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

[HEXUS]

What do you get when you combine two GeForce GTX 480s and unleash them on our benchmarks?

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[GoNz0]

What do you get when you combine two GeForce GTX 480s and unleash them on our benchmarks?

the police raiding you for an illegal cannabis grow due to the leccy bill doubling!

[sammorris]

In the games that matter, paying £450 for a GTX480 nets you almost identical performance to that of a £310 HD5870. On top of that, a £900 pair of the cards on an 850W PSU can barely beat a £550 HD5970 on a 550W PSU. I am seriously unimpressed by the GTX400 architecture. If it were priced appropriately (i.e. £350 or so for the 480) and used a lot less power, it'd be worthwhile.
As it stands, my pair of HD4870X2s that cost me less than £600 in 2008, can take on a brand new pair of GTX480s costing £900, pretty much keep pace, and better yet, use less power!
Back to the drawing board methinks.

[Sihastru]

In the games that matter, paying £450 for a GTX480 nets you almost identical performance to that of a £310 HD5870. On top of that, a £900 pair of the cards on an 850W PSU can barely beat a £550 HD5970 on a 550W PSU. I am seriously unimpressed by the GTX400 architecture. If it were priced appropriately (i.e. £350 or so for the 480) and used a lot less power, it'd be worthwhile.
As it stands, my pair of HD4870X2s that cost me less than £600 in 2008, can take on a brand new pair of GTX480s costing £900, pretty much keep pace, and better yet, use less power!
Back to the drawing board methinks.

WRONG...

GTX470 gives you identical performance to that of a HD5870. The GTX470 is CHEAPER then the HD5870. Two GTX470 in SLI would still beat the HD5970, and that is the config most of us will choose.

[sammorris]

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.

[sammorris]

From HardOCP:

GeForce GTX 470

Starting from the bottom up, we would say the least relevant video card is the GeForce GTX 470. In all our gameplay testing today, not once did the GeForce GTX 470 provide a superior gameplay experience compared to the Radeon HD 5850, even in Metro 2033. In fact, performance was very close between both video cards, and in some cases the Radeon HD 5850 proved to provide faster framerates. Looking strictly at performance, these video cards are equal.

[GoNz0]

i do hope new drivers show off the 470/480 or nvidia will not make much money.

i was poised to buy a pair of 480s until the benchmarks cameout.

[Repressor]

So, overall, both of the cards released today are £150~ overpriced?

[sammorris]

GTX470: Costs £320, worth £240 ignoring TDP. Worth £200 considering TDP.
GTX480: Costs £450, worth £340 ignoring TDP. Worth £250 considering TDP.

[TooNice]

Edit: now the GTX470 is benched, whadda'ya'know, it's the same as an HD5850.

Anandtech's results differ quite significantly from a performance perspective (there is still the issue of heat). It is quite consistently faster than the 5850, but also quite consistently slower than the 5870, though it has it's wins too. Instances where the 5850 beats the 470 are consistent with instances where the 5870 bests the 480 (e.g L4D/Bad Company) with one exception (Mass Effect 2).

Moving on, we have the GTX 470 to discuss. It’s not NVIDIA’s headliner so it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. With a price right between the 5850 and 5870, it delivers performance right where you’d expect it to be. At 5-10% slower than the 5870 on average, it’s actually a straightforward value proposition: you get 90-95% of the performance for around 87% of the price. It’s not a huge bargain, but it’s competitively priced against the 5870. Against the 5850 this is less true where it’s a mere 2-8% faster, but this isn’t unusual for cards above $300 – the best values are rarely found there.

It's more of a case of 'polish' than going back to the drawing board. Their refresh would need to be more impressive than AMDs, but that's not unthinkable, the 7900 was much more competitive with the X1900 than the 7800 was with the X1800. Granted, being so many months behind, the engineers will have much to do. I'd expect AMD to gain market share in the coming months (GSOD still needs sorting though).

[Bloke]

Great numbers but I would rather have 5870 in xfire atm.

Hexus, a Xfire review of 5870 with 10.3 drivers as a comparison would have been nice.

[Bloke]

Looking at the pic of the sli set up, the proximity between the two cards is way too close and will most definetly detriment the performance of the bottom card if not endanger it if the temps are closing to 93C at load in single card set ups. A board not supporting tri sli/ will help the spacing.

[kapitilist_pig]

I think 2 x gtx 480 represent excellent value for money considering that 2 of them, watercooled, could be adapted to provide hot water for your homes' heating system bath / shower etc. lol.

If left aircooled, then they may be able to heat your homes ground floor area?.

Northern Islands, Ati's next gen, are gonna show this 'hot', 'noisy', garbage how its done!

[sammorris]

Anandtech's results almost always do vary from everywhere else which is why I am a little sceptical. The way I see it, take a look at previous benchmarks of games and consider whether they are biased for performance toward ATI or toward nvidia - easily doable if you match up the GTS250/HD4850 and GTX260-216/HD4870. If either card comes out noticeably on top, the game is biased towards whichever manufacturer. Bad Company 2 is a big example of this, the GTX260 demolishes the 4870. Yet the benchmarks of the GTX400 series really don't show it at all, the DX11 cards are very even.

kapitilise_pig: You realise it's more efficient to heat your home with gas right? LMAO

[leexgx]

most review sites have used the 5970 for the Dual GPU tests, most would get 2x 5850 or 5870 the latter been faster then an 5970 but cost an little more

i have an 9800GX2 (i had an GTX280 but loss of mains (prepay meter) + folding killed it some time ago got an 5850 as an RMA replacement but sold that) i had an GTX280 and most of the games ran lovely, i most likely going to get an GTX480 as it be like an GTX295 but with out the SLI, cant justify buying 2x GTX480 unless they was cheaper and water cooled

3 of my friends just ordered the 480 (one ordered 2 of them need to warn him about the heat + ATI Vacuum cleaner fan the HardOCP videos show how noisy they got)

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

[sammorris]

I was considering an ebay GTX280 as a PhysX card for another PC but I don't think I'll bother after hearing that nvidia hardware is just as unreliable as always. Cutting power under load is a ridiculous reason for a card to break.
ATI's drivers are no worse than nvidia's, at all, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either doing it wrong or never intended to buy an ATI card to start with. Folding is the only benefit nvidia cards have.