's AA #s are the same as the other company's.
It's a well known and long standing fact (especially at [H] who compared the two many times) that nV's basic CSAA is not as good # for # unlike their Quality setting for AA, and in this case where it says 16X CSAA vs 12X CFAA , in fact they are equal in result as mentioned in the article itself;

"The real question is what are the gameplay advantages between NVIDIA’s 16 X CSAA and AMD’s 12 X CFAA? The answer to that is nothing, we could tell no visual difference as we were playing the game between these two settings. Therefore, the gameplay experience was identical between GTX 480 SLI and Radeon HD 5970."

And if you look at the numbers (don't know which ones you were looking at), it clearly shows the HD5970 as being faster


Min 28 > 20
Max 76 > 75
Avg 50.1 > 48.4
HD5970 > GTX480SLI

Dunno where you got your #s for the HD5970 when replying and including his link, but it sure wasn't from there. Maybe you were confusing the HD5870 #s which would be strange as that would miss the point completely.

So while his overall premise may be a little off in general, the example he provided does exactly support that statement, even if most of us know it's the minority and not the norm.

It's kind of a pointless BS sidebar brought up by Notty about the single GPU vs Single card as if it has anything to do with SI or NI, other than piling-on the wild guesses of the unwashed masses. [:thegreatgrapeape:5]

isnt that just one game out of 4. in metro, avp and dirt it seems 480 slis are ahead .
even in badcompany it is close.

 

[shadow187]

I wonder if this will drive prices down on current tech or if the new stuff will just be priced above them.

As a simple stopgap, I think SI is meant to completely replace evergreen.