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

[Tarinder]

Chaps,

There has never been an NVIDIA requirement or pressure not to include ATI multi-GPU cards.

As the title states, this is a quick peek at GTX 480 SLI performance because we were fortunate enough to have two cards for a short while.

Rest assured that appropriate ATI comparisons will be added, with the latest drivers, as soon as we have a chance to catch our testing breath.

[sammorris]

Thanks for the clarification. Since it's still before retail availability, you tend to wonder what the restrictions are on what you can and can't do with newly released products, especially from a company like nvidia.
Given that the latest 10.3 drivers have been added quite recently, it would be good to get some tests in based on the drivers customers will be using at the time of the GTX480's true release, from both sides.

[Tarinder]

The ones we've used for the GTX 480 review are 10.3a. They're actually a newer build than 10.3 WHQL and include further optimisations for Alien vs. Predator and Eyefinity6.

We'll be using Cat 10.3a, keeping consistency with the other results.

[0iD]

I notice bit-tech have been playing catch-up with Hexus with this today on twitter.

[HalloweenJack]

hiya , do you have an pictures of the system you tested this with? things like the case fans etc - was it closed up or open? heard that the GTX runs cooler when used in a closed but well ventilated case

[borandi]

why i would not consider ATI, i still not impressed with ATI drivers the cards them self are very good just the drivers can Suck some times having to reload windows due to an .net bug in CAT drivers is no good, and it takes them 2-3 months to get there drivers working (e.g. point statement is 10.1 and 10.2 been Quite broken one of my members cant load 10.3 as it BC2 is messed up still and then there's the 1 min Load bug when you use BC2 with an ATI card my game works in under 2-5 secs in BC2 that means 2 of us have taken flags at the start before the ATI players have joined),
other issue Folding sucks with ATI cards as well, Texture problems with some games or they brake an game with newer drivers that they fixed before, i could go on but i be ranting

Never had a problem with ATi drivers, ever. Don't see how other people have. I load into BC2 almost instantly with my ATi cards.

Folding is all single precision; the ATi cards, while harder to program, excel at double precision over the nVidia counterparts. That, and the Pande group have spent a long time optimising the CUDA code. All the BOINC double precision projects have seen epic speedup using ATi cards, but mediocre using CUDA.

Personally, I program with nVidia and CUDA because it's easier; but I know if I put more effort in, I could get more performance using of ATi cards.

[Biscuit]

Iv only ever had problems with ATI driver because i didnt have .net frameworks installed. Other than that yeah they have been fine.

Interesting info that though Borandi. How does Open CL computation compare between the two?

[borandi]

General figures show that OpenCL is slightly (~0-10%) slower than CUDA and Stream (for ATi), but the upshot is the same code should work for both. If you only work with one type of card, you get better benefits from using the specific language for that hardware.