GTX 480 Official Reviews Thread!! Post links here

[Gwiggles]

Maybe not epic fail, but epic late for sure. The performance would have been perfect... 6 months ago

Sorry bud, but IMO it was pretty "epic fail". For what people were EXPECTING at least, its disappointing to see 480 results that aren't significantly better than the 5870.

With these, in my opinion, overly-ridiculous power consumption, heat, and noise levels, I don't think the performance (or just the card in general) would have been perfect 6 months ago either.

 

[Bobnova]

Pretty sure 2x285s consumes more power, and hence creates more heat, then one gtx480.

 

[EarthDog]

Great job Diaz on the links...

Well, single fastest gpu out there...personally i wish it was by more. The 470 is what Im jumping on. I bet these fold like bunnies do their bunny thing..!

Pretty sure 2x285s consumes more power, and hence creates more heat, then one gtx480.

Yeah, agreed.

 

[atm743]

What game uses Cuda?

Just cause 2 just came out and uses it

 

[J-Sap]

Well this is how I see the launch of the 480 & 470 GTX:

1. NVidia has a product that looks to be very close to the ATI equivalent. A little faster in some games but not a significant leap ahead of ATI. I think NVidia priced them properly but there are two big factors with that. The first is that ATI has increased the price on the 5850 from $260 to $300 and the 5870 from $380 to $400. If ATI dropped the prices back down to the original price than I could not see a reason to purchase a 470 GTX for $350 over a 5850 if it cost $260. Many people would see the benefit of purchasing the 5870 for $30 more than a 470 or saving $90 and get the 5850. People would still get the 480 if they wanted to SLI them but it would be a significant premium to get a 480 for $500 over a 5870 for $380 IF ATI dropped their prices back down. The second is ATI has had their cards on the market for 7 months and can afford a price war and price decreases, NVidia cannot.

2. ATI has had their current generation of high end cards out since September and are probably gearing up for the next version to be released very soon to battle NVidia. NVidia can only get a paper launch of the 480 and 470 GTX. They are not even thinking about the refreshes of these cards and had to introduce them without all the speed they wanted. ATI has two and a half weeks before the hard launch of these cards and still has a chance to ruin NVidia’s party before a single card is sold.

3. ATI has had the market for over 7 months. A lot of people (myself included) decided to go ATI for the next generation of cards because it was our time to upgrade. NVidia missed that party and all those customers. ATI came out with a product that is similar in performance over 7 months before NVidia. A lot of people just got tired of waiting (and the announcements about waiting) and got a product months ago that is very similar to what will be released in a couple weeks. Those who waited are severely disappointed that this new card from NVidia is not the ATI killer that they wanted. Is it faster overall, yeah but not by a lot. And ATI normally comes out with a refresh of their top cards around 9 months after the initial release; and they thought like many of us that NVidia would come out with the new 480 GTX earlier (until it was delayed again and again) and now have had ample time to come out with a new card (5890 cross fingers) anytime between now and the next two months with hopefully 20-25% faster speeds. I am speculating on what ATI might be doing but if they did do this than they would retain the performance crown and NVidia would have nothing to counter it for another couple months.


I normally buy whatever is best at the time I purchase, ATI got my last sale and NVidia got the two before that so I am no fan boy of either. I do think that ATI came up with a far superior product this generation and implemented the launch and distribution a lot better than NVidia. I also think that ATI is far better set up for the refresh and the counter to NVidia’s launch today, not to mention the next generation. I do see a place for the 480 and 470 GTX in the market and am glad they came out. But I think they will mostly cause the price of current ATI cards which are falling in price to drop faster or officially drop to a certain level and cause the refresh from ATI to appear faster.

 

[Psychotron]

I thought video cards were getting cheaper?

 

[Bobnova]

They are, seven or eight years ago a new high end card ran 600-800 bucks.

 

[diaz]

Great job Diaz on the links...

Well, single fastest gpu out there...personally i wish it was by more. The 470 is what Im jumping on. I bet these fold like bunnies do their bunny thing..!

Yeah, agreed.

Thanks!


Yeah I agree with the 470 being a beast for folding, with its new programmable shaders...

EDIT: I'm not sure if I should hunt down all the other review sites and post them here too... Seems kinda pointless to me?

 

[jobrien2001]

Well i was hoping the cards would be better so the prices would come down but... its gonna be a while... those cards suck, no good. Way too hot, doesnt justify the performance gain. The 470 looks more attractive, but why buy it when you can have a 5870 for the same price.

NVIDIA failure, hopefuly they get their **** together soon, so we can see some competitive prices. There is no way NVIDIA can compete with ATI on price because of die size.

 

[NOVAA]

Overall I would have to say I think they're pretty dissapointing products, haven't gotten a good look at the 470 yet but at least the 480, in my mind, is a pretty big failure. From what I've seen, the best case scenario is that it performs 5-10% faster than the 5870, and in the worst case equal or even a touch worse. For a 25% more expensive card thats coming to the market over half a year later, thats a pretty big dissapointment.

And as if that wasn't enough, a single 480 consumes more power under load than a 5970 for crying out loud! That reflects both on Nvidia's hot, inefficient design, and Ati's great acheivement with Cypress. Then you have to remember sticking a 480 in your case instead of a 5870 literally could raise temps 10C, I can't remember a card ever running this hot before. I've seen 93-99C in various load tests, thats just ridiculous, especially considering the heatsink this thing has.

Overall, I think its fair to say Ati is going to lay claim to this generation. Only thing I would have to say in regards to that is that Nvidia seemed to build the card around a feature that isn't enabled really yet, who cares if the 480 is a superior tessalator if the only place you see the benefits is the Heaven bench. By the time any games are out featuring it heavily, we'll have a new gen of cards out. Not necessarily Nvidia's fault however.

Edit- The more I read about it, the more the heat is bugging me. Seriously, this thing is SOO hot that people who have their CPU's OC'ed to about the edge of temp threshold might actually need to dial things back with one of these. I know I reach about 49C in gaming (Running F@H on the CPU at the same time, I bought a quad core and I'm going to use those clocks d@mn it!) and thats with my 4890 running at about 75-80C. Tack on another 10-15C to that temp, and suddenly I might be running at 52-53C, which is higher than I would want to run my CPU. And I'm very curious to see the F@H performance and temps, people are planning on doing some serious folding on these things lol, curious to see how long one of these lasts under 10-20 hours of constant 95C temps a day... Has anyone seen a review where they cover the temps of two of these in SLI? I have to imagine the top card reaches at least 100C.

 

[don'tknow]

Just cause 2 just came out and uses it

Just looked up some vids, CUDA is used for the water. Possible to do the same thing without CUDA though, it pretty much looks like the water in Crysis.

 

[baris_]

Which site has the best/complete review you lads have seen? I thought the one from canucks was pretty good.

 

[-Blue-]

What game uses Cuda?

just cause 2 i believe has 2 things in the options that are nvidia only and well fermi only to be fair because they mess everything up if i turn them on with the 280

 

[Douken]

I was curious on the reviews and I went to ChileHardware to see if they had a review. Well they don't but in a forum thread I found listed around the main page (web 2.0) the first thing the denoted was that most of the reviewers are using old catalyst drivers... "...TechpowerOP using catalyst 9.12 from more than a year ago". Some user then quotes the Guru3d review which uses the Catalyst 10.3 and nVidia 197.13 ones. Most users agree that is the best card and that it sure kicks in the DX11 and Tessellation but that the heat is an issue as well as the noise, power consumption, price and little real world difference over the 5870.

Source

 

[baris_]

I was curious on the reviews and I went to ChileHardware to see if they had a review. Well they don't but in a forum thread I found listed around the main page (web 2.0) the first thing the denoted was that most of the reviewers are using old catalyst drivers... "...TechpowerOP using catalyst 9.12 from more than a year ago". Some user then quotes the Guru3d review which uses the Catalyst 10.3 and nVidia 197.13 ones. Most users agree that is the best card and that it sure kicks in the DX11 and Tessellation but that the heat is an issue as well as the noise, power consumption, price and little real world difference over the 5870.

Source

In terms of what you get for what you pay, I think, the 5850 rules.. 5870 comes pretty close to GTX480 which just came out today - let me rephrase, ISN'T EVEN OUT -. And the 5850 has such good overclockability that it can exceed a 5870. Yet a 5850 is what? $320 and a 480 is $500. This is of course strictly gamewise and not counting any thing like eyefinity or whatever, because I am sure they'll do better at those insane resolutions because of a higher memory and memory bandwidth!

 

[mxthunder]

Nothing really surprises me about these cards. I figured after all the wait and delays, they would be a little bit more expensive, and perform a bit better, but this is typical for nvidia. They always have a little more expensive cards, with a bit better performance. Add in the folding capabilities, and physx, and they make for a temping purchase. I am really going to try and hold off on buying one, but its going to be hard.

 

[baris_]

Nothing really surprises me about these cards. I figured after all the wait and delays, they would be a little bit more expensive, and perform a bit better, but this is typical for nvidia. They always have a little more expensive cards, with a bit better performance. Add in the folding capabilities, and physx, and they make for a temping purchase. I am really going to try and hold off on buying one, but its going to be hard.

Always a bit better? Because they're half a year behind. They shouldn't get any credit for it to be honest.

 

[diaz]

I wouldnt discard the GTX 480 just yet. Sure it is not impressing the crap out of you now against the 5870, but you have to consider 2 things:

1. Drivers are still very young. IMO, expect maybe 5-10% overall performance over the next year.

2. Architecture: Current tests show that the GTX 480's strengths are in more complex calculations, such as texturing unit calculations, tessellation and geometry shaders. These come in handy in newer and upcoming games, including everything from DX9, to DX11. DX11 features being the card's forte.

-D

 

[theELVISCERATOR]

So far, its nice seeing pricing drop, but my 280 easily plays anything made YET, being pushed at 4.5 ghz....the telltale problem with ATI is still min framerate.....

 

[don'tknow]

Which site has the best/complete review you lads have seen? I thought the one from canucks was pretty good.

I'm finding HardOcp's to be one of the better reviews, for a few reasons. They don't go only by numbers and say things like "Omg Card X is getting +5 FPS over Card Y, whoaa Card Y just got destroyed!!", they actually describe the difference in how the games themselves feel within the gameplay. And they also tested SLI which seems to show some surprisingly good scaling, in most games at least.

One problem is they didn't test 1680x1050 (my res), but mostly 2560x1600 and 1920x1200 with high levels of AA; they tried to push the cards to the max and described how well each game felt playable with different levels of AA and how far they could go before it became unplayable.

Edit: Oh yes, they also show videos of watt use and heat in real-time while the cards are in furmark, with audio so you can hear how the fans sound at different speeds too.

In terms of what you get for what you pay, I think, the 5850 rules.. 5870 comes pretty close to GTX480 which just came out today - let me rephrase, ISN'T EVEN OUT -. And the 5850 has such good overclockability that it can exceed a 5870. Yet a 5850 is what? $320 and a 480 is $500. This is of course strictly gamewise and not counting any thing like eyefinity or whatever, because I am sure they'll do better at those insane resolutions because of a higher memory and memory bandwidth!

Yes, I figured that the 5850 especially with its OCability would still be up there close to the other top single GPU cards even after Fermi releases, and still among the best in price/performance ratio, which is why I bought it. Also assumed that Fermi wouldn't OC very well because of its heat + power issues and that seems to be how it is with the stock cooler.