Nvidia Benchmarks GTX 480 Against Radeon 5870

[MattNo5ss]

Nvidia shows its tessellation muscle against ATI's Radeon HD 5870. Interestingly enough, the ATI part hangs on fairly well until Fermi pulls ahead with its hardware tessellation.

Nvidia's GF100/Fermi GPUs, the GTX 470 and GTX 480, will be officially launched later this month on March 26. Until then, we're being teased by unofficial board shots and unverified benchmarks.

Today, however, we bring to you something completely official: a benchmark demo straight from Nvidia that compares the upcoming GeForce GTX 480 and the ATI Radeon 5870.

While Nvidia doesn't put the two video cards up against our usual battery of tests, it does chart the two in an demo that leans on hardware tessellation. With tessellation demands piled on, the GeForce GTX 480 performs significantly better. Other times, however, it seems that the Radeon 5870's performance will be on par with Nvidia's upcoming high-end GPU.

Until developers take advantage of hardware accelerated tessellation however, the 5870 still gives a GTX 480 incredible competition for being over six months old.

Source: Nvidia Benchmarks GTX 480 Against Radeon 5870

Just a tessellation bench...

 

[MadMan007]

This is almost worse than a complete win or a complete lose. Now there will be endless fanboy flamewars over an indecisive result.

NV fanboy: 'Look, it's often faster and is worth more.'
AMD fanboy: 'It's often no faster and costs more.'

 

[Bobnova]

Yeah, not nvidia's brightest hour.
Especially when you consider that their tessellation feature is largely software run by cuda cores, not actual built in tessellation.
There's a big ole thread about the youtube video this came from. The video itself is painful to watch, it's mostly the nvidia dude claiming that nobody else has tessellation and that it's fantastic. Never mind that 10.1 cards could do it with the right setup.



Here we go:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=636455

 

[mjw21a]

My question is when's ATI's hardware refresh due. I'd expect them to do nothing more than crank up the clock speeds to match or beat this, assuming of course that they can do it. I'd assume that yields have improved sufficiently over 6 months that they can do so fairly easily.

I blieve their product refresh isn't that far away: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/...ck_for_the_Second_Half_of_2010_AMD_s_CEO.html

Either way, I hope this pushes the price on the 5770 down to what I'm willing to pay. Got to replace my 4850 with something that exhaust heat out the back of the case, my current solution causes my CPU to overheat and crash the game I'm playing on hot days. Heck, the longer I can put it off the better.

 

[jason4207]

Yeah, not nvidia's brightest hour.
Especially when you consider that their tessellation feature is largely software run by cuda cores, not actual built in tessellation.
There's a big ole thread about the youtube video this came from. The video itself is painful to watch, it's mostly the nvidia dude claiming that nobody else has tessellation and that it's fantastic. Never mind that 10.1 cards could do it with the right setup.



Here we go:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=636455

When does the nVidia guy claim nobody else has tessellation? Form what I can tell he's just saying the GTX480 is better at Tessellation than the 5870, and then goes on to show his pretty graph that shows the GTX480 pulling 40-50fps during the tessellation scenes vs 20-30fps on the 5870. He also goes into detail explaining Tessallation and the benefits it can bring to graphics in games.

More than likely it's a cherry-picked benchmark and the only benchmark that shows nVidia w/ a somewhat substantial lead, but I don't see where nVidia is claiming they have the only card capable of Tessellation. Tessellation will be a buzz-word for nVidia during their advertising, but their not saying they're the only one's that have it like they do w/ Physx, CUDA, etc.

 

[Bobnova]

The long version of my post in the other thread says pitched rather then claimed, which is more accurate. He does his best to imply that nobody else has dx11 or tesselation hardware.

 

[Firey_chasm]

The long version of my post in the other thread says pitched rather then claimed, which is more accurate. He does his best to imply that nobody else has dx11 or tesselation hardware.

hate to break it to you, welcome to the world of marketing and business.

NVIDIA are there to make money, a large segement of their customer base is clueless (please note a large segement isn't clueless - this is not an insult to NVIDIA owners in the slightest as I am one myself ). Therefore subtle implications that aren't lies but make them seem great is what they do!

All companies want their potential customers to believe they offer something the competition doesn't offer! Sometimes buesinesses are a little heavy handed (like that presentation) but they all do it to some degree or other

 

[Bobnova]

Oh yes, i'm well aware of that, it still annoys me though. Next time ATI does it i'll yell at them, too.
Nvidia seems to do it more then any of the other big PC parts manufacturers though.

 

[EarthDog]

I presume you yelled at ATI when the 2900xt/3870 came out then? At that time, they were jocking DX10.1 (3870) as the second coming, and tesselation as the third coming. ROFLMAO.

 

[Bobnova]

That was in an off-period. Had i been doing then what i am now, you bet i'd have yelled at 'em! At least they were the first (and only) people to do DX11 (which got shaved to 10.1 due to nvidia not having anything to sell).

I don't mind hocking something you just invented as being (*@#&%* awesome, though i'd certainly prefer that it was actually awesome. The difference is that for 10.1 ATI said we have it they don't, and it was true. Nvidia is implying they have it and ATI doesn't, which is not true.



All that said, what the hell is new about polygon count changing with distance? It's not like it's never been done before, that concept is so far from being new it's just silly.
Hell Oblivion had changing polygon counts for near/far vision, and that came out four years ago.

Is that seriously all that tessellation is?

 

[EarthDog]

Good points. While that is true, there was nothing to play/use that feature for w/e reason (I dont buy that Nvidia had it shut down either in the case of DX10.1 an Assasin's Creed). How can you, in good faith, market a feature which cannot be used?

 

[ratbuddy]

How can you, in good faith, market a feature which cannot be used?

I know, the nerve of some companies.. Oh wait, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TruForm

 

[Shiggity]

Whats the difference?

Your CPU has dozens of features you probably never use once.

I for one appreciate engineers thinking outside the box and trying to innovate, on both sides. Only to see shot-cutting console designers scrap it all.

 

[EarthDog]

The difference is CPU makes dont advertise/push it, and then the fanboy's follow... If I had a dollar for everytime I heard DX10.1 and tesselation as a selling point for 2900/3870 over 8800 series, I could probably retire now..

 

[baris_]

Hmm, why don't they put it up against the 5970? Do they not want to get their asses kicked on youtube?

 

[Shiggity]

The difference is CPU makes dont advertise/push it, and then the fanboy's follow... If I had a dollar for everytime I heard DX10.1 and tesselation as a selling point for 2900/3870 over 8800 series, I could probably retire now..

Check out the server market, soooooo much there for CPU's.

GPU's can't really market cores or clock speed. That's pretty much all the common masses understand.

 

[EarthDog]

Check out the server market, soooooo much there for CPU's.

GPU's can't really market cores or clock speed. That's pretty much all the common masses understand.

I know, and a lot of enterprise environments actually use a lot of the features and efficiencies.

Hmm, why don't they put it up against the 5970? Do they not want to get their asses kicked on youtube?

Why would they unless it beat it? Thats a 2 GPU card vs a 1 GPU card.

 

[gear.h34d.2012]

Hmm, why don't they put it up against the 5970? Do they not want to get their asses kicked on youtube?

Apples to Oranges, broham.


EDIT: Because Earthdog beat me to it >_<

 

[720x770]

Just a tessellation bench...

the benchmark itself is NOT for just tessellation. It's for the entire benchmark. there is around a 5-20fps difference in tessellation, and only tessellation. The rendering power itself is about on par with the 5870 and in a few instances it surpasses the 480.

keep in mind that the 480 is a much larger chip, energy hungry, and runs very hot especially as you up the voltage beyond stock.

also keep in mind, ATI has already had their DX11 GPU's out for over 6 months already which means they will be able to move on to bigger and better things not too far from now, while nvidia will be still trying to push the 480.

for an SLI setup of a 480, it would take nearly 600w just for the cards themselves, not including the rest of the system. not to mention that the heat generated by 2 of these in one box might pose some serious cooling problems.

I don't even think a 480x2 on one board would even be possible since it would far surpass PCIe regulations (300w max) and the heat itself would make it unfeasible without a serious die shrink to 28nm.

the 5870 has a die size of 334 mm², the GTX 480 if I recall correctly has a die size of 570 mm², that's a 236 mm² difference or nearly 50%. so chip area for chip area, the ATI gpu's are more powerful and efficient than nvidia's. if you put a 570 mm² sized ATI chip head to head against a 480, it would rape it with almost 200% the performance and still use less power and generate less heat.

I mean come on, having a chip nearly double the size that offers only around 15% more performance in certain areas is just laughable.

 

[FishDog3]

Apples to Oranges, broham.

I'm honestly curious where them thought process came from, because it certainly isn't based on basic logic. If the cards are priced in the same ball park (which some rumors hint at being correct) than it is the perfect comparison. It wouldn't matter if one card was made out of solid gold and the other had a fusion reactor on board, all that matters is how much performance you get for the price you pay.

It is as if nVidia did a huge marketing campaign and conned a bunch of people into thinking that price points do not matter.