GTX 480 and GTX 470 Reviews

[Marios]

Ppl think of Fermi as a GPU.
I see it as a highly efficient, massively parallel and scalable "fusion" CPU/GPU that has the potential to become the main processor of future plants.
From this perspective Fermi is a programmable beast capable to perform massive calculations in a fraction of time and energy compared to existing architectures.
It's a miracle Nvidia did it where Intel failed with Larrabee.
This is why it opposes a real threat to existing CPUs as well as GPUs.
What we see today with all those benches on the net is proof of Fermi being a chameleon that was programed to serve us as a GeForce GPU.
I believe we have a lot more to see from Nvidia's Fermi architecture in a year time frame.
Fermi architecture is Nvidia's ticket to the future.

[sbattosai]

One of the best review so far, with a lot of technical insight, the one from Damien Triolet:
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/787-...e-gtx-480.html



Unfortunately it is in French, it will get translated in the next days as usual.
Anyway the numbers speak for themselves...

[GoldenTiger]

One of the best review so far, with a lot of technical insight, the one from Damien Triolet:
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/787-...e-gtx-480.html



Unfortunately it is in French, it will get translated in the next days as usual.
Anyway the numbers speak for themselves...

Thanks for the link .

[Olivon]

One of the best review so far, with a lot of technical insight, the one from Damien Triolet:
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/787-...e-gtx-480.html



Unfortunately it is in French, it will get translated in the next days as usual.
Anyway the numbers speak for themselves...

Right, one of the best reviews

Here Translated

And concerning IQ :

With the Radeon 5870 we saw AMD implement true angle-independent AF and we’ve been wondering whether we would see this from NVIDIA. The answer is no: NVIDIA’s AF quality remains unchanged from the GTX200 series. In this case that’s not necessarily a bad thing; NVIDIA already had great AF even if it was angle-dependant. More to the point, we have yet to find a game where the difference between AMD and NVIDIA’s AF modes have been noticeable; so technically AMD’s AF modes are better, but it’s not enough that it makes a practical difference

[onethreehill]

http://www.ninjalane.com/reviews/video/nv_gtx480
http://www.techspot.com/news/38385-n...i-arrives.html
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.a...tno=668&pgno=0
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fea...d_power_hungry
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-...-679629/review
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx480/

[Caparroz]

What?! They've clearly stated, and every review has said that 470 is $350.

Oh, my bad.

The $450 price for the gtx470 must be written in stone in my brain after so much "Fermi speculation" threads.

Posting after almost 2 bottles of wine doesn't help either...

Edit: where's xbitlabs review? They're the best.

[Warboy]

Wow, FERMI may be hot, but not hotheaded like nevermind...Movieman might ban me.


Seriously, these are samples with early drivers and fans at 80%. It's entertaining watching people jump to conclusion.


Picard - "Engage Conclusion"

[LordEC911]

Ppl think of Fermi as a GPU.
I see it as a highly efficient, massively parallel and scalable "fusion" CPU/GPU that has the potential to become the main processor of future plants.
From this perspective Fermi is a programmable beast capable to perform massive calculations in a fraction of time and energy compared to existing architectures.
It's a miracle Nvidia did it where Intel failed with Larrabee.
This is why it opposes a real threat to existing CPUs as well as GPUs.
What we see today with all those benches on the net is proof of Fermi being a chameleon that was programed to serve us as a GeForce GPU.
I believe we have a lot more to see from Nvidia's Fermi architecture in a year time frame.
Fermi architecture is Nvidia's ticket to the future.

Too much green koolaid?
Other than the fact that almost everything you said is even not even remotely true or possible, you have a point that Fermi is their future.

[ajaidev]

I have read over a bazillion reviews now my conclusion is split in two parts:

Cons:

1080p gaming gives similar/close fps as 5870.
Eats quite a bit more than the 5870, you could have 5870 CF and still manage to save a few watts.

Pro:

AA performance seems good less of a hit.
In some games its performance is closer to 5970 than 5870, but then again 5870 CF would perform better than the 5970.

Result:

5870 2GB @ 900Mhz would close the gap with GTX 480 and it would be very close around 1080p. GTX 480 as it stands at $500 is very good card for the price. Lets see it its price does not go the way 5870 did and keeps stable at $500 "Its very hard tough"

If 5870 2GB @ 900Mhz is available around $420-$429 it would be a good alternative against the GTX 480 specially considering the less power consumption.

BTW 5870 was listed at $399 originally maybe at last AMD will offer 5870 at the release price

[Caparroz]

I have read over a bazillion reviews now my conclusion is split in two parts:

Cons:

1080p gaming gives similar/close fps as 5870.
Eats quite a bit more than the 5870, you could have 5870 CF and still manage to save a few watts.

Pro:

AA performance seems good less of a hit.
In some games its performance is closer to 5970 than 5870, but then again 5870 CF would perform better than the 5970.

Result:

5870 2GB @ 900Mhz would close the gap with GTX 480 and it would be very close around 1080p. GTX 480 as it stands at $500 is very good card for the price. Lets see it its price does not go the way 5870 did and keeps stable at $500 "Its very hard tough"

If 5870 2GB @ 900Mhz is available around $420-$429 it would be a good alternative against the GTX 480 specially considering the less power consumption.

BTW 5870 was listed at $399 originally maybe at last AMD will offer 5870 at the release price

Newegg sometimes have some 5870 at $399 but you got to be fast.

[Chrono Detector]

Wow, this card runs hot and that is not a good thing. And was it worth the 6 month wait? I don't think so.

NVIDIA, you disappointed me yet again. Hopefully a refresh will follow because the GTX 480 is another 280 GTX repeat.

[SimBy]

What the hell? All the reviews say ~50C idle (most say sub-50 but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt). What the.... what... wha.....

Only with 2 monitors though. To prevent screen flickering. Still its ridiculous temp.

[onethreehill]

Snip.....

BTW 5870 was listed at $399 originally maybe at last AMD will offer 5870 at the release price

What are you saying?
HD 5870 US$379 - launch price
HD 5850 US$259 - launch price

[Dimitriman]

So what kind of minimum power supply are we looking at here for running the 470-480 on single and SLI modes?
I saw a review where gtx480 in SLI was making a system consumption of 710W on load :S

I think some people aren't grasping the fact that when they buy one they will need a new PSU, especially if they are thinking of SLI. I can see a lot of PSU's going down from ignoring this issue.

Still though GTX480 is faster than 5870 by some 20% which in my books is a success given all the problems they had. As long as everyone realizes that their investment in these chips will likely go beyond the 350$ price tag (PSU, extra case cooling) - then I don't see any Nvidia loyals backing down from this one.

PS: At Fermi's current price, if it stays this much, we will no doubt see 5870 price cuts and it probably will not take very long to happen.

[mmorpgfocus]

So.

I have just got a hexi-core 980 extreme edition with 12GB Ram and 256GB SSD with TRIM built in.

It seems that 2x GTX480 in SLI will be the fastest possible GPU.

From the reviews it seems that 5970 and even 5870 Xfire are stomped by 2x GTX480 in SLI.

[iTravis]

So.


From the reviews it seems that 5970 and even 5870 Xfire are stomped by 2x GTX480 in SLI.

We all know that Captain Obvious, not to mention price, heat, noise, and power consumption.

[xdan]

It think that most of reviewerss should have used an 6 core processor.
The difference betwen 5870 and Gtx 480 is 20-30%, and in some situation GTX 480 reach 5970.
Also in some situation G100 arhitecture is in deed 2x GT 200 With LN cooling without any voltage modification which is posible, but now there is any software, can reach 900MHZ core..
The consum is indeed very bad...I hope than in 1-2 month to lauch GTX 490( 512 SP). A better revision chips could shave 10W TDP...All in all these cards are decent ...not very good, not bad either ant the prices are good.
The best FERMI card will be the budget GTX 460...?
http://lab501.ro/placi-video/nvidia-...l-magnetism/22

[Marios]

What are you saying?
HD 5870 US$379 - launch price
HD 5850 US$259 - launch price

HD 5870 launch price with almost zero availability and lots of price increases in the meantime.
In Europe most ppl bought HD 5870 at 450-500 euros (600-670 US$)
This moment there is availability at 410+ euros (550 US$).

[Newblar]

no idea why everyone is concerned about the massive power requirements...
why not throw some full cover gpu blocks on two 470/480gtx? this is xtremesystems, not joetheplumber's dumbass

[insurgent]

no idea why everyone is concerned about the massive power requirements...
why not throw some full cover gpu blocks on two 470/480gtx? this is xtremesystems, not joetheplumber's dumbass

Xtreme meaning pushing the limits of what you have, or that's what I thought. Disregarding price/watt/performance isn't "xtreme", it's foolish for most people.

[Helloworld_98]

looks like I'll be getting a 470, and hopefully someone will come out with a cooler for it soon.

[Caparroz]

Damn, 1.8v @ 5,5 with the 980?!? I got some reading for the next week.

[zerazax]

Noticed something interesting. Looking at the reviews posted, the most positive reviews for the GTX 4xx's were the ones that didn't review power consumption and noise. The ones that did, were far more muted in conclusion

The difference betwen 5870 and Gtx 480 is 20-30%, and in some situation GTX 480 reach 5970.

Outside of synthetics and a few games where either ATI isn't well optimized or SLI/CF doesn't scale well, the 480 never really reaches the 5970 at all.

And 20-30%? Where? HWC and AT all gave the 480 roughly a 13% average on performance over the 5870. One of the users on this forum collected the data from 8 different reviews and showed 8% with no AA, and 15% with AA at 1920 x 1200. All the reviews acknowledged that the gap between 5870 and 480 shrinks at 2560 x 1600.

Don't make up 20-30% here, that's not even close to being true

[ajaidev]

GTX 480 does not really do much, its hot and well hungry. GTX 485 would be a good card and hopefully it would be out before ATi's refresh.

5870 around 900mhz-950mhz is very comparative and if you mix in 2GB's and say a $70 or so less of a price tag its would be a win on ati's side.

What are you saying?
HD 5870 US$379 - launch price
HD 5850 US$259 - launch price

Yep those are the launch prices but the 5870's were listed at $399.

[zerazax]

Looking through the reviews again (late night reading ftw)

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1258/15/

"We are currently keeping memory clock high to avoid some screen flicker when changing power states, so for now we are running higher idle power in dual-screen setups. Not sure when/if this will be changed. Also note we're trading off temps for acoustic quality at idle. We could ratchet down the temp, but need to turn up the fan to do so. Our fan control is set to not start increasing fan until we're up near the 80's, so the higher temp is actually by design to keep the acoustics lower." - NVIDIA PR

Yikes! 90C at idle for 2 LCDs??