PAX: What Gamers Think of Nvidia's GTX 480

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[citation][nom]CaptainBib[/nom]What is missed in the reviews is how well a scaled back card, with an unproven driver can compete against Ati's full-blown dx11 GPU with mature drivers.Don't forget that the GF100 hasn't arrived yet, that card will have 512 sps, not 480.Couple the Shader increase with driver maturation and the Fermi cards SHOULD gain another 5-10% over the HD 5xxx series. If nvidia does what they did with the gt200, upping the sps post-launch, the Fermi cards will be what Nvidia promised they would be.Right now though, they just aren't worth it. Sorry to say it, but for the next 6 months at least, ATI has won[/citation]

Well, the card was cut back because they couldn't make it work with 512sps, at least not with a realistic power usage. It's just a monster GPU, way too big. If ATI cranked up their cards to use 250W they would definitely beat the GTX 480, after all they have proven they have more performance per transistor and more performance per watt.

Nvidia's drivers probably won't improve much: remember how the GTX 480 was supposed to be released last year, well, Nvidia has had that long to make drivers for the new cards so we definitely won't see the performance increases through drivers that we saw with the HD 5xxx.
 
[citation][nom]JackNaylorPE[/nom]Everyone's focusing on the flagship 480 but the 470 looks like the big noise from this release....the 470 wins on a $ per frame analysis almost entirely across the board and the headroom provided means it should be pushed by overclockers well beyond it's released values.http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/for [...] ew-32.html[/citation]

This is what I've been saying for a couple of weeks, the 470 is the more intriguing card at launch. Once initial prices settle down, I think nvidia will sell alot more 470's than 480's.
 
phyx and cuda is not cuda impleted as i heard

[citation][nom]atikkur[/nom]well, CUDA and Physx are not separate features. Physx is just one of the implementation of CUDA applications. That is CUDA that drives Physx. Virtually anything that can be done with CUDA, with one purpose in mind, taking the benefit of paralelism in computing that might be very slow to process in cpu based. (scientiest favor)and with this fermis power, nvidia add more implementation of CUDA, raytracing. i dont know whether this power could drive raytracing enough, but this is the first sign.what else? CUDA application can be placed to process video/ photos / encoding / and i dont know more (too many possibilities).So, is this CUDA thing is gimmick? I dont think so, it works and just growing. That is why nvidia is so obsessed to build the ultimate GPGPU, and still gaming departement continuing to evolve.And what about ATI. They sure add the GPGPU capability, but what about their support. Their applications that actually uses it? Just flat.[/citation]or
 
AMD is 6 months ahead of nVidia in their product cycle. All the margins that nVidia has to improve their latest products in price, performance and availability, AMD has more. The reviewers are smart to try and soften the blow but make no mistake - Fermi is a fiasco or poor engineering and poor project management. Even if it sells, the market share of these high end GPUs is insignificant compared to more mainstream parts.
 
I've also claim no loyalty to either company but I also think I made the right choice when coming down to the 5800 series for good performance.
Nvidia has done a good job on their video card but I've truly believe ATI has won the customers choice this year. But this is the first quarter and new drivers would be release.
 
[citation][nom]pipes990[/nom]They are selling like crazy. I can't find anywhere on the net that isn't sold out. Anyone know where I could pick one up?[/citation]
Good thing you read the short article...or better yet...the bold headlines. You may know then that they aren't being sold yet...
 
[citation][nom]tethoma[/nom]Nvidia drivers are 3 times more stable than ATI's. Anyone who has owned both know this.[/citation]
does "3 times" come from YOUR bias review? lawlz @ Nvidia fanboi. Nice to see Nvidia's marketing strategies are better than their engineering and the fanboi's upset that their days of proclaiming Fermi would kick ATI's ass can now only sit there and revert back to plan B..."So!...Nvidia drivers are 3 times as better and 10 years ago ATI had a faulty part and 5 years ago their chipsets didn't work that well when they began making chipsets"...

I'm no fanboi for either as I currently own both and love them both...but some of you are just so funny to wage this lame war on gaming graphic cards...

But then again I guess I can understand when the author writes "I'll leave it to the commenters to battle over which is better."...I know Toms likes to create hype but man, it's like they know it is a sensitive subject but tell us to "play nice"...lawlz
 
I won't be upgrading to either brand for a while. IF I did upgrade it would be Nvidia, but my GTX275 powers every single game that has come out and will come out this year on max settings. I was maybe going to upgrade for Crysis 2, until I read that it uses less resources than Crysis 1. So my question is: Why waste your money?
 
[citation][nom]regulas[/nom]The one point here is no single GPU/chip and most dual chip cards can touch the new GTX 480 Nvidia single chip solution. Yes it is a power eating monster but it rocks. Later when they shrink the die it will be the card of choice.[/citation]

Later this and Later that. If you want to wait another year go right ahead.
There are many fans out there with the 5850 which is the best bang for the buck with nothing even coming close to it.
 
The tessellation performance seems to be a big strong suit for Nvidea right now, but it remains to be seen how much the benchmark performance edge will translate to better user-experience in actual titles. What I was very impressed with on the Fermi is how efficiently it handles AA. When you crank up the AA, the Fermi doesn't take nearly as much of a performance hit as ATI's offering. But, at the end of the day, while the 480 outperforms the 5870 in certain situations, it doesn't seem to justify a $100 price difference. At the same time, though, it isn't clear that the 5870 is a better value than the less expensive 470.

I feel pretty comfortable saying that the 480 is probably overpriced for its performance, but other than that, it is hard for me to crown a value winner in the 5850/470/5870 race. But I know one thing for certain: the Fermi's release has not made very many 5870 and 5850 owners regret their purchases.
 
It will be interesting to see if the much better tesselation and min. frame rate performance of fermi makes it capable of playing tomorrows games better than AMD''s offerings. Personally my 8800GT has managed to cut it for considerably longer than i expected it too, and whilst its definitely hitting upgrade time for me in terms of needing new hardware for todays games, performance in future games is clearly more of a consideration than performance in todays game (which both AMD's and Nvidia's cards handle equally well at nearly any resolution and graphics levels).
 
i think the hidden cost of having to buy a new power supply is what finally nudged me back to ATI. i haven't had a radeon card since my venerable 9800 pro (an awesome solid card at the time). i've had nvidia card since but after getting a gtx something (i forget which model) coming OC'd out of the box with a 575 watt requirement which my 650 watt power supply couldn't handle i got leery. i've been sitting on this 8800 gt for a couple years and it was time for an upgrade. i just ordered a 5850 that comes with modern warfare 2 (i wasn't going to pay $60 retail for it but its a hell of a bonus for a $300 card to have) for $308 from newegg. my board supports crossfire so after awhile when the prices drop i'll just pick up another one. according to the specs they use 155 watts each which is barely more than my 8800 and easily doable without buying another power supply (my full size case can hold 2). i was really looking forward to this release mostly to help drive the prices back down on the radeons.
 
Can't alt + tab in fullscreen opengl applications running windows 7 with my 5850.... Often screen goes black or display driver stops responding using the latest 10.3 catalyst.

Have poor framerates on Second Life, worse than my previous 9600gt... Have issues running older games for my son, such as Bloodrayne2 and Counter Strike 1.6 or City of Heroes.

For the current games crowd, it's a great card.

But I want a full product, I have just bought a Geforce 240 so I could play these games without problems on my 2nd monitor... So I get the best from both. Kinda disappointed, I'm very optimistic about the newer Nvidia cards, I do not care about power usage or power supply, I've got a 850w Power Supply with plenty of room for a 470 or 480. I just want a full, stable product.

Could be better though but I guess they just wanted to match AMD performance and Nvidia has never been really good at pricing except for the mid range series (remember 6600GT/7600GT/8800GT/9600GT)

About the issues with ATI cards with older AMD motherboards - This is true, but was only limited to few chipsets from VIA and AMD. Keep in mind this was with the Radeon 9000 series and with older AGP boards and AMD and ATI were two different creatures back then.

If it wasn't for Nvidia, the gamers community would probably be stuck with the catastrophic x1k Radeons. They do make very nice cards and are a respectable company.

We are happy that Fermi has arrived and welcome it to the gamers community, it's our win, even for the sickest ATI Fanboi.
 
Nvidia had to push 480 to its limits to make the lead over 5870 pronounced which means we are unlikely to see any performance improvements till the next process shrink. On the other hand, ATI seems to have some headroom to release more powerful single GPU card than 5870 like 5890. Anyway, it seems very unlikely that Nvidia will beat 5970 anytime soon. What I wonder is what 5890 can bring to the table. Its performance should be fairly similar to 480. One thing is for sure: it will use less power. For now, 480 takes pretty good price/performance position between 5970 and 5870. 5890 should be its main competition and people will have to decide whether they wand 480 features over lower power consumption of 5790.
 
I would really like to see some CAD opengl comparisons. I run SolidWorks as well as play games on my machine and i'd like to know if one brand has better performance than another when in comes to Engineering apps. I'm sure there's a lot of people that also use Adobe, Maya, Autocad etc. I don't buy the workstation cards because they just don't offer bang for the buck. They usually run 4X more for half the performance.
Any chance you could do a nice review for us?
 
What I'm wondering is how long it will take nVidia to get the 16 ROP version out. The tessellation results are impressive, if developers implement it in their games, but with the short ROPs, it's missing another 5-7% of its horsepower. I'm thinking the refresh part is going to have a pretty substantial performance boost.

Of course, it's not like ATI's going to sit on its hand either.
 
catastrophic x1k Radeons
Click to expand...
I'm still running my x1900 and it's done just fine for how many years now. Just Cause 2 is the first game that is forcing me to upgrade although I was going to anyways. I agree it wasn't the best generation but i'm amazed how well it has held up. I bought an HP laptop with Nvidia DX10 and was pretty unimpressed. Until just recently it was over heating and just a couple weeks ago it finally got a driver update that fixed the problem. Once again that generation probably had more problems than any other, recalls or what should have been recalls etc. Maybe this time around i'll finally get a good one. I have the feeling I'm going to have to pick the ATI though, unless Tom's can show me that Nvidia is worth the extra $ for CAD.
 
the one thing I like about these nvidia cards is how they took the gamble to try and push the envelope with tessellation. trying to actually go in the new direction that is obviously better in many ways. Its a pretty big risk knowing how slowly timid devs adopt new features, and I commend them for it. if this means its less power efficient when tessellation is not being used, I think thats fair enough. sadly I've lost faith in Nvidia, there constantly buggy drivers and immature public image has put me off.
 
The greatest part of these debates are when the morons cry "Nvidia drivers are better!". Tell that to the people who have fried video cards thanks to the drivers not speeding up the fan when gaming. I tend to think they'd disagree with ya.

Honestly, ATI spanked Nvidia this go round. ATI used to get spanked by Nvidia until they cleaned up their act and started working smarter. Now it's Nvidia's turn to build a better product. I hope Nvidia's next card kicks ATI's ass. No company needs to stay on top. If not, we get overly inflated prices and crappier cards.
 
The disclaimers in theses reviews and interviews are hilarious. No one can have any opinion without claiming they are for one company or another, or flat out stating they are neutral. This is so ridiculous. Nvidia, AMD, unless you own stock in either company, I don't see why anyone would care. Get a life people.
 
I currently own Nvidia and am looking to upgrade from an old 8800gt sli configuration and looking at the 32xAA, the smaller penalty it imposes on frame rate and new dx11 with tessalation and thinking I'm sticking with Nvidia. Am I buying the 480? No, Im waiting for a fully enabled 512 shader version that has a G100 process thats been worked on a bit more. The heat issues hurt overclocking headroom and do no favors to Sli configurations. Ati is doing very well though with keeping both Intel and Nvidia on thier toes especially with the new six core black edition coming out under 3 bills.Competition in all these markets are great! I also like the AMD systems at $999 being sold together with measurable results and performance. This might be the new wave in making PC gaming accessible to the beginners or people who just want to play instead of research cpus and gpus. All these companies definitely have their place and its a cool time to play games.
 
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