Nvidia Unleashes 'Release 256' Graphics Drivers

[sliem]

Cool, I still have my 8800GT since 2 years ago and happy with it. Yes it plays Crysis fine (not highest res but I don't care about that) and Bad Company 2 very well.

 

[Guest]

To be CUDA or not to be lol

 

[MxM]

[citation][nom]SchizoFrog[/nom]All these comments about the heat of Fermi is just as retarded as 'Can it play Crysis?'GET OVER IT!Has anyone even heard of a Fermi card failing due to heat?[/citation]
You are talking about temperature, not heat. Heat = higher power consumption, higher heat generation, higher temperature IN YOUR ROOM (it is a problem for me), higher electrical bill (do not forget if you need to include extra AC power spent to cool your room/house) and so on.

 

[babachoo]

A friend of mine offered to trade me his 480 for my 5870. He said it sucks and his electric bill went way up (20% more KWH than last year's bill for the same month). He said he got better FPS on Crysis with the 5870 he used to have. So I told him he should have checked the benchmarks before he bought the piece of crap GeForce Grill, because he would have seen that the 5870 plays Crysis better, and it uses about 9000 watts less power, and produces 9000 degrees less heat. He said "will you trade or not?", so I told him that I was quite happy with my 5870 and he should just buy another one since he misses it so much.

True story

 

[borisof007]

THIRTY TWO times AA? Holy smokes who the heck needs that?

 

[notty22]

Fermi FASTEST gpu ever.
Did you ATI fanboys miss the article about Nvidia offering the only Pc 3d solution, lol
5 series most talked about feature GSOD, Grey Screen of Death.
ATI's version of 3d is the grey screening, monitor flickering option.

 

[the associate]

How many generations of "HOT" cards will we have to go through before ppl stfu about heat. If you don't like the heat, buy an aftermarket cooler, it's what enthusiasts do, it's what I do, and it's what you should do if you don't like high numbers in Celcius.

Oh and by the way the grey screens are history bud, funny how fanboys from both sides try to act like their not the fanboys....

I can't wait til the performance on both sides start to shine better, especially in dx11.

 

[shin0bi272]

[citation][nom]sliem[/nom]Cool, I still have my 8800GT since 2 years ago and happy with it. Yes it plays Crysis fine (not highest res but I don't care about that) and Bad Company 2 very well.[/citation]
crysis on dx9 rocks on my 8800gtx too... 12x10 res very high spec still around 45fps average... its the dx10 that kills the fps and for just a little more eye candy... dx10 is worthless IMHO.

 

[back_by_demand]

What does the 256 stand for?

Fahrenheit?

 

[Guest]

This reminds me of the infamous Pentium 4 "PressHot". With decent air cooling you can get one of those to 30°C idle and 50°C under load. If I'm not mistaken the Core i7 produces a lot more heat and requires huge copper/aluminium towers with one ore more 120mm fans for proper cooling.

PC cooling depends on many factors. Yes, there are some components witch produce a lot more heat than others, but if you know what you are doing you also kow how to properly cool them. I still think that if you can shell out enough cash for one of these cards, you can spend a little bit more and get liquid cooling, a better case, better ventilation in that case, or all of the above. You can't be that cheap if you spend 500 on a single piece of hardware.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

[citation][nom]babachoo[/nom]A friend of mine offered to trade me his 480 for my 5870. He said it sucks and his electric bill went way up (20% more KWH than last year's bill for the same month). He said he got better FPS on Crysis with the 5870 he used to have. So I told him he should have checked the benchmarks before he bought the piece of crap GeForce Grill, because he would have seen that the 5870 plays Crysis better, and it uses about 9000 watts less power, and produces 9000 degrees less heat. He said "will you trade or not?", so I told him that I was quite happy with my 5870 and he should just buy another one since he misses it so much.True story[/citation]

Bogus Alert:

There are valid reasons to choose one card or the other but electric cost argument is totally bogus.

GTX 480 = 355 watts
5870 = 240 watts

That's 115 watts difference.

115 watts x 20 hours per week at full load x 4.3 weeks per month x $0.10 per kw-hr / (1000 watts per kw * 0.85% PSU Eff) = Holy Crap $1.16 per month .... maybe he can qualify for a rent subsidy ?

Using the Antec PSU calculator, you'll notice that overclocking a 920 / 5870 based system to 4.0 Ghz (1.35 vcore) and replacing the stock cooler w/ aftermarket CPU cooler increases system wattage from 425 to 554 so given the 129 watt increase, my guess is your friend must be playing at stock CPU speeds....since overclocking your CPU results in a greater wattage increase than going from a 5870 to a 480.

As for Crysis benches, these do not include the 4% increase with the 256 drivers:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=518&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=8

But in today's world, where you're buying a card to serve the games of the next 2 or 3 years, I think the DX11 tests are more relevant:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=518&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=11

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=518&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=7

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=518&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=6

In short, heat and power are legitimate concerns, especially if you have case or PSU limitations ..... electrical cost is NOT an issue. Might as well argue against over clocking because it consumes too much electricity.

 

[datawrecker]

[citation][nom]V3ctor[/nom]But a HD5970 eats less power and doesn't heat up as much as yours GTX470[/citation]

True, but I really dont care about power consumption or heat. I want performance. If power consumption is that much of an issue for you why bother getting a "high performance" card.

 

[irh_1974]

[citation][nom]datawrecker[/nom]True, but I really dont care about power consumption or heat. I want performance. If power consumption is that much of an issue for you why bother getting a "high performance" card.[/citation]
If you only care about performance then why not get a 5970?
If heat and energy consumption aren't issues then why should a dual GPU be any differant, performance is performance.
Price shouldn't be a factor either, if you are prepared to spend the money that a GTX480 costs you are exactly surfing the bargain bins.

 

[RADIO_ACTIVE]

[citation][nom]borisof007[/nom]THIRTY TWO times AA? Holy smokes who the heck needs that?[/citation]
It actually is runs beautifully in bad company 2 with my 2 480s and @ 1080p

to answer your question ME!

and about the heat thing, if you have a good case with good air flow I have not seen the cards even hit 80c

 

[dogofwars]

I want my 386 back it did not had to have a cooler on it at all....nah I prefer performance

 

[IzzyCraft]

[citation][nom]AsianJetlag[/nom]Yawn.GTX480 are all out of stock at $500, you have to pay at least a $50 premium for one.In which case, a $600 Radeon 5970 still rapes the f**k out of the GTX480.[/citation]
Where do you live because it apparently it's not the US
Newegg look it up
cheapest GTX 480 = 499.99 MSRP (if you don't know)
cheapest 5970 = 699.99 MSRP + $100
you getting it wrong on what price is inflated.

[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]What does the 256 stand for?Fahrenheit?[/citation]
Actually the 105c cut off for the GF100 is about 221 Fahrenheit

 

[jerreece]

Someone posted about this driver release in the forums about 2 days ago.

 

[Lamiel]

[citation][nom]AsianJetlag[/nom]Yawn.GTX480 are all out of stock at $500, you have to pay at least a $50 premium for one.In which case, a $600 Radeon 5970 still rapes the f**k out of the GTX480.[/citation]
What? Newegg currently has 8 different GTX 480's in stock at $500. Did you even bother to check it out before you posted? Everyone can say what they like about the heat and power consumption, but at least the Fermis haven't suffered from the ridiculous price inflation that is normal for cards in this class.

 

[segio526]

I remember buying a midrange desktop for $2000 and getting a top of the line VooDoo5 5500 to go in it for $300. It had 2 little fans, 1 over each GPU and everyone complained because it needed a 4-pin molex to power it. Now the midrange computer costs $600 and the video card costs $400-$500 ($750 for a dual GPU), it's always dual slot and gets between 12 and 16 pins worth of power connection.

Video cards are so overpowered as it is. I'd like to see what they could make if they worked hard to make it single slot again. I'm sure if they worked at it, they could make a 5770 single slot and it would be good enough to run the next few years worth of games.

 

[eklipz330]

i feel that i'll be adopting 3d on my pc before i adopt to it in the living room... just bring out those 3d bluray players

 

[z0d]

still a negligible performance increase on some games that matter

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]IzzyCraft[/nom]Where do you live because it apparently it's not the USNewegg look it upcheapest GTX 480 = 499.99 MSRP (if you don't know)cheapest 5970 = 699.99 MSRP + $100you getting it wrong on what price is inflated.Actually the 105c cut off for the GF100 is about 221 Fahrenheit[/citation]
Yeah, to get the fastest you always pay a premium, that's a fact that will never change regardless of who owns it, the problem is that both sides are doing it at the same time.

Fastest card overall = HD5970
Fastest single GPU card = GTX480
Next fastest single GPU card = HD5870

OK, so if people are saying the cost between the HD5970 and GTX480 is too much for the small increase in performance...
Then...
Why is the small differance in performance between the GTX480 and HD5870 worth the same ridiculous price differance?

All joking aside this is simple fanboyism - if you want to dispense with partisan ideas and simply have the fastest card available then if you are prepared to shell out $500 on a graphics card then you are not in the least bit interested in "value", you may as well shell out an extra $200 for the bragging rights.

But don't try to fool anyone into thinking that a card that is half a thousand dollars is anything other fanboyism when a better card is clearly available.

 

[silky salamandr]

[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]How bout you wait a couple months and see? If I recall, all those nvidia chipset failures we saw a while back didn't happen the second you turned the computer on. No, heat damage is more than just instantaneous smoke, its stress to the solder joins, degradation of the silicon, etc...Not saying its gonna happen, I'm just saying 90C has never been a healthy temp for integrated circuits, not in the long run. But I guess if you can afford another $500 card in 6 months, by all means.[/citation]
Its so funny that all the people that do not even own a 480 comment on how it performs in the real world not by an biased sites. Every single site has different performance stats for these cards.

My 480 has NEVER went above 76c and thats after playing Metro for 4 hours straight and running benchmarks. If your card gets that hot then I dont know what the hell your doing. People bought these cards and stick them in a crap mid case with poor air circulation. Get afterburner and set the damn fan curves. Its easier to cool the card when it hasnt already reached 90c!

And you can put the stupid power bill issue to bed. All of you that dont own the card are just regurgitating the same crap that your hearing on the net. If your smart youll go to your power company website and use their calculator to see how much your bill will go up. With my i7 clocked to 4 and my 480, if I spent 8 hours with my cpu on full load 5 days a week, my power bill would go up 24bucks a year. Most of you spend more than that at kfc loading up on double downs.

My point is You dont see me bashing ATI cards because ive never owned one so I feel like I HAVE NO OPINION ON SOMETHING I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. Most of you need to live the same way I do.

 

[silky salamandr]

[citation][nom]JackNaylorPE[/nom]Bogus Alert:There are valid reasons to choose one card or the other but electric cost argument is totally bogus.GTX 480 = 355 watts5870 = 240 wattsThat's 115 watts difference.115 watts x 20 hours per week at full load x 4.3 weeks per month x $0.10 per kw-hr / (1000 watts per kw * 0.85% PSU Eff) = Holy Crap $1.16 per month .... maybe he can qualify for a rent subsidy ?Using the Antec PSU calculator, you'll notice that overclocking a 920 / 5870 based system to 4.0 Ghz (1.35 vcore) and replacing the stock cooler w/ aftermarket CPU cooler increases system wattage from 425 to 554 so given the 129 watt increase, my guess is your friend must be playing at stock CPU speeds....since overclocking your CPU results in a greater wattage increase than going from a 5870 to a 480.As for Crysis benches, these do not include the 4% increase with the 256 drivers:http://benchmarkreviews.com/index. [...] mitstart=8But in today's world, where you're buying a card to serve the games of the next 2 or 3 years, I think the DX11 tests are more relevant:http://benchmarkreviews.com/index. [...] itstart=11http://benchmarkreviews.com/index. [...] mitstart=7http://benchmarkreviews.com/index. [...] mitstart=6In short, heat and power are legitimate concerns, especially if you have case or PSU limitations ..... electrical cost is NOT an issue. Might as well argue against over clocking because it consumes too much electricity.[/citation]

+1 Jack

People are really blowing this gtx 480 power consumption out of control. Everybody is a sheep and is just following what others that dont own the card are saying.

 

[rambo117]

[citation][nom]notty22[/nom]Fermi FASTEST gpu ever.Did you ATI fanboys miss the article about Nvidia offering the only Pc 3d solution, lol5 series most talked about feature GSOD, Grey Screen of Death.ATI's version of 3d is the grey screening, monitor flickering option.[/citation]
LOL

Im just gonna agree with you so you can sleep at night about your fermi purchase. Typical mvidia fanboys, let their mouth do the thinking