Graphic Cards GTX 480/470 reviews and discussion

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Bullocks! This card takes in more power than HD5970 which is a dual GPU card. No wonder why nVidia is not looking at dual-GPU fermi.

6 months wait, heavy on power, blazing hot, pricier than competition. All for 10%-15% increase in performance? Nvidia has lost this round of bottle really bad.

Given that ATI is soon going to release a 2GB version of HD5870, the gap will further decrease.

the funniest thing is that today's release of Fermi is a paper release and god knows how long it is going to take for this card to reach Indian market.

And ironically, in dx11 games, as the resolution went up, the difference between HD5870 and GTX480 came down unlike what Nvidia said about dx11 performance of this card.
 
desiibond said:
heavy on power, blazing hot, pricier than competition. All for 10%-15% increase in performance? Nvidia has lost this round of bottle really bad.

Given that ATI is soon going to release a 2GB version of HD5870, the gap will further decrease.
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Exactly my thoughts
About a 100W of extra power at load, load temps at 100 as compared to 75 of 5870 and more expensive. No wonder they did not want to reveal the specs for so long.
 
desiibond said:
Bollocks! This card takes in more power than HD5970 which is a dual GPU card. No wonder why nVidia is not looking at dual-GPU fermi.

6 months wait, heavy on power, blazing hot, pricier than competition. All for 10%-15% increase in performance? Nvidia has lost this round of the battle really bad.

Given that ATI is soon going to release a 2GB version of HD5870, the gap will further decrease.

the funniest thing is that today's release of Fermi is a paper release and god knows how long it is going to take for this card to reach Indian market.

And ironically, in dx11 games, as the resolution went up, the difference between HD5870 and GTX480 came down unlike what Nvidia said about dx11 performance of this card.
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That's much better now :)

OTOH, why is it funny that today was a paper release date? nvidia has made that crystal clear for a while now.

At the end of the day, power consumption or not nvidia has the fastest card on the market BEFORE releasing the REAL Fermi. If you folks have noticed, the GTX480 & 470 are castrated versions.
 
So I can safely go ahead and buy 5870 right no point waiting price cut is not likely to happen and even if it does will take long time
 
yeah. looks so. HD5850 should be the best card to buy for performance per watt. And two of these in CF can make any other card run for cover.
 
Well its far from ideal press coverage for these cards.
Guru3D for some odd reason loves every card they test these days.

Everyone is slamming them for how hot and power hungry these cards are and specially considering the result.

Here are few interesting comments from multiple reviews.

From TechPowerUp:

NVIDIA first publicized its maximum board power as 295W, retracted it and posted it as "250W" probably fearing bad PR. We disagree with their 250W figure. Investigating maximum board power, we landed at the 320W mark, which is way off NVIDIA's claims.

Nvidia is just straight out lying about power figure?
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And someone uploaded this epic pic on TPU :P
Capture598.jpg


Anandtech said:
Last but not least, there’s anisotropic filtering quality. 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

For images : AnandTech: NVIDIA?s GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470: 6 Months Late, Was It Worth the Wait?
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AnandTech said:
Finally, as we asked in the title, was it worth the wait? No, probably not. A 15% faster single-GPU card is appreciated and we’re excited to see both AMD and NVIDIA once again on competitive footing with each other, but otherwise with much of Fermi’s enhanced abilities still untapped, we’re going to be waiting far longer for a proper resolution anyhow. For now we’re just happy to finally have Fermi, so that we can move on to the next step.
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Tom's hardware said:
Despite its aggressive power use, the Radeon HD 5970’s performance is enough to make it the most efficient board in the lineup, followed by the Radeon HD 5850 and Radeon HD 5870. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 pull up the rear. What I'm wondering is this: Nvidia rates the GTX 480 with a 250W maximum board power. AMD cites 294W for the 5970. Why do we keep seeing Nvidia's card using more system power?

Nvidia argues that the enthusiast space isn’t as sensitive to figures like power consumption, and that lofty load figures still only translate to a few dollars per year. However, when you have the system power of a single-GPU card outstripping the total power of a faster dual-GPU board (despite their respective max. board TDPs, which we really can’t vouch for), that’s something to think about. We’re not even talking about FurMark here—it’s the Unigine performance, power, and efficiency index that put things into perspective. Of course, that power invariably gets dissipated as heat, and thus the GTX 480, in particular, becomes a very hot card, cresting 160 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface during game play.
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I have a feeling, "The way its meant to be renamed" cycle is about to repeat itself down the line :P

This thing needs die shrink..................... BADLY.
 
Guys, now that the reviews are out, please avoid posting charts from the sites. Just post links. Those sites deserve the traffic for all their hard work.
 
read all the reviews and now its time to upgrade to a radeon 5850. have always used nvidia in my pc(12-13years) its finally time to change sides.

any idea when the next ati card 6 series will be out?
 
Well finally the reviews are out. Read them up. (Guru3d, Techpowerup, Anand, HardOCP)

Well Team Green is back on the bus, for the cost of immense power and tons of heat. And not to say, high price. Most sites are not too impressed and it will not kill the ATI line up. Only Guru3D was singing praises galore. We will have to wait when the lower - mid segment units are released. A lot of people will want to be in that comfortable sandwich. Things will get slightly uncomfortable for nVidia if ATI decides to lower the pricing for their flagship HD5870. All ready there is a $99 delta. ATI is in a position to lower prices. Plus they have 6 month old launch, good brand value, optimized drivers. The release of the super 10.3s has been great timing.

End story: the performance this new refresh offers at the price point, not worth it. I think a lot of people will be disappointed after the long wait for this chip. Aggressive marketing, TWIMTBP partnership with game publishers, strategic pricing, high optimization of future driver builds, good middle order product line, and sheer brand loyalty -- might sail this ship on high waters and bring it ashore safely...!
 
asingh said:
End story: the performance this new refresh offers at the price point, not worth it. I think a lot of people will be disappointed after the long wait for this chip. Aggressive marketing, TWIMTBP partnership with game publishers, strategic pricing, high optimization of future driver builds, good middle order product line, and sheer brand loyalty -- might sail this ship on high waters and bring it ashore safely...!
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think brand loyalty is what carried nv with the same chip for several generation ... with this lot think that loyalty might come down a bit ... atlest people who expected that the 6+ months they took over the ati might have seen something more significant .... i believe ATI have gone on the record saying they wont change the prices for now atlest that is what the guru3d review claimed so might see a stagnant month or two ...
 
The less than stellar performance improvement is forgivable, but what takes the cake is the load temperatures and the power consumption.

The load temperatures are literally insane. My first gen 4850's run hot, but at 90 deg, I get alarmed and Its time for some cleaning. 480's runs at 95~97 deg load by default. I mean 3 deg more and you can turn water into steam.

Added to that, I read the metal enclosure on the card is actually part of the HSF or at least connected to it. People would burn their fingers on that thing if they try to remove it immediately after shutting down the system.
 
^^
Yes the metal shroud is supposed to get really hot. Risky.

Also all the 'positive' hype which nVidia created themselves, and aggravated further more by the time delay, added more fuel to the fire regarding expectations. We all were seriously expecting a considerable more powerful GPU. OK, the pricing of nVidia has always been similar. Most expensive parts, and the fastest. (Remember the 8800GT day). All this created a roller coaster + vacuum for team green. Now it just might boomerang back to them. What will people say: "WHAT..??..So expensive...!....So much heat....! Ok. But the performance is not that much 'above' ATI. Forget it."
 
Here is my card history of the last 6-7 yrs :

Radeon 9600

GF5200

GF6600

GF7600

GF8800

GTX260

and now next one is definitely :

Radeon 5850

Too bad i have to move away from the green side, i was looking at 470 but its pure disappointing at that price point. I dont need a Frying pan inside my cabby, i already have one in the kitchen :p
 
Lord Nemesis said:
The less than stellar performance improvement is forgivable, but what takes the cake is the load temperatures and the power consumption.

The load temperatures are literally insane. My first gen 4850's run hot, but at 90 deg, I get alarmed and Its time for some cleaning. 480's runs at 95~97 deg load by default. I mean 3 deg more and you can turn water into steam.

Added to that, I read the metal enclosure on the card is actually part of the HSF or at least connected to it. People would burn their fingers on that thing if they try to remove it immediately after shutting down the system.
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I'd just posted something on the show-off thread - http://www.techenclave.com/1449650-post1710.html

I'll quote it -

If the card is meant to run at high temperatures on loads, then nVidia must have designed the cooling solution that way. This card has a high TDP so it is quite obvious it runs at high temperatures on loads and idles at slightly higher temperatures compared to their previous versions. This is exactly what happens when you cramp more transistors into a limited space on the die!

The heatpipe based cooler mimics the ones found in their previous flagship high-end cards starting 7900GTX. Why would it BSOD otherwise!

Overclocking may have a very limited headroom that said.
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