NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480 finally unleashed. Reviewed and rated.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

I hvae said this in a another thread and i will say it again.

i am leaning more towards the 5870 card. why? because its alot cheaper, cooler and the 10-15fps gains you get on the 480 is not worth it imho especialy when the fps is near the 100's.

seriously, who cares if the 480gtx can do 120fps while the less expensive more cooler 5870 can get around 80fps on the exact same game and settings?

I tell you why the 480gtx will cost a lot for me.

first thing is the obvious starting price of £400+

2nd thing is the amount of heat and power in generates. i only have a 600w psu with about 4 hdd's an i7 quad core cpu, 1 dvd drive(going to buy another one) and about 6 120mm fans cooling my system.

For me to have a bit of peace of mind i would need to buy a new psu thats 1000w or above and a decent one of that range is over £100.

Summer is also coming along and things will only get hotter so possibly i would also need better case fans as im only using lian li stock ones or water cool the gpu which will cost another £100+

As you can see now, £100+400+100 i around 600 in total to get a 480gtx running fine without anyworrying if my psu is overloaded or the temps going above 90c in the summer.

With a 5870. i dont need a new psu and i dont need a new cooling system. i spend £300 on it and i could use the extra £200 to maybe buy more ram(only have 3gb) or maybe a 1080p monitor.

In a nutshell the 480gtx is too much for the performance gains. None economical and need to re-do my cooling and psu on my pc which adds to the cost of it.


ATI may not have the fastest card now, but for me, speed is not everything in games or else i would have bought two 4870x2 last gen but as stated above, im not interested in a gain of fps from 80-120fps. what im interested in is a gain from 30fps to maybe 50/60fps and none of the benhcmarks have produced results on that ie crysis and other demanding games that no one can play above 30fps in insane resolutions

[dfour]

98 degrees is hot, I cant help but think that thats the perfect temp to make a coffee. Is there a trick missed here, I mean what gamer doesn't like a nice hot coffee to keep him/her going through the night.....

Good point while blasting nasties you could use the excess heat to keep your cup of coffe hot. See its not a design floor, Nvidia will be releasing a cup holder attachment for the fermi any time.......

[Bloke]

Bit of a let down I feel, too hot, too expensive considering poor performance increase over 5870 and way too power hungry.

Nvidia, I was hoping for a 5870 trouncer but you have delivered a hot, expensive, tbh slow for the power usage, disappointment!

ATI, you can breathe easy for now!

[Bloke]

For the sake of enthusiasts lets hope new drivers from Nvidia will give this oven of a card a performance boost worthy of the inferno in peoples PCs.

[jim]

They already explained that - there isn't a 5870 2gb with stock speeds AFAIK.

Could they not have just underclocked it to stock?

[Blaineoliver]

This is a bizarre card, it cries at high resolutions, where you would expect a powerful card to extend its lead.

[Tarinder]

They already explained that - there isn't a 5870 2gb with stock speeds AFAIK.

nVidia have tried to save face.. but at this stage in time, they haven't made it. Slower than a 5970, while using more power both at idle and load, with a noisy fan and dangerously exposed heatsink (I would not like to cram up another expansion slot card next to it).

The double precision crippling is also majorly disappointing for people hoping for a GCGPU card on the cheap. Fully fledged fermi looks like it might be great for that, when it finally comes out, but at what price?


PS: Excellent review Tarinder, one of Hexus' best, despite the odd decision about dirt2 dx modes. Especially love the bang4watt.

PPS: Another non-launch - no cards available to buy yet?

The reason for running the DX9 tests was to tie it together with NVIDIA's last-generation GPUs, and the question I tried to answer was how it stacked up against a three-year-old architecture in varying forms - GTX 295, GTX 285, and GTX 275.

Moving on, the DiRT 2 tests will be flipped around, so 16x10 to 25x16 in DX11 and a single DX9 test.

[Tarinder]

Could they not have just underclocked it to stock?

If we exclude the Eyefinity6 card for a second, we don't believe that the 2GB model will ship at stock frequencies. AMD/ATI has provided partners with the leeway to ship it at whatever frequencies they can qualify.

That said, because people have asked for it, we will run the additional tests on the Sapphire card and include it in the full GTX 470 review.

[slickric21]

re comparing the GTX 480 with HD 5970 2gb

They already explained that - there isn't a 5870 2gb with stock speeds AFAIK.

A just thought that the 2gb HD 5870s were meant to be ATI's short term competition or shot at dethroning the 480, and that they were all going to be OC'd anyway - so comparing to a stock speed one would be useless.

As it turns out ATI don't actually need to do anything really, as the 480 pricing has distanced itself from the old HD 5870 1gb enough that many people - myself included won't even consider it yet.

I'm in a bit of a conundrum becuase I've got a GTX 285 SSC, which i've had for nearly a year i guess - but what do i upgrade to ??

Is a HD 5870 1gb enough of an upgrade for me ????? Thats why i'm interested in the 2gb versions.

Edit......

Guess the above post ^^^^ explains it, i was too slow !!!! Thanks

[dodgybob]

As much as it's always interesting to see new cards at the high end, my budget doesn't stretch that far.

I've read elsewhere that Nvidia may be getting this architecture into the mid-range by July. Although very good cards, the HD5750 and HD5770 are sorely in need of some good competition.

[Georgy291]

so this is a joke from nvidia i take it?

.....remember we had this guy here. rolo i think was his name (the hard core nvidia fan boy) i wonder what he has to say now

[sammorris]

I just don't get why nobody, not a single review site, has considered reviewing More than two ATI GPUs from this generation up against the GTX480. Why wouldn't you? For instance, HD5970+HD5850 or HD5970+HD5870, both combinations are less than that of two GTX480s at about £820 and £890 vs £900, and at less wattage, around 450W TDP and 480W TDP versus 550W.
The HD5870 may not have what it takes to beat the GTX480, and thus two of them aren't going to beat a pair of 480s in SLI, but it's damn close, and if you were to add a third GPU, let alone a fourth (which is still easily doable - for cost and power restraints, amongst being single GPU cards, more than two GTX480s isn't really feasible yet) I'm pretty certain you'd find ATI well on top. Nobody seems to have considered applying the same over the top lunacy nvidia exhibits in the GTX480 to using Crossfire with ATI. It would also be good to see how the HD4 series stacks up. I reckon an HD4870X2 has a good chance of busting the GTX470 up, and the GTX470 costs the same now as the 4870X2 did at launch, and it doesn't really use much less power at all!

[Fraz]

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/...0_sli_review/7

Have a listen.
And turn your headphones down.
RIGHT DOWN.

That is mental. There is no-way I'm having one of those things in my computer. It sounds louder than the fan-heater I use in winter.

[sammorris]

My pair of 4870X2s sounds as bad when running full tilt, but they run well below 90ºC as a result. On top of that, as I say, Radeons don't have a habit of going all artifacty and crashy when they get hot. I've never had it happen, and I've tried, sometimes on purpose

[Terbinator]

That is mental. There is no-way I'm having one of those things in my computer. It sounds louder than the fan-heater I use in winter.

But this could replace your fan heater and be louder - hotter, louder = BETTER.

Onto the point of upgrading, I'll say what I did before the ATi price increases (the original 5850 prices were bargains), after them, and now. Is there really any need to upgrade your graphics card from any of the high-end cards from the last gen - because as far as I know the DX11 gains in games currently released aren't worth the outlay. At the same time stop blaming Nvidia because you choose to get arse-bashed off ATI on pricing, again, Crysis 2 isn't here so if you are rocking a decent enough GPU stop moaning.
FFS.

[sammorris]

There are those who play games and don't really care what they play like, and there are those who want to get the best experience they can. The sort of person willing to spend £450 on a card is the latter, almost certainly. There are so many demanding games out there today that if you want to play them at maximum detail smoothly, you need ridiculous amounts of graphics processing power, far more than an HD5870 or GTX480 are able to provide.
I'm not sure what the point of your post is. If it's to say the new DX11 cards are unnecessary, you're very wrong.