Reviews - A peek at NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 in SLI - just how fast is it?

[TooNice]

Firingsquad back Anandtech's finding: the 5850 mostly beat the 470 in benchmarks where the 5870 bests the 480 (minority of the time). In some of those cases, the 5850 even beats the 480, it's fair to say that the 58xx is better suited than the 4xx (I do not believe it's always a case of intentional bias). Hardware Canucks also back that notion. So I wouldn't say it's just Anandtech with that conclusion.

As for drivers, I tend to think that they are about equal nowadays, but it's certainly not always been the case (incidentally, nVidia 'broke' support for one of two of older game I have so I may well lean in favour of AMD from that perspective). Still, I can only speak for Windows based PCs, nVidia had the edge under Linux for a long time, and if that's changed then I would say that it's in the relatively near past).

[sammorris]

That's now what I was disputing, it was the fact that the 470 was showing superior to the 5850 overall is what someone said, I've not actually looked at the anandtech page myself yet.

[TooNice]

GTX470 gives you identical performance to that of a HD5870.

^ That, is a joke. But based on the benchmarks I've seen, I am also leaning toward the 470 being faster than the 5850 overall (not every time). Granted, there are other issues, such as heat and cost that could make the 5850 a better buy, especially for the many who do not care about PhysX/CUDA.

[sammorris]

The HardOCP was enough to convince me otherwise. I am fairly certain the GTX470 makes for a worse card than the HD5850. Its performance isn't worse per-se, but unlike GTX480 vs HD5870, it isn't any better, and it's a lot more expensive, then add the same old heat & power concerns.

[TooNice]

*Shrug* - Sounds like selection bias, unless you are very good reason to believe that HardOCP is somehow more accurate than other reviewers. Having gone through a fair number of reviews now, I'd say that the conclusions are more distinct than, say, 250 vs 4850 where most would call it a tie.

[Infinite]

How about adding ATI's high-end multicard setups to the charts i.e. 3x 5870 CF and 2x 5970 CF. Considering three 5870s cost the same as two 480s.

[TooNice]

Here's one I've seen. It's not in English, but the graphs are there: http://www.sweclockers.com/articles_...id=6236&page=1

The 5970 CF murders the competition in some tests, but do chokes in the odd tests. GTX480 SLI is somewhat more stable across the charts.

[zoomee]

Too little too late nvidia - sorry nvidia fanboys but its true - This round belongs to ATI (which I'm REALLY surprised to say myself btw!)

ain't the 5970 just 2x5850's? Would have been much fairer to score 480SLI against 2 x 5870's (as others here have pointed out).

What will be interesting is the next gen cards which will hopefully have higher clocks at a more reasonable price (that goes for both the red and green teams).

Looks like I made the right choice getting a 5850 - makes a bloomin change!

[GoNz0]

Here's one I've seen. It's not in English, but the graphs are there: http://www.sweclockers.com/articles_...id=6236&page=1

The 5970 CF murders the competition in some tests, but do chokes in the odd tests. GTX480 SLI is somewhat more stable across the charts.

http://translate.google.com/translat...&sl=auto&tl=en

[sammorris]

I don't get why review sites always post lower scores for Quad crossfire than two cards in Warhead, it's certainly not true for my system :S

[Perfectionist]

Lol'ed resident nvidiot has showed up.
They haven't even benchmarked the GTX470 yet...

Edit: now the GTX470 is benched, whadda'ya'know, it's the same as an HD5850.
The Wrong in capital letters made me laugh, it really did.

Sihastru registered on this forum just to post messages supportive of nVidia apparently. Account only created yesterday (same day as release of the new card by nvidia), location: Romania, 4 posts...

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

[sammorris]

Hah, why are there so many people out there like that!

[Infinite]

Part of nVidia's marketing team, genius. For a second I thought we had another Rollo from nVidia's "focus" group.

[Biscuit]

its rollos spawn child?

[ehhhhhhh]

I'm just wondering why is the 5870CF configuration is missing from this review?

it would be faster than one 5970, and also much cheaper than the GTX480 SLI option.

Is there any good reason not to include it?

[sammorris]

This was my comment as well, and everyone else has done the same. All I can assume is that it was a conditional requirement of nvidia releasing the cards - the site wouldn't be allowed two 480s to review if they compared it to two 5870s in crossfire.