GTX 480 and GTX 470 Reviews

[cegras]

Summmmeeeeer

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1258/16/

In my personal system (Corsair 800D Chassis) with two monitors the GeForce GTX 480 graphics card would idle at 90C and if it was a sunny day and my office was warmer it would idle at 92. I fired up the new DX11 game title Aliens Versus Predator and with GPU-Z in the background I saw the temperature reach 99C while gaming for around 30 minutes. At this temperature the fan is spinning at 70dB and it honestly was not an enjoyable gaming experience. I asked NVIDIA if the card was built to run at temperatures this high and they claim that the GeForce GTX 400 series was built to operate at high temperatures and reminded me that 105C was the peak temperature for the GeForce GTX 480 video card. While benchmarking the GeForce GTX 480 graphics card on the open test bench I found the outside of the heatsink to reach 50C on the fan side and 59C on the exhaust side, so this card without a doubt will put out some heat.

Only a true nvidia fanboy would brave his sanity for this. I sure as hell won't. Part of the reason why I considered the GTX260 was for the superior thermals, given equal performance to the 4870.

[Romir]

I've been reading for 5 hours non-stop & I need a breather to let everything sink in... but how is it that we can have 20 reviews of Bad Company 2 and have such varied results?

I game @ 1920 x 1200.. I had thought Fermi would tear Battlefield up, it doesn't... now I am pissed for waiting 6 months!

No built in benchmark means people are benchmarking the opening cutscene, single player portions, or multiplayer portions haphazardly.

The HBAO (or whatever its called, sorry) setting being on or off is also drastically changing the recorded FPS.

[KoHaN69]

I think most discrepancies in the reviews are due to older drivers.

[annihilat0r]

Isn't the BC2 multiplayer engine different from the single player engine? That might be the cause of the discrepancies also

[ferrari_freak]

Wow this is getting a lot of attention. Hundreds of posts on XS, the review sites are still having problems. I'm having trouble reading the Anandtech review atm. Didn't know there were so many computer geeks in the world lol.

[JohnJohn]

So... besides the fact that is late, extremely power hungry and hot for a single gpu card, having a small edge over 5870, and the possibility that these card are going to be more rare than a yeti,

The biggest concern nvidia must be having is how on earth are they going to be selling these as HPC cards, when they are clearly power hogs, and potentially too hot for a rack?

[Sentential]

Hearing those HardOCP videos seals the deal for me, there is no way in hell I'm buying these cards, earlier indications from reviews suggested the fan profile wasn't aggressive enough topping out at 64%. Based on what I saw in those videos there is no way that can be 64% of max RPM and if that really is HOLY .

Knowing how hot it gets down here in FL I just cannot see me being able to use these in SLI without my room turning into a sauna.

Northern Islands it is.....

[JumpingJack]

So... besides the fact that is late, extremely power hungry and hot for a single gpu card, having a small edge over 5870, and the possibility that these card are going to be more rare than a yeti,

The biggest concern nvidia must be having is how on earth are they going to be selling these as HPC cards, when they are clearly power hogs, and potentially too hot for a rack?

The irony is that nVidia focused a lot of attention to make it more attractive to this market, and I am with you ... at least their top end card anyway, i don't see many in the HPC circles jumping up and snagging these, perhaps a clocked down version that runs much cooler.

[Sushi Warrior]

GTX 480 graphics card would idle at 90C

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.....

[Radamanthys]

6 months for this ? Nvidia epic fail

[freeloader]

I want a GTX480 for Folding@Home like NAOW! Unfortunately my room will get too damn hot and my power bill will shoot up way too high. I think it is prudent to wait this out a little to see a refresh from Nvidia, AMD's next gen GPU due out, and Stanford's OpenCL F@H client.

We also better see a mother ing price drop on 5870s RIGHT NOW!

It's too bad about the thermals and power usage. Would make a damn killer F@H card. Just for comparison, I light my whole upstairs of my house on 42 watts (14 GU10 LEDs 3 watts each). This card would probably cost me more to run 24/7 in 2 months then what it would take to light my one house floor for a year!

[SKYMTL]

The card isn't loud. Neither one is actually. You can't equate noise from a crappy mic on a camera to what a card would sound like in your case with the side panel on. The videos seriously mislead people regarding the noise output.

The problem is most reviewers bench on open systems which is why the card needs to be installed into a case before SUBJECTIVE conclusions regarding noise can be made.

Want loud? Install a HD 4870 X2, GTX 295 or a HD 4890 and you'll get loud.

It does run ULTRA hot though.

[bill_d]

The card isn't loud. Neither one is actually. You can't equate noise from a crappy mic on a camera to what a card would sound like in your case with the side panel on. The videos seriously mislead people regarding the noise output.

The problem is most reviewers bench on open systems which is why the card needs to be installed into a case before SUBJECTIVE conclusions regarding noise can be made.

Want loud? Install a HD 4870 X2, GTX 295 or a HD 4890 and you'll get loud.

It does run ULTRA hot though.

most of us have open cases too, don't know where i put that door

and the 5870 didn't sound near as loud in same vid with same mic

and my two 4890's are not that loud as that

[antiacid]

It's too bad about the thermals and power usage. Would make a damn killer F@H card. Just for comparison, I light my whole upstairs of my house on 42 watts (14 GU10 LEDs 3 watts each). This card would probably cost me more to run 24/7 in 2 months then what it would take to light my one house floor for a year!

if you ran your lights for 6 hours per day, 7 days a week (so 42 hours a week) and you wanted to compare 24/7 SLI 480gtx (using anand's number of ~850watts for the total system at peak), you'd basically spend 8kwh on your lights versus 632kwh on your computer. In terms of money, that'd be 1$ vs 95$ (assuming about 14.5cents per kwh). If you are in Europe, you can double those numbers to accommodate for the ridiculous electricity prices. Using your initial example, that would mean you could run your lights for something like 8 years before you spend the money you would've spent on crunching.

I sure hope HPC people are looking at this and wondering if there's a way they could potentially get fission reactors ready to power a cluster of these...

So anyway, this card is so hot it'll take it's own dedicated water loop, it's so bad in price/perf that it won't be attractive to anyone making less than 100000$/year and it'll get re-released in 6 months with all the bits unlocked when they finally figure out how to make it work properly.

I'm going to pass on that crapola.

[STEvil]

The card isn't loud. Neither one is actually. You can't equate noise from a crappy mic on a camera to what a card would sound like in your case with the side panel on. The videos seriously mislead people regarding the noise output.

The problem is most reviewers bench on open systems which is why the card needs to be installed into a case before SUBJECTIVE conclusions regarding noise can be made.

Want loud? Install a HD 4870 X2, GTX 295 or a HD 4890 and you'll get loud.

It does run ULTRA hot though.

My 4870X2 isnt that loud. I run an open case.

[MirageSys]

I think Fermi has taken the title of "space heater" from the old Pentium D's.

I want to see what availability looks like, but honestly its fairly well priced considering the recent past of the company that has launched it.

[highoctane]

The card isn't loud. Neither one is actually. You can't equate noise from a crappy mic on a camera to what a card would sound like in your case with the side panel on. The videos seriously mislead people regarding the noise output.

The problem is most reviewers bench on open systems which is why the card needs to be installed into a case before SUBJECTIVE conclusions regarding noise can be made.

Want loud? Install a HD 4870 X2, GTX 295 or a HD 4890 and you'll get loud.

It does run ULTRA hot though.

I've got a 4850 & 8800gt both ref coolers which are very loud with the fans cranked up, how would the 470/480 noise level compare with either of those in your opinion?

[KingOfsorroW]

I don't want to make the unneeded PR for nvidia, because I think it doesn't desrve it, but I can say that I will be getting a couple of 480s for sli purposes...)) But I have my own argumentation for it - I just got used to the nv image quality too much. It's not that ati's iq is inferior, they are just different... So even if it were slightly faster than285 but with dx11 support I would've got it anyway. All in all though fermi looks like fail in general, but still, it seems to have a strong potential, in its future revisions probably . Kind of. heh

[JumpingJack]

My 4870X2 isnt that loud. I run an open case.

Agreed -- my 4870 X2s are notably quieter at load than my 295 GTXs, the only real fan noise I get from the X2s are at POST when the fan spins 100% until it initializes the card.

[SKYMTL]

My 4870X2 isnt that loud. I run an open case.

The you and I must have different versions or something. Mine is ULTRA loud...as is one of my HD 4890 cards. My GTX 295 does beat them all out though....


If the mic isn't set properly it will take directional sound and not ambient. My Canon S2IS has the same problem and it picks up EVERY sound from a nail scratch to a pen writing on paper if the wrong setting is selected.

The GTX 470 isn't quiet by any stretch but it doesn't make as much racket as that video would lead you to believe. I'm just stating this from my personal experience with the card.

The HD 5870 is VERY quiet though. There is no doubt about that.

[Svnth]

The card isn't loud. Neither one is actually. You can't equate noise from a crappy mic on a camera to what a card would sound like in your case with the side panel on. The videos seriously mislead people regarding the noise output.

The problem is most reviewers bench on open systems which is why the card needs to be installed into a case before SUBJECTIVE conclusions regarding noise can be made.

Want loud? Install a HD 4870 X2, GTX 295 or a HD 4890 and you'll get loud.

It does run ULTRA hot though.

Agreed... it isn't loud like the HARDOCP videos make it seem in my experience. I was trying to compare the video volumes and I think the microphone's frequency response might have a lot to do with the perceived volume.. the mic might respond more to the pitch of one card than another?

[SKYMTL]

I've got a 4850 & 8800gt both ref coolers which are very loud with the fans cranked up, how would the 470/480 noise level compare with either of those in your opinion?

If I can equate noise levels with some of the cards I have gone through in recent months, I'd put noise output at something like this from loudest to quietest.

Palit 9600 GSO (my mistake for ever putting it in my system)
GTX 295
HD 4870 (with the revised fan speed profile)
HD 4890
HD 4870 X2
GTX 480
GTX 280
GTX 470
GTX 285 / GTX 275
HD 5970
HD 5870
HD 5850


Then again, we all have to remember that certain noises bother some people more than others.

[dasa]

same model cards can often be louder than another due to a bad mount\thermal paste application which is unfortunately fairly common
gpu stays the same temp but the fan revs harder to keep it there

[highoctane]

Then again, we all have to remember that certain noises bother some people more than others.

Yeah I find the certain pitches/frequency to be more annoying than the actual sound level I think.

[Utnorris]

They performed as expected, but I was hoping for a better pricing just to push ATI's cards back down to at least MSRP. The one thing that I think Nvidia did right compared to ATI was backporting the Nvidia surround vision (or whatever it is called) to the previous generation, meaning that if you have current GT200 cards you can get a similar experience to eyefinity without buying new cards. Granted, it isn't for everyone, but it makes the current generation last that much longer. The heat output on the cards doesn't bother me or the noise since I would water cool them anyway, but the price and availability is the big issue here. We will probably not see a good supply for several months. At least this should push the prices of the current cards down on Nvidia's side. Why buy a GTX295 or a GTX285 when this is "available".