NVidia GTX470/480 Reviews Stream out


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The GTX470 and GTX480 are major disappointments to me (though I'm not surprised after following the rumors for some time). Too power hungry, loud, and costly vs. the ATI equivalents.

I've had 2 4770s in crossfire since last summer and have no plans on upgrading anytime soon now that I've seen what Nvidia has come out with. Prices don't look like they'll be coming down anytime soon which is the major factor in my purchasing decision (I'd like to see the 5870 come down to ~$250) and paying $300-$400 for a new card when 2 4770s in crossfire have great performance isn't really worth it at the moment (can max out most games at my res - 1680x1050).

I guess I'll wait until ATI's next lineup of cards show up before upgrading (in which point I'd probably get 2 5870s). Sucks though because I'm not very patient :(

lol i knew from get go this would be pretty fail.. as for Ati's next ones code named Northern Islands with chip code names cozumel, ibiza and kauai are planned for 3/4Q 2010 so round later half of the year and might have a possible drop past 32nm to 28nm fabrication so would be well efficient power consumption wise and temperatures. They are apparently going to feature a new architecture rather then like evergreen/cypress which was an evolution. So will definitely be more exciting then this.

Pathetic. Just like Intel (pre Core 2 line) they thought they were the best and did not innovate and refine their products that much with every major release. Now that nVidia has been high and mighty with their superior cards the past couple of years they finally have fallen.

nVidia has a lot of work ahead of them to beat the ATi 5000 series of cards.

I cant agree move. Nvidia has sadly disappointed me. Ive loved them since GeForce 5500+ but now there disappointing. I mean Fermi is a REDONE ARCH, so i dont blame it for running so hard, but JESUS really? I mean everyone knows you dont jump to Nvidia till 2-3 months later. Hopefully this summer the numbers change, if not ill stick with my 260, if they do im getting a 480.

Whats sad is, before anyone comments about me not considering ATI, im getting a chance to test drive a 5850 and a 5970 for a week each starting next week. Ill have a new hard drive with a new installation of windows 7 64 + Cat offical / beta. I really wanna see if they have made better drive support, if not, im sticking to staying away from ATI like i have so far.

But, nothing warrants me to getting a 480 anyway, I was just gonna end up wasting money on it. So regardless im not getting nvidias next gen till i warrant it. For now my 260 holds up very nicely to any game i throw at it.

I have a feeling prices on the 5xxx series will surge as well.

I'll wait until AMD releases Fusion and then I'm going to purchase a 6870 w/ it :laugh:

Dude cant wait for Fusion. Idea of a "hybrid" is great.

It's not just the heat, it's the incredible noise the fan make!! Check it out at HardOCP, they put video of the cards running. Vacuum cleaner sound level...

The power/heat/noise and price are killing the new nVidia card. It took all that time for nVidia to be able to be "slightly" better than what ATI is selling for a long while....

One thing I find unfair in some benchmarks, is using 2 x GTX 480 in SLI and comparing it to a 5970, witch is slower than using 2 x 5870.

ATI could come out with a quick refresh of their video card and beat nVidia in all categories, even performance.

To be fair to NVIDIA, the ATI stock cooler sounds just like that when under Furmark.

And I have to say, is anyone SURPRISED by this? With all the stuff from Charlie @ Semi Accurate as well as the leaked benchmarks and power consumption charts....

I'm not an NVIDIA fanboy at all, but the GTX 470 aside from power consumption and temperatures handily takes it to the HD 5850 in price to performance.

Price is everything, the huge price difference between the GTX480 and the HD5870 don't make up for the difference in 10-15% of performance. Plus there's other factors, a new 2GB HD5870 coming. Or a faster clocked 5880? I think AMD can match the GTX480 with a good stepping and a higher clock really.

The other things are power and noise. I only have a 550w PSU, so it's not like I can go all out with these top of the line cards anyways, but even if I did, that's alot man. I'm perfectly fine with a HD5770, which I'll still probably end up getting sometime in the next few weeks.

Plus there's other factors, a new 2GB HD5870 coming. Or a faster clocked 5880? I think AMD can match the GTX480 with a good stepping and a higher clock really.

The 2GB 5870 are a bit of a snooze, but if they did a new model with higher clocks it could be interesting, whatever it's going to be called (5890?).

Price is everything, the huge price difference between the GTX480 and the HD5870 don't make up for the difference in 10-15% of performance. Plus there's other factors, a new 2GB HD5870 coming. Or a faster clocked 5880? I think AMD can match the GTX480 with a good stepping and a higher clock really.

The other things are power and noise. I only have a 550w PSU, so it's not like I can go all out with these top of the line cards anyways, but even if I did, that's alot man. I'm perfectly fine with a HD5770, which I'll still probably end up getting sometime in the next few weeks.

Not to forget heat generated too.

I too have 5770 which can max out any game easily with res of 1440x900 (50+ for all till now)

yeah , its too easy for amd to beat 4xx , a 5890 as above person said would definitely beat 480 with either higher clocks and memory

so , amd will be top of the hill till launch of next gen too! (also 6xxx are coming second half this year :D)

Whats sad is, before anyone comments about me not considering ATI, im getting a chance to test drive a 5850 and a 5970 for a week each starting next week. Ill have a new hard drive with a new installation of windows 7 64 + Cat offical / beta. I really wanna see if they have made better drive support, if not, im sticking to staying away from ATI like i have so far.

Glad to hear you are at least willing to give them a chance. I personally have never had any driver-specific issues with ATI cards, but I can say 10.3s are definitely the best driver I have seen ATI release in a long while.

yeah , its too easy for amd to beat 4xx , a 5890 as above person said would definitely beat 480 with either higher clocks and memory

so , amd will be top of the hill till launch of next gen too! (also 6xxx are coming second half this year :D)

Just as I said a few posts back (may have been in another thread, not completely sure) as soon as AMD releases a 5890 they will at least compete with the 480 in top performance. That will pretty much force nVidia to drop prices on the 480 to keep up, and AMD has had a 6 month head start to work and perfect the 5890, so if it comes out any time soon it will really put nVidia in a bind.

Man they really dropped the ball with fermi. Those temps and power usage are completely ridiculous lol.

The 5xxx series has been out for ages and fermi can hardly best it whilst being way more expensive and using way more power.

I had a feeling fermi wasn't going to be the amazing second coming of god everyone thought it was going to be with all these delays and such.

I'm not an NVIDIA fanboy at all, but the GTX 470 aside from power consumption and temperatures handily takes it to the HD 5850 in price to performance.

What? 470 is more expensive and isn't any faster than 5850. 470 is a completely useless card, and at least the reviews that I read agree with this (see HardOCP for example). There is absolutely no reason to buy the 470 at the moment unless you are a hardcore nvidiot.

Edit: On the other hand, 480 is not a horrible choice if you have a beefy PSU and the money. It does offer a performance edge over 5870 unlike its little brother (compared to 5850).

To be fair to NVIDIA, the ATI stock cooler sounds just like that when under Furmark.

And I have to say, is anyone SURPRISED by this? With all the stuff from Charlie @ Semi Accurate as well as the leaked benchmarks and power consumption charts....

I'm not an NVIDIA fanboy at all, but the GTX 470 aside from power consumption and temperatures handily takes it to the HD 5850 in price to performance.

My 5850 sure as hell isn't that loud. The fan speed never even goes above the 21% range.

Why is everyone comparing 480 to 5870..isnt ati 5970 a much more superior card?

Because the 5970 is an "x2" card.

It's crossfire on a single card (2 cores).

Maybe if they do a GTX 480 x2 or something like that, then they'll compare it. Imagine the power draw on this!

Man they really dropped the ball with fermi. Those temps and power usage are completely ridiculous lol.

The 5xxx series has been out for ages and fermi can hardly best it whilst being way more expensive and using way more power.

I had a feeling fermi wasn't going to be the amazing second coming of god everyone thought it was going to be with all these delays and such.

Most of the rumors were true, people were correct that the 480's performance is about 5-10% better (initially, this may grow w/ driver and game updates, but not by much), and people also guessed that it would have a large power draw. Sure enough, both of those rumors seem true enough.

I'm going to stick to my GTX 260 SC. For a whopping $160, the performance is still pretty decent (roughly GTX 280 territory). I'll either wait till ATI releases the 6x series, or wait till Nvidia gets it right, but I'm in no rush to upgrade. I hope the GTX 260 has about 2-3 years left in her.

Glad to hear you are at least willing to give them a chance. I personally have never had any driver-specific issues with ATI cards, but I can say 10.3s are definitely the best driver I have seen ATI release in a long while.

Just as I said a few posts back (may have been in another thread, not completely sure) as soon as AMD releases a 5890 they will at least compete with the 480 in top performance. That will pretty much force nVidia to drop prices on the 480 to keep up, and AMD has had a 6 month head start to work and perfect the 5890, so if it comes out any time soon it will really put nVidia in a bind.

oh of course. Why I got my 260 in December over a 5xxx series because for the last 2 years I've "fixed" enough video issues happen to be with ati and there always drivers. Ati has had the hardware never the drivers. I will agree 10.3a seems stable but we will see if ati continues this good faith and comes out with stable drivers.

Sadly neither EyeEPEENFinity or 3DEPEENVision sells me. There both gimmicks and bs. Honestly I can't play with black bars between monitors. What's worse Is last weekend I went to a LAN where a guy had 3 28" Dell panels that rotated and he uses them vertically because of space issue. Regardless while everything he played looked good it was crap seeing the black bars. I don't understand why you would choose a 3x22+ setup or one big monitor. The LAN admin has dells old 42" monitor. Strickly monitor snd he paid a pretty price for it. But it's been 3 years and the monitor looks BEAUTIFUL.

42" Monitor > 3x22.

Same thing with 3d vision. What's also worse is you need a high hz monitor AND the kit which is glasses and ir transmitter. **** that. I'll stick to one big monitor.

But Monday I get my 58 and hard drive to play with.

IIRC samsung does thin bezel monitors for this purpose but the bars are still there albeit thin :p

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/9/10/samsung-to-launch-a-six-monitor-setup-for-amd-eyefinity-technology.aspx

oh I know that companies do offer thin bar montors but my point Is there is no differnece eith one big monitor or epeen. The guy at the LAN did it specifically to gaming. Hell he had a x2 5000+ for a CPU, really... Can't tell me he multi tasked. Nope just epeen.

I on the other hand run dualies and that samsung 6 monitor setup I WOULDNT mind at all. Again it's gonna be expensive as **** and I can get it alittle later. I run vm's/develop websites/collab with people on cms's/etc. So dual monitors is a must for me now.

Either way I choose 1 big panel over several small panels. Only thing I truly see either be good for in gaming is flight simulation. I dont see someone going to a LAN with 3d vision gear. I don't see anyone going with there eyefinity stuff either. This guy they let in but next time he has to pay for 2 seats because he literally took up 2 seats... So once that comes into play don't see many people buying it for actve LAN gaming.

oh I know that companies do offer thin bar montors but my point Is there is no differnece eith one big monitor or epeen. The guy at the LAN did it specifically to gaming. Hell he had a x2 5000+ for a CPU, really... Can't tell me he multi tasked. Nope just epeen.

I on the other hand run dualies and that samsung 6 monitor setup I WOULDNT mind at all. Again it's gonna be expensive as **** and I can get it alittle later. I run vm's/develop websites/collab with people on cms's/etc. So dual monitors is a must for me now.

Either way I choose 1 big panel over several small panels. Only thing I truly see either be good for in gaming is flight simulation. I dont see someone going to a LAN with 3d vision gear. I don't see anyone going with there eyefinity stuff either. This guy they let in but next time he has to pay for 2 seats because he literally took up 2 seats... So once that comes into play don't see many people buying it for actve LAN gaming.

I know how you feel, I have been using dual monitors for years now and I cannot get away from it. One 30" is nice (my father runs a single 30"), but I would rather have 2x 26" monitors (what I have right now) than 1 30".

As far as gaming on eyefinity, sure it looks cool, but its not that great IMO.....the only way I would game on more than 1 monitor is if you could completely remove the bezel and butt the edges of the screens themselves up against each other so the only seam you really have is the line between the monitors (which would be less than 1mm thick). Chances are we will eventually have something like that (or with OLED, a huge single monitor that simply curves around the person), but it is likely quite a ways out there still.

It could work for flight simulation for the window at least if you can line the windows up with the bezels (remove the in-game frame between the windows, and "replace" it with the physical bezel between the monitors) to give the illusion that the window frames are behind the bezels, but it would still look worse then having no bezel at all between multiple monitors.

I know how you feel, I have been using dual monitors for years now and I cannot get away from it. One 30" is nice (my father runs a single 30"), but I would rather have 2x 26" monitors (what I have right now) than 1 30".

As far as gaming on eyefinity, sure it looks cool, but its not that great IMO.....the only way I would game on more than 1 monitor is if you could completely remove the bezel and butt the edges of the screens themselves up against each other so the only seam you really have is the line between the monitors (which would be less than 1mm thick). Chances are we will eventually have something like that (or with OLED, a huge single monitor that simply curves around the person), but it is likely quite a ways out there still.

It could work for flight simulation for the window at least if you can line the windows up with the bezels (remove the in-game frame between the windows, and "replace" it with the physical bezel between the monitors) to give the illusion that the window frames are behind the bezels, but it would still look worse then having no bezel at all between multiple monitors.

Agreed. Off topic but I wish PC games had the ability to play local multi-player on a single PC using multiple monitors / keyboards / game pads. It'd make PC gaming so much better for when you have friends over. Plus we'd have another way to further push our video cards to the limit.

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