GTX 480 and GTX 470 Reviews

[Philip_J_Fry]

I really don't see Fermi-Dual card in sandwich design, unless they put gold or something to transfer heat more efficiently than copper

lol i cant imagine how hot that will get, GTX 495 with 2 x GTX 470 chips

[sbattosai]

Honest straight up reviewer:
Anandtech
Techpowerup
legitreviews
Toms Hardware
Hexus
bit-tech.net

Clearly nVidia nut or paid off:
Guru3D
HardwareCanucks
Hardware heaven <--- They taking the p+ss or what

All the respectable sites come to the same summery:
Wattage is shockingly high
HEAT is a problem
Noise is a problem
Price is slightly to high

Performance is GOOD
Performance is SLI is AMAZING!
Future Proof

TechPowerUp review is not honest, they used catalyst 9.12 or something like that for the HD5k, very old drivers...

[Chickenfeed]

Neither of mine (I had one that I RMA'd, and one I kept) could top 910-920 for everyday gaming without issue (hours of continuous gaming, or without overclocking-related artifacts), even with voltage tweaked. Getting it stable meant making it run too hot even with the fan speed up a lot. They could make it for quick benches but that's it.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to agree with you. I've had 4 different 5870s pass through my hands and my experiance with them reflects the same. Most of the people running 950-1000 are on water with/near max voltage or only can claim bench stable runs. A single screen of Furmark running for a short spell is not considered stable in my book... I'm sorry. I put these cards through a gauntlet of games to consider them stable and most were doing 925/1250tops. None could reach 1300 on the memory (the ICs are rated at 5GHZ and they really don't have much if any headroom ), 1 I deemed stabled at 950 core. I was able to do a Vantage run at 1000/1275 on 3 of 4 but none were stable for gaming. Do note I did all sub 950 clocking on auto fan speed. For 1000 I had to set the fan to max. For benching this wouldn't bug me but the noise increase required to run 950+ on the stock sink is just not worth it in my eyes ( from 850-950+ fan noise went from 32-37% in games from 40-50% in games which is a near doubling of noise ) At stock I'd call the 5870 fairly quiet in relation to current cards ( its still no GTX260, those things are awesome theramally ) but once you start overclocking the 5870 quickly gets much louder.

I can see 950/1300 being within the releam of possibility with refinements and a improved cooler ( to compensate for the extra voltage, the VRMs get very hot at 950+ at the voltage this requires ) Now if the Saphire 2GB card is anything to go by, the power usage difference between the 2 would shirink but the 480 will still likely have a good 75 watts on a higher clocked 2gb model.

Still all that said, I feel a 5890 such card with 2gb VRAM would tide ATIs line over until their next series.

[Solus Corvus]

There is a reason for this.

If you look at the numbers on that GREAT chart that was posted, there were a number of games that weren't included. Unfortunately, including two Far Cry 2 results and not including the AvP, L4D 2 and some other results meant the percentage is shifted WAY too far in NVIDIA's favor.

Also, we are using a highly overclocked system to eliminate as much CPU bottleneck (a major problem at 1680) as possible.

Also, unlike most other reviews, Crysis or Crysis Warhead wasn't reviewed. It's one of the few games that really need the power of the new cards, unfortunately it's also one of the games where fermi doesn't have a major lead. I wonder if it is a driver issue or if the new Nvidia architecture really isn't that good at Cryengine.

Personally, I'd prefer if you benchmarked the games where these GPUs will really make a difference (like Metro 2033, Crysis, Shattered Horizon, Stalker:COP, ARMA2) then games where even midrange GPUs can handle high-res no problem (DA:O, L4D2).

[illidan]

you can run gpugrid or you can...



... fry an egg

[tdream]

TechPowerUp review is not honest, they used catalyst 9.12 or something like that for the HD5k, very old drivers...

They also bench in a stupid way. They increase AA + AF the higher the resolution. Who does that? Know anyone who games 1024x768 0AA + 0AF or 2560x1600 8AA + 16AF? This also skews the final averages he does as it includes those meaningless benches.

[-=DVS=-]

GTX 480 handles God Rays well. Bjorn3d review

[-Sweeper_]

asus 5890?

wut?

[-=DVS=-]

asus 5890?

wut?

Its a typo , 5970. If you read review they talk about 5970.

[Helloworld_98]

you can run gpugrid or you can...



... Fry an egg :d

+100000000 :d

[xdan]

Hardware heaven <--- They taking the p+ss or what

I don't know why so much people hate Physix and CUDA... May be because ATI don't have anything of these. It's like saying that i7's are not honest because they have TURBO and HT. Now Amd will implement TURBO to.
May be Ati 6XXX series will have Physix. When you buy something you use all it's capabilities, not throw away Physix to the back door just because Ati don't have. Anyway the performance is far from being competitive...
Probably a 512SP GTX 480 would have been more distanced from 5870 and closer to the 5970. But clearly would not have meet the 250W TDP.

[ajaidev]

I don't know why so much people hate Physix and CUDA... May be because ATI don't have anything of these. It's like saying that i7's are not honest because they have TURBO and HT. Now Amd will implement TURBO to.
May be Ati 6XXX series will have Physix. When you buy something you use all it's capabilities, not throw away Physix to the back door just because Ati don't have. Anyway the performance is far from being competitive...
Probably a 512SP GTX 480 would have been more distanced from 5870 and closer to the 5970. But clearly would not have meet the 250W TDP.

hd6000 cant have Physix because it belongs to nvidia. ATi does support 3D and there is a combo ATi will use to support physics "Bullet Physics and another one"

Also in multi threaded app Turbo and HT does squat. HT has to share resources and since all cores will be busy Turbo will not help.

[Solus Corvus]

I don't know why so much people hate Physix and CUDA... May be because ATI don't have anything of these. It's like saying that i7's are not honest because they have TURBO and HT. Now Amd will implement TURBO to.
May be Ati 6XXX series will have Physix. When you buy something you use all it's capabilities, not throw away Physix to the back door just because Ati don't have. Anyway the performance is far from being competitive...

ATI has their own physics library they are backing, bullet physics. But because it's made with OpenCL and DX11 it works with all manufacturers that support those standards, not just ATI. You don't need to wait for HD6000, it is available now. And Physx (but not physics) is nothing like turbo - if you want a CPU analogy it's like a proprietary instruction set, it might work great but it only works for one manufacturer.

ATi does support 3D and there is a combo ATi will use to support physics "Bullet Physics and another one"

The other one is Pixelux.

[SKYMTL]

I can confirm that the heatsink atop the GTX 480 gets VERY hot. Stupid hot actually.

I forgot this and burned myself very badly the other day.

[azza21]

Anyone had any experiences with Provantage.com? They deliver to England and the prices are superb, i could get a 480 gtx a £100 cheapers than UK e-tailors and thats including delivery, i might take the plunge if they are respectable...

Also PNY Technologies, anyone had any epxeriences with them, what there like, warranty etc...

[Chickenfeed]

I can confirm that the heatsink atop the GTX 480 gets VERY hot. Stupid hot actually.

I forgot this and burned myself very badly the other day.

How hot is it compard to a 4870x2 ( to the touch that is? ) My 4870x2 was easily the hottest running PCB / sink I've ever used by a wide margin, just curious if the 480 comes close or god forbid... matches it.

[azza21]

How hot is it compard to a 4870x2 ( to the touch that is? ) My 4870x2 was easily the hottest running PCB / sink I've ever used by a wide margin, just curious if the 480 comes close or god forbid... matches it.

Mate i don't see what the problem is with the cards being blisteringly hot, you've got yourself a heater and a graphics card all in one, thats 2 for the price of one. You want to learn to be bit more grateful

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

I now know how to heat my home in the winter of 10'/11'.

Thanks nvidia!

[Funky]

Anyone had any experiences with Provantage.com? They deliver to England and the prices are superb, i could get a 480 gtx a £100 cheapers than UK e-tailors and thats including delivery, i might take the plunge if they are respectable...

Also PNY Technologies, anyone had any epxeriences with them, what there like, warranty etc...

Their reseller rating does not look good. They have some bad reviews with delays and unresponsive customer care and history of holding onto preorder money even when they are selling products at higher cost on their site.

[Helloworld_98]

I now know how to heat my home in the winter of 10'/11'.

Thanks nvidia!

and after that you can put it in a HTPC with an i7 965 and use it as a heater/hob

[azza21]

Their reseller rating does not look good. They have some bad reviews with delays and unresponsive customer care and history of holding onto preorder money even when they are selling products at higher cost on their site.

Oh right gutted about that, anyways thanks mate for the heads up on them, the price of the card and delivery looked superb.

Anyone know of any other american e-tailors that post to the united kingdom at a reasonable price?

[kemo]

I can confirm that the heatsink atop the GTX 480 gets VERY hot. Stupid hot actually.

I forgot this and burned myself very badly the other day.

Makes me wonder if zipping a 120mm fan to the shiny part with the logo could help a bit and allow the fan to spin at lower speeds

[joshd]

I don't understand how this has a 250W TDP, and the very similar Tesla core has a 225W TDP, and yet runs at 1.4GHz with the same number of compute cores?

[Trigger5521]

Makes me wonder if zipping a 120mm fan to the shiny part with the logo could help a bit and allow the fan to spin at lower speeds

Or H2O

[Chumbucket843]

I don't understand how this has a 250W TDP, and the very similar Tesla core has a 225W TDP, and yet runs at 1.4GHz with the same number of compute cores?

the bad yields force them to use chips that should have been gtx470's or lower. it requires higher voltages to reach the same frequency. also tesla has the graphics core turned off so it is just shaders, 448 to be exact.