Buying GTX 480 / 470? Post Review poll

[Systemlord]

Or you can always struggle your balls with the door when you pick up your wallet and go to buy it, that helps and a lot :p

For those how aim to wait for the next gen of Ati cards, they are going to have kind of good improvements over the Cypress. The code name for them are Southern Islands, they will include actual tech plus some quite interesting new techs, but it's said that the new and big change will be the other step, called Northern Islands.

My advice, if you are into Physix and you are a devoted Nvidia user, go for the GTX480, is a good card with some cons in it, like heat, people that buy that card doesnt care about power consumption. But, if you really hate that heat production, you are afraid that your psu will explode and just love hearing the world with your ears without needing an amplifier, go for a 5870 1GB right now or wait a little bit for the 2GB non-eyefinity edition.

Also, if you go for the 5870 and want to enable Physix in-game, you can take a 9600GT from nvidia, is a really nice card for that work.

Damn, I really need a new card now! I could water cool the GTX 480, heat non issue then along with the noise factor. I don't care if it takes 200 or 300 watts as long as my PSU can handle it which it can! When I overclocked my 8800 GTX the fan noise at 100% all of the time did sound audible on Windows desktop, so I wanted to go for water cooling anyways! I would be nice if Nvidia go get the last SMs and 512SPs like their target was originally. Do you really know for a fact that Nvidia couldn't improve the 480? Miracles do happen from time to time!

[franklin5252]

Im waiting to the new Ati comes out with the 6 series cards before i do anything.

[demo23019]

Once microcenter gets them instore...very soon. Ill be picking up 2 evga 480

[audioave10]

I might get a GTX 470 - $350 in the US. Set your fan speed to 60% and the
temps aren't that bad. 5850 would be the other consideration - $320.

[BobyTT]

Already got two 480.

[BeepBeep2]

Good! hopefully more like you and it'll ensure I get 2xGTX 480 HC FTWs immediately, heat? 50'C full load on water, noise ZERO, power consumption $1 extra per month compared to ATI.

Overclock? Ya I'll post my 800-900 core clock numbers here and see how that HD5870 CF or HD5970 compares :-) Let them release the 5890 2GB even with 2560x1600 isn't fully utilized and won't for a long while.

Umm, remember that that "$1 per month" is over the 5970, not 5870...you could run two 5970's in QuadFire and use less power than two 480's.

I love nvidia, my first DX10 card was an 8800 GTS 320MB that I got for $400. Fermi...sucks.

HD5870's are notorious for doing 1000 to 1100 on their core compared to the stock 850. Thats about a 20-25% increase.
Even if you get to 850 core thats a 21% increase in performance with much more power used than the 5970 and 50% less performance. Congrats

If you clock it that high it puts it about 8-9% above the 5870. Remember, with 60 FPS you are getting 60 FPS while the ATI card has 55 and uses half the power


In all seriousness, if fermi had lower power usage and nvidia had released mid-range cards I'd be all over them.

[Frag Maniac]

I might get a GTX 470 - $350 in the US. Set your fan speed to 60% and the
temps aren't that bad. 5850 would be the other consideration - $320.

From what I've read the 480's fan is set at 60% from the factory. I assumed the 470 was too because though it's less powerful, the HS is less robust too.

Sounds like you're saying the 470's stock fan speed is less than 60%. If so, can you provide something to back that up? If I can get around 80c or less load temps at 60% on a 470, I may consider one. I am very skeptical that is possible though.

[audioave10]

Here is a quote from Rage 3d (which is an AMD/ATI forum mostly):
"thanks for the tip, I just got to get me a set for SLI, a friend of mine snagged 1 up from ebay. I went to his house to check it out and was surprised by it. 1st of all this card is not a dustbuster, It's about as loud as a gtx 285, the fan on it is very good quality, we tested in furmark, and it reached 86 degrees, and in gaming it hovers around 70-75 degrees, the fan speed was 69-70% all the time while gaming, and at that speed it's the same as a gt285 noise wise or even a bit quieter due to the high quality fan. I run my fans @ 75% on my SLI setup so I fugure a gtx 485 SLI will be the same noise while gaming or less. I went to his house thinking it was going to glow red and sound like a vacuum, but after seeing it in action I was very impressed, I'm confident that 480 SLI is going to be about the same noise and maybe a little bit hotter temp than gtx 285 SLI but not by much, most of the reviews hollering about the noise and heat are overexagerated bull**** unless if you're gonna use your gpu's to run furmark and watch fanspeed and temps. In the real world (gaming) it's very acceptable noise and heat wise, the powerdraw is really the only downside for me at this point."

True user info is sketchy right now but I'm seeing a few like this where its not quite as bad as it seems. Comparing to ATI's latest is the problem since ATI did such a great job with power usage & heat. Its not too much from the norm however. If Nvidia could get the 28nm working for Fermi, it would kick-ass.
It may take a year for it to happen. Darnit!
Its borderline as far as being too much heat or not (and it does need more power). With my history of good driver support and long-lasting GPU's
from Nvidia, I still would like a GTX 470. I'll still be searching for more info.

[Systemlord]

Here is a quote from Rage 3d (which is an AMD/ATI forum mostly):
"thanks for the tip, I just got to get me a set for SLI, a friend of mine snagged 1 up from ebay. I went to his house to check it out and was surprised by it. 1st of all this card is not a dustbuster, It's about as loud as a gtx 285, the fan on it is very good quality, we tested in furmark, and it reached 86 degrees, and in gaming it hovers around 70-75 degrees, the fan speed was 69-70% all the time while gaming, and at that speed it's the same as a gt285 noise wise or even a bit quieter due to the high quality fan. I run my fans @ 75% on my SLI setup so I fugure a gtx 485 SLI will be the same noise while gaming or less. I went to his house thinking it was going to glow red and sound like a vacuum, but after seeing it in action I was very impressed, I'm confident that 480 SLI is going to be about the same noise and maybe a little bit hotter temp than gtx 285 SLI but not by much, most of the reviews hollering about the noise and heat are overexagerated bull**** unless if you're gonna use your gpu's to run furmark and watch fanspeed and temps. In the real world (gaming) it's very acceptable noise and heat wise, the powerdraw is really the only downside for me at this point."

True user info is sketchy right now but I'm seeing a few like this where its not quite as bad as it seems. Comparing to ATI's latest is the problem since ATI did such a great job with power usage & heat. Its not too much from the norm however. If Nvidia could get the 28nm working for Fermi, it would kick-ass.
It may take a year for it to happen. Darnit!
Its borderline as far as being too much heat or not (and it does need more power). With my history of good driver support and long-lasting GPU's
from Nvidia, I still would like a GTX 470. I'll still be searching for more info.

Things are being manipulated by some websites (legionhardware COUGH!), they will show you what they want you to see, ie links! Each paint a different picture about the GTX 480. Notice how the choice of what games are tested favor ATI, while the last two links favor both ATI/Nvidia which seem more balanced! You have got to know that the GTX 480 drivers really need much more work before judgement is passed, "my predictions are that Fermi yields will improve along with the drivers to the point where the GTX 480 will pass the ATI 5970". I'll eat my words if I'm wrong, words in chocolate!

http://www.legionhardware.com/articl...arrives,1.html

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforc...70-480-review/

http://anandtech.com/show/2977/nvidi...orth-the-wait-

[Frag Maniac]

...my predictions are that Fermi yields will improve along with the drivers to the point where the GTX 480 will pass the ATI 5970...

It's not just driver tweaks that will improve Fermi's results against the 5970, it's games that make much more use of DX11 than the current ones. The main problem with early adoption is always the unknown as far as how well the product will be supported. In this case though much of the support is not in the hands of Nvidia directly.

No matter how much they get out and talk to devs, it's still up to them to employ the features to make full use of the hardware. My guess is Nvidia will be busier than they have ever been before in that regard, because all the time and money spent on Fermi's success depends on it. There will no doubt be even more ATI fanatics accuse them of sabotaging games too, but you know how that goes.

[Systemlord]

It's not just driver tweaks that will improve Fermi's results against the 5970, it's games that make much more use of DX11 than the current ones. The main problem with early adoption is always the unknown as far as how well the product will be supported. In this case though much of the support is not in the hands of Nvidia directly.

No matter how much they get out and talk to devs, it's still up to them to employ the features to make full use of the hardware. My guess is Nvidia will be busier than they have ever been before in that regard, because all the time and money spent on Fermi's success depends on it. There will no doubt be even more ATI fanatics accuse them of sabotaging games too, but you know how that goes.

An excellent point, Nvidia did design the Fermi's architecture with features not yet used by devs and game makers. ATI made a similar guess on the future of gaming and came up short, too many Shader processors and not enough texture units when the HD2900XT came out.

My guess is Nvidia will be busier than they have ever been before in that regard, because all the time and money spent on Fermi's success depends on it. There will no doubt be even more ATI fanatics accuse them of sabotaging games too, but you know how that goes.

I have only one thing to say about this statement, "The Way It's Meant To Be Played".

[xguntherc]

the 480's fan is set to 44% at auto.. but I crank it to about 80% when I game. and can't hear anything under 72% on my system cuz my medium yates. it's not as loud as my 260's were until it gets high.

but playing Crysis warhead I did see 86c load.