GTX 480 and GTX 470 Reviews

[Donta1979]

Let's all just hope the 480 doesn't RMA as much as the 280 did in the first few months.

A refresh will really help with heat and power.

280 RMA? all for of my 280 GTX's are still running today, the rmas that did happen and still happen is people not being anal about keeping temps down with air or water. Basically your novice user"not all the time but a majority of the time", having a poor air flow case and is like ok whatever 85-90c+ is ok to game on. Resulting in the gpu to cook and an rma down the road, I have a rule never let me gpus go over 70c under full load and to get my idle temps 37-45c. The die shrink was to make the 280 GTX more profitable with the 285/295 lines, the dye for the 280 was just way way too big for nvidia to keep producting them and keep a resonable profit without charging us an arm and a leg.

Do I see the 480 GTX getting an rma by the average to novice user not willing to use a quality case, quality fans, a good water setup to extreme cooling? Yes.. happens with each gen of new cards, I see cases like the cm 690, antec 900, and other small form factor cases not dealing with the heat so well and cooking cards unless whoever purchased the cases knows about air flow, removing heat and supplying the 480 GTX with cool air, or the entry level overclocker who has thier current video cards/video cards in thier cpu loop with only a 500w rad. This is where the rmas come from, yes there are defects there always is.... but my 3-4 years of watching the EVGA forums iv seen many people fry thier gpus due to those reasons I just wrote down.

Also what is up with the crying about heat and power? This is Xtreme Systems right or did I miss something? Power no big deal on a single card it has the gpu power to more than replace 2x 280/285's and some with less power usage, yeah a bit more heat well alot more go go George Forman 480 GTX! But thats part of the fun how far can you push this card on air, water, ln2, phase change, the list goes on, How can you keep the heat down.
I do agree the card's cost should had been 440-470 dollars with the one major problem that comes with it and that being the heat. But none the less its going to be something fun to tinker with regardless.

Does it mean everyone should go out and buy one ummm no if you dont want to spend the extra time/money to find ways of keeping it cool do not even go near it with a 10 foot pole. But yeah many where expecting more with this gpu, but if you followed everything said you would had been ready for what got released. It needs a price drop, power consumption lowered, heat lowered, a rev die shrink yup. Is this card for the average user, looking for a bang for the buck card, or is worried about spending about $20-33 dollars a week "20hrs a day for around 33 us dollars" to run the card? Is this card for the crazy enthusiast wanting something to tinker with and overcome to push things to the limits? Yeah pretty much if your worried about cost, power usage, heat your better for waiting for the die shrink down the road. An enthusiast on a budget though should wait for the price wars that should start raging soon.

If I didnt do 3d modeling use cuda on rendering, video compiling, or in my 2d art/textures , needed the tech that nvidia offered with for real time while I work on some of my 3d models I would had gone ATI. I also like new things to tinker with since I only upgrade every 2 years sometimes upgrading something in between if its too good to pass up.

but yeah i would not call the 280 GTX a card that was messed up and had to be rmaed for the average gamer/pc user yeah it was in alot of cases, the 480 gtx was over hyped from how I see it and if you didnt keep yourself informed I am guessing your highly dissapointed on its release or if you upgraded like crazy after the rev die shrink of the 200 series 285/295 or picked up some nice ati cards while waiting. Those complaining about heat, power last I checked this is xtremesystems the real enthusiast on here are not going to really care about these things.

Sorry for the wall of txt just looking at it makes me tired=D

[eric66]

btw just read hwc review seems :
lower res + 4aa fermi looks nice
high res + 8aa fermi tanks

[GoldenTiger]

btw just read hwc review seems :
[^B]lower res + 4aa fermi looks nice[/B]
[^B]high res + 8aa fermi tanks[/B]

They state that is a driver bug in the review.

[BababooeyHTJ]

280 RMA? all for of my 280 GTX's are still running today, the rmas that did happen and still happen is people not being anal about keeping temps down with air or water. Basically your novice user"not all the time but a majority of the time", having a poor air flow case and is like ok whatever 85-90c+ is ok to game on. Resulting in the gpu to cook and an rma down the road, I have a rule never let me gpus go over 70c under full load and to get my idle temps 37-45c.

Do I see the 480 GTX getting an rma by the average to novice user not willing to use a quality case, quality fans, a good water setup to extreme cooling? Yes.. happens with each gen of new cards, I see cases like the cm 690, antec 900, and other small form factor cases not dealing with the heat so well and cooking cards unless whoever purchased the cases knows about air flow, removing heat and supplying the 480 GTX with cool air, or the entry level overclocker who has thier current video cards/video cards in thier cpu loop with only a 500w rad. This is where the rmas come from, yes there are defects there always is.... but my 3-4 years of watching the EVGA forums iv seen many people fry thier gpus due to those reasons I just wrote down.

Like I said those 280s had a bad connection between the gpu and IHS causing obscene temps. AFAIK, GTX280 RMA rate isn't any higher than any other high end video card. Evga forums is a hardware support forum obviously you are going to see more complaints of cards dieing there than you'll see here. I know that I rarely post there unless there is a problem.

[Helloworld_98]

3-Way SLI GTX 480
http://www.maingearforums.com/entry....-Buy-A-GeForce

SLI scaling is ridiculous on these ovens.

[Blacky]

480 is only around 10% faster than a 5870
price is 100$ higher than 5870
high idle temps
very high load temps
very high idle/average and load power consumption (only surpassed by 4870x2)
mem can only be oced to ~1150, i expected more...

Remember when you told me i was pessimistic about Fermi ? Now you see why

[Sadasius]

Sadly this is exactly what I am expecting when some 16 year decides to buy one and sticks it in their case. There really should be a warning on the card itself right where that hot plate is because if it can cook food on it (which has been shown it can)then it will have no problems melting wire sheaths and making light shows and perhaps causing a fire. Not everyone has proper wire management so it definitely a possibility. I do not want ATI to be the only one in the market as that is not good. So Nvidia, for Christ sake....put a warning stamped into that grill so that you are not sued over and over again for burning peoples homes down.

[snoro]

Why i am the only one that is liking fermi ? I mean, from the approximative number for folding we have it will be a beast, It do give about a 10-15% performance boost with some IMMATURE driver like the hd5870 when it launched. And remember ATi did alot of work on their driver and i think they may have got something like 5-10% from catalyst 9.2 to catalyst 10.3 and we are talking about Ati who was not really working very hard on their driver in the past. SO give Nvidia maybe 1 or 2 month, they might comne out with the 512sp version of the gtx480, some good mature driver and it could kick the hell out of the hd5870. But to do that in reasonnable temp, you definitly have to watercool it. But not a problem for me since it will be the only gpu in the rig and it will have a 240mm and a 120 rad and its own loop to cool it down.

[N19h7m4r3]

280 RMA? all for of my 280 GTX's are still running today, the rmas that did happen and still happen is people not being anal about keeping temps down with air or water. Basically your novice user"not all the time but a majority of the time", having a poor air flow case and is like ok whatever 85-90c+ is ok to game on. Resulting in the gpu to cook and an rma down the road, I have a rule never let me gpus go over 70c under full load and to get my idle temps 37-45c. The die shrink was to make the 280 GTX more profitable with the 285/295 lines, the dye for the 280 was just way way too big for nvidia to keep producting them and keep a resonable profit without charging us an arm and a leg.

Do I see the 480 GTX getting an rma by the average to novice user not willing to use a quality case, quality fans, a good water setup to extreme cooling? Yes.. happens with each gen of new cards, I see cases like the cm 690, antec 900, and other small form factor cases not dealing with the heat so well and cooking cards unless whoever purchased the cases knows about air flow, removing heat and supplying the 480 GTX with cool air, or the entry level overclocker who has thier current video cards/video cards in thier cpu loop with only a 500w rad. This is where the rmas come from, yes there are defects there always is.... but my 3-4 years of watching the EVGA forums iv seen many people fry thier gpus due to those reasons I just wrote down.

Also what is up with the crying about heat and power? This is Xtreme Systems right or did I miss something? Power no big deal on a single card it has the gpu power to more than replace 2x 280/285's and some with less power usage, yeah a bit more heat well alot more go go George Forman 480 GTX! But thats part of the fun how far can you push this card on air, water, ln2, phase change, the list goes on, How can you keep the heat down.
I do agree the card's cost should had been 440-470 dollars with the one major problem that comes with it and that being the heat. But none the less its going to be something fun to tinker with regardless.



Sorry for the wall of txt just looking at it makes me tired=D

Wall of text crits for over 9000.

Sorry but I only read the first 4 paragraphs then skimped the rest.

Valid points about the average user indeed. Sadly they make up the majority of the market.

Also this being XS is all well and good. But Heat and Power IS a problem.

This isn't XS because we run cards at stock. We over clock, heat and power limit that.Therefor limiting our results and FPS.

No one, plays games or works with LN2 constantly being fed to a card, that's absurd. Specially thinking of costs.

I agree, the card costs to much, I really would have liked one. But I shall not buy it simply because of costs, that's not the issue. The issue is the underlying heat problems and power consumption.

The last thing I need is a electricity bill to slowly rise simply because I need the card to run at 90-100% daily.

I also cool my system with water, but with a hotter climate it becomes more troublesome and costs even more.

Therefor why spend the 400 euro on a card that could only further increase my costs.

Die shrink I shall wait for, or possibly the next generation.

[Donta1979]

Wall of text crits for over 9000.

Sorry but I only read the first 4 paragraphs then skimped the rest.

Valid points about the average user indeed. Sadly they make up the majority of the market.

Also this being XS is all well and good. But Heat and Power IS a problem.

This isn't XS because we run cards at stock. We over clock, heat and power limit that.Therefor limiting our results and FPS.

No one, plays games or works with LN2 constantly being fed to a card, that's absurd. Specially thinking of costs.

I agree, the card costs to much, I really would have liked one. But I shall not buy it simply because of costs, that's not the issue. The issue is the underlying heat problems and power consumption.

The last thing I need is a electricity bill to slowly rise simply because I need the card to run at 90-100% daily.

I also cool my system with water, but with a hotter climate it becomes more troublesome and costs even more.

Therefor why spend the 400 euro on a card that could only further increase my costs.

Die shrink I shall wait for, or possibly the next generation.

Well for power it will matter what you have now, if you already have 2x 280/285's you would see a cost in your power bill actually go down some with a single 480 gtx. Thermals yeah I live in southern florida water cooling during the summer is not an option in the place I am living now"i have boxes of water cooling stuff and a box of fans ranging from 93-130 cfm plus".
I know that heat and power limit it but the gpu does have a big ocing fun factor=)


Source

the 480 GTX might be hot might use alot of power but is a playground for enthusiast. That cpu is on air too btw lol It would definatly break the 30k mark if the cpu had at least water cooling, for a single gpu thats pretty good for P vantage.

[KingOfsorroW]

What?

I have to doubt that graph, a GTX280's fan speed is in no way comparable to a 4870x2 and in without a doubt not louder than a reference 4870 even. The fan doesn't even spin up to half the speed of either card.

Aside from that did you notice the sometimes over 100% crossfire scaling in their review. I have never seen a 4870x2 perform as well as in that TPU review.



That was due to a bad connection between the gpu and IHS causing a ton of heat. I had one.

according to anandtech the 480gtx resides close to the theoretical 280gtx, which is louder than 285gtx as we know. So the graph seems to be ok to me.

[Danger30Q]

its funny how nearly all benchmarks in different websites show differing results..........

especially in BC 2 and Dirt2, MOST especially in BC2... at one site 480 is significantly faster, at others they are equal, at others 5870 leads by a good margin. just look at all the reviews and tell me that they add up.

I have to agree with you completely with this statement about BC2. It's the only game I plan on playing for the next 6 months so I have only focused on reviews that include BC2. About half of the reviews show the 5870 on top and the other half have the 480 on top. There is also the same variability when looking at SLI/Crossfire. All reviews are using i7 in the range of 3.2-3.8ghz. Its so damn odd that there is so much variability between reviews in BC2.

[JohnZS]

I have to agree with you completely with this statement about BC2. It's the only game I plan on playing for the next 6 months so I have only focused on reviews that include BC2. About half of the reviews show the 5870 on top and the other half have the 480 on top. There is also the same variability when looking at SLI/Crossfire. All reviews are using i7 in the range of 3.2-3.8ghz. Its so damn odd that there is so much variability between reviews in BC2.

My guess is some reviews are using boards which sadly have the PCI-E Gen 2.0 compliance bug where nVidia cards fall back to PCI-E 1.1.

The only boards I know off the top of my head which do not have this issue are the Intel own brand boards (DX38BT, DX48BT2, DX58SO) none of those have this bug.

Gigabyte P45 and P55 do not have this bug, but practically all ASUS boards do, Biostar's X58 suffers from this bug.

IMHO all board vendors need to get this sorted out with a BIOS update ASAP, the crippling of the GT200 and newer cards using PCI-E 1.1 really does show when you are playing games which use a lot of textures and/or playing at high resolution.

I just thought I'd mention this as the review results do seem erratic in places and as you can see, this here does not look right.


John

[Xoulz]

280 RMA? all for of my 280 GTX's are still running today, the rmas that did happen and still happen is people not being anal about keeping temps down with air or water. Basically your novice user"not all the time but a majority of the time", having a poor air flow case and is like ok whatever 85-90c+ is ok to game on. Resulting in the gpu to cook and an rma down the road, I have a rule never let me gpus go over 70c under full load and to get my idle temps 37-45c. The die shrink was to make the 280 GTX more profitable with the 285/295 lines, the dye for the 280 was just way way too big for nvidia to keep producting them and keep a resonable profit without charging us an arm and a leg.

Do I see the 480 GTX getting an rma by the average to novice user not willing to use a quality case, quality fans, a good water setup to extreme cooling? Yes.. happens with each gen of new cards, I see cases like the cm 690, antec 900, and other small form factor cases not dealing with the heat so well and cooking cards unless whoever purchased the cases knows about air flow, removing heat and supplying the 480 GTX with cool air, or the entry level overclocker who has thier current video cards/video cards in thier cpu loop with only a 500w rad. This is where the rmas come from, yes there are defects there always is.... but my 3-4 years of watching the EVGA forums iv seen many people fry thier gpus due to those reasons I just wrote down.

Also what is up with the crying about heat and power? This is Xtreme Systems right or did I miss something? Power no big deal on a single card it has the gpu power to more than replace 2x 280/285's and some with less power usage, yeah a bit more heat well alot more go go George Forman 480 GTX! But thats part of the fun how far can you push this card on air, water, ln2, phase change, the list goes on, How can you keep the heat down.
I do agree the card's cost should had been 440-470 dollars with the one major problem that comes with it and that being the heat. But none the less its going to be something fun to tinker with regardless.

Does it mean everyone should go out and buy one ummm no if you dont want to spend the extra time/money to find ways of keeping it cool do not even go near it with a 10 foot pole. But yeah many where expecting more with this gpu, but if you followed everything said you would had been ready for what got released. It needs a price drop, power consumption lowered, heat lowered, a rev die shrink yup. Is this card for the average user, looking for a bang for the buck card, or is worried about spending about $20-33 dollars a week "20hrs a day for around 33 us dollars" to run the card? Is this card for the crazy enthusiast wanting something to tinker with and overcome to push things to the limits? Yeah pretty much if your worried about cost, power usage, heat your better for waiting for the die shrink down the road. An enthusiast on a budget though should wait for the price wars that should start raging soon.

If I didnt do 3d modeling use cuda on rendering, video compiling, or in my 2d art/textures , needed the tech that nvidia offered with for real time while I work on some of my 3d models I would had gone ATI. I also like new things to tinker with since I only upgrade every 2 years sometimes upgrading something in between if its too good to pass up.

but yeah i would not call the 280 GTX a card that was messed up and had to be rmaed for the average gamer/pc user yeah it was in alot of cases, the 480 gtx was over hyped from how I see it and if you didnt keep yourself informed I am guessing your highly dissapointed on its release or if you upgraded like crazy after the rev die shrink of the 200 series 285/295 or picked up some nice ati cards while waiting. Those complaining about heat, power last I checked this is xtremesystems the real enthusiast on here are not going to really care about these things.

Sorry for the wall of txt just looking at it makes me tired=D

Uh.. there really is not such thing as a novice user of a video card. Perhaps installer? Once installed though.. it should work and function properly from the factory.

[570091D]

Uh.. there really is not such thing as a novice user of a video card. Perhaps installer? Once installed though.. it should work and function properly from the factory.

orly?

one doesn't need a proper power supply, or good air flow? granted, most customers are ill-informed and unwilling to take the time to change that, but both companies attempt to make clear that you need to prepare you computer to handle the high end cards. my brother bought an 8800gts-512 and tried running it with a 350watt psu, he installed the card correctly but didn't read the requirements for the card before hand. pop goes the psu...

[Donta1979]

Uh.. there really is not such thing as a novice user of a video card. Perhaps installer? Once installed though.. it should work and function properly from the factory.

True if your looking at it like that, but we do know alot of novice computer users/gamers/ the ones that will install the gpu are not going to have the case with the air flow to keep this card in safe operating temps. Not many will keep the fan on the gpu turned up as well, they will install the card have a case with a few 53-73 CFM fans, then start posing on forums w/ "POS my card died in a month its your fault *insert vendor name here*!". We will also see people with stock duel and quad cores that are before the i7 series cpus saying the card does terrible its hot, its dead slow....

That is what I am talking about I could rant about it all day all the stuff iv seen/heard. Iv seen these kinds of people burn video card after video card because of cheap low air flow cases, low cfm fans that would not listen to reason of why thier gpus were cooking or ran in none safe temp ranges that where dead set it was the gpu vendors fault for giving them a crap product.

[orangekiwii]

My guess is some reviews are using boards which sadly have the PCI-E Gen 2.0 compliance bug where nVidia cards fall back to PCI-E 1.1.

The only boards I know off the top of my head which do not have this issue are the Intel own brand boards (DX38BT, DX48BT2, DX58SO) none of those have this bug.

Gigabyte P45 and P55 do not have this bug, but practically all ASUS boards do, Biostar's X58 suffers from this bug.

IMHO all board vendors need to get this sorted out with a BIOS update ASAP, the crippling of the GT200 and newer cards using PCI-E 1.1 really does show when you are playing games which use a lot of textures and/or playing at high resolution.

I just thought I'd mention this as the review results do seem erratic in places and as you can see, this here does not look right.


John

I've never heard of this bug. Are there any reviews are articles on it?

Just curious if I upgrade whether my Asus P5Q Deluxe will limit the card due to some silly hardware issue.

[Donta1979]

These pics have me cracking up esp the GF one I first saw it on the evga forums days ago haha. But yeah someone just posted this figured I would share it for the laugh, I am buying a 480 GTX BTW but I just find these to be too hilarious

[JohnZS]

I've never heard of this bug. Are there any reviews are articles on it?

Just curious if I upgrade whether my Asus P5Q Deluxe will limit the card due to some silly hardware issue.

Sadly I am not aware of any reviewers doing articles on this, but there is a 10 page thread on the ASUS forums, and a thread on the nVidia forums. Some members of XtremeSystems have also been helping me prove to ASUS support that the issue is with their motherboards and not (as ASUS support initially claimed) nVidia drivers.

To cut a long story short, in July 2009 Intel released BIOS updates for their motherboards which resolved an issue with PCI-E Gen 2.0 compliance on 2x 2.0x16 motherboards.

P45 was unaffected by this bug, so people using those motherboards have never experienced this issue.

I have provided ASUS with GPU-Z screen shots, everest screen shots and links to Intel BIOS release information which documents the fix. However ASUS support have not done anything about resolving this issue.

My advice is that if you are planning on upgrading you should stick to either Intel's own brand motherboard, or a third party motherboard which does not have this issue. Sadly most, if not all third party boards are affected as manufactures like Gigabyte have moved on from providing BIOS updates for the X38/X48 platform.

I would not be surprised if one of the causes of these erratic results at high resolution and lower than expected performance in some games was caused by this bug.

GTX 480 would likely use more PCI-E Bandwidth than a GTX 280.

Would be interesting to see a review (if any) that used the Intel DX58SO motherboard.

John

[Sushi Warrior]

GTX 480 would likely use more PCI-E Bandwidth than a GTX 280.

Would be interesting to see a review (if any) that used the Intel DX58SO motherboard.

John

TPU did a test with a 480 at 16x, 8x, and 4x. At 4x it only lost 8% performance

[JAG87]

These pics have me cracking up esp the GF one I first saw it on the evga forums days ago haha. But yeah someone just posted this figured I would share it for the laugh, I am buying a 480 GTX BTW but I just find these to be too hilarious

My god, I laughed so hard.

[Olivon]

Would be interesting to see a review (if any) that used the Intel DX58SO motherboard.

Erenumerique.fr made their review with DX58SO and i7 980X

[hyperdoggy]

orly?

one doesn't need a proper power supply, or good air flow? granted, most customers are ill-informed and unwilling to take the time to change that, but both companies attempt to make clear that you need to prepare you computer to handle the high end cards. my brother bought an 8800gts-512 and tried running it with a 350watt psu, he installed the card correctly but didn't read the requirements for the card before hand. pop goes the psu...

All modern retail boxed vid card have power requirements on them, air flow? no but as the case with your brother, that's his fault for not reading the label on the box.

That said, i doubt you have to put in this type of consideration about massive power+air flow requirements if you were to go with a 5870...

[Chickenfeed]

All modern retail boxed vid card have power requirements on them, air flow? no but as the case with your brother, that's his fault for not reading the label on the box.

That said, i doubt you have to put in this type of consideration about massive power+air flow requirements if you were to go with a 5870...

Very true. I've ran a GTX 285 in a HP oem case ( friend bought one for his, it was an HP elite so the hardware was half respectable but the case is still el cheapo ) It had no issues. To be honest, appart from the dual gpu cards and the 480, nearly all of the current gpus do well enough with their reference design and fan profiles in a basic case. Do I recommend this... no. But they do account for the fact that users won't be always using an ideal enclosure for the cards.

Still most people who have such systems don't tend to buy a +$400 gpu, so it would be ignorant to claim otherwise. Sure the odd person will, thinking it will make their system *awesome* so to speak but I'd wager 95% of the time people buying these cards are putting them in appropriate systems.

[SKYMTL]

They state that is a driver bug in the review.

Yes. That's what NVIDIA said. However, the real question is whether they will "fix" it in a timely manner or if there is a driver issue at all.



As I said in on our forums: For the vast majority of the time over the next few days, I won't be commenting in this thread or in the other GTX 480 threads simply because I believe these products have brought out the worst in everyone.

If you have any questions pertaining to the reviews themselves, I will answer them. However, I refuse to get involved in this childish bickering though simply because I for one am happy to finally have some competition in the DX11 marketplace. You should all be happy about exactly the same thing IMO.