Opinions - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480: the way it was meant to be played?

[GaryRW]

Interesting indeed but curiously similar to an article on 'Australian PC Authority' that was referenced over on \. 3 days ago...? Surely not...

Just to add my 2p - there's been more than a few people saying similar things on lots of forums, Hexus included. I have seen very little reason to upgrade my nearly 2 1/2 year old 8800gt for exactly these reasons (unless of course I get a bigger monitor.... )

It was a good article, and it made the point as well if not better than I have seen it made elsewhere, but I hope those concerned don't take too much offence if I say that I don't think it will win an award for a startlingly original observation. That's a long way though from saying it's plagiarism though!

I personally can't see the pc market getting a massive revival until the next gen consoles come along. Shame that seems like some way away yet.

[Pob255]

I agree with a big chunk of this acticle
I've said this before, most games are still just dx9 based because of consoles and pore uptake of vista, this means no developer is going to cut out a massive chunk of their customer base so al we end up with is dx9 with a few additional dx10, and now dx11, extra effects thrown in.
when the next generation of consoles come out the we'll start seeing true dx10/10.1/11 games.
The intresting thing here will be which they go for.
The whloe sitution is not really helped by the lackluster OpenGL 3 so microsoft has no real competition for DX and so no real need to push it or push for developers to use it.

EDIT: I'm one of thoes people who are still happly using xp, why? Because games don't really offer anything much over dx9, a few added bits of minor eye candy for a performance impact.
DX11 Tessellation has the potential to be a massive feature if it's implimented correctly and not just slapped on as a way of get additional poly count.

[Jimbo75]

What worries me is nVidia will try to use their superior tessellation performance as a weapon against ATI.

This is what bugs me about nVidia. Everything they do is based around dominating through a proprietary feature or big advantage, either sli, physx and now probably tessellation.

They will use millions of pounds to bribe game devs to use more tessellation than is really needed, so it hurts ATI more than it does their cards. And the worse thing is, they will claim to be keeping the pc gaming industry alive while doing that.

Where is the 3-screen support? They said it would be available at launch but so far we haven't seen any game running on 3 screens. How far behind ATI is nVidia really? It could be almost a year.....

[kalniel]

Having just read Anand's value SSD RAID 0 article, are we at the point where the money is far better spent on upgrading to SSD to bring noticeable improvements to the whole computer experience?

[Perfectionist]

I have an Intel Generation 2 MLC 160GB SD (the high end one) (proof) and have to say it really makes a HUGE difference, the Intel "My SSD ROCKS!" sticker you get optionally given to apply is actually totally justified lol. Especially game loading/bootup times, I'd say it's about 2.5x faster (ofc that is with Win7 which I'm told has TRIM set up by default in the background)

[sammorris]

The GTX480 is being discussed a lot on the merits of its future potential. This is very true, but there is a potential snag here. How long is it going to take before the benefits of the architecture really shine through? By that time, ATI may well have come up with something so powerful it negates all the benefits of Fermi, or better yet, come up with something that shares the same future benefits, negating the advantage at all. The revised 40nm Southern Islands design seems interesting, and it puts heavy pressure on nvidia to continue developing the GTX480 into something usable. I am highly doubtful that the refresh of the HD5 series will raise the TDP without substantially raising performance. A strategy that has also worked very well for ATI is getting dual-GPU cards out the door early, as the HD4870X2 and HD5970 have shown. If the TDP remains low enough to do this without compromising the comparative performance, I don't see any future for the GTX480 at all. It needs to be completely reworked to counteract this. Never mind the fact that so few GTX480s are being produced you'll struggle to find any, even if you wanted any. Frankly I think nvidia would have been better off canning the GTX400 architecture when they first realised how bad it was and starting over. Had they done that and come up with something successful, it may have launched only a few weeks or a couple of months from now and done very well indeed. Speculative, of course.

[ehhhhhhh]

Having just read Anand's value SSD RAID 0 article, are we at the point where the money is far better spent on upgrading to SSD to bring noticeable improvements to the whole computer experience?

That's what I was thinking too. I was hesitating between a 5850 and a couple of 40GB SSDs...I feel the SSDs are the better bet for now... my next GPU upgrade will be one from the next gen cards.

on a side note I would highlight that I would not even touch the GTX480 or 470, however I really hope that they will offer some kind of competition with the next gen.

You mentioned the potential of these cards, but I have a feeling that these cards will be obsolete too at the time the 58xx won't be enough for gaming (depending on the tiny difference between the 5870 vs gtx480)

[sammorris]

No I'm sorry, I disagree there. I do indeed want an SSD, but the performance it gives for the cost is just too slight to really be worthwhile which is why I've kept pushing it back. With the advent of stuff like the X25-V I'm sorely tempted to try one out in one of my other systems but for the time being, I see no reason to jump out and spend hundreds on SSDs (especially not in RAID, the raw transfer performance really means quite little when you're using a drive so small, it's the response time you're really after, which surprisingly enough, not that many SSDs are very good at)
I do however, entirely agree with your last point. Everybody knows that absolute high-end cards instantly stop being worth it as soon as the next high-end card comes out due to their huge size, power, etc. footprint, and the fact that due to their excess they never come down in price sufficiently. By the time the successor to the HD5870 arrives (which isn't going to be that long, comparatively) I think the GTX470 and 480's futures are very bleak.

[ehhhhhhh]

Everybody knows that absolute high-end cards instantly stop being worth it as soon as the next high-end card comes out due to their huge size, power, etc. footprint, and the fact that due to their excess they never come down in price sufficiently. By the time the successor to the HD5870 arrives (which isn't going to be that long, comparatively) I think the GTX470 and 480's futures are very bleak.

That's why I do not understand why some sites (including Hexus) are applauding this HW so much...
for example one would need some ego to publish something like this:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gtx-48...ews-33131.html

I mean, after reading many reviews and articles I felt that most of them were disappointed which is understandable.

on the SSDs, My only concern is that if you run them in raid0 then it can't pass the trim command just yet, (workaround exists).but it even raises more concerns after how intel handled the G1 - G2 transition...(I'm not sure if there's any rational explanation why trim is not supported on G1 drives)...
otherwise it's an amazing tech, especially after you had the chance to use it...

[sammorris]

To be fair, I heard rumours that THG were taking bribes from nvidia, which does explain an unusually high preference to them in testing, so in caution I ignore tests from THG and have done for the last couple of years.

As for G1 vs G2, Intel are just a mean company. There's no getting away from it. They make some awesome products, and in my opinion their product quality outweighs their corporate greed, but they are certainly pretty evil compared to AMD. The same goes for nvidia really, though that is of course obvious through various press stories, and if you have ever been within a hundred miles of the semiaccurate site

TRIM I'm considering quite important for the expensive SSDs, which is why I'm waiting until I can guarantee I'll get a G2 with it equipped from stock until I buy one.

[Terbinator]

TRIM I'm considering quite important for the expensive SSDs, which is why I'm waiting until I can guarantee I'll get a G2 with it equipped from stock until I buy one.

It isn't just down to the drive.

[sammorris]

I realise I can flash the firmware on it myself, but with a data-critical device, an expensive product, along with the previous firmware troubles of the X25-Ms I think I'll play it safe

[Perfectionist]

How can you tell if the drive has TRIM on it or not? Someone told me before that Windows 7 has TRIM included so don't need to worry about firmware (I have the intel g2 mlc 160gb)

[Terbinator]

How can you tell if the drive has TRIM on it or not? Someone told me before that Windows 7 has TRIM included so don't need to worry about firmware (I have the intel g2 mlc 160gb)

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...ssd-rocks.html