GTX 480 Official Reviews Thread!! Post links here

[nightelph]

I feel kinda disappointed with all the numbers, I expected the card to do better.

 

[Douken]

Guys, if you notice, you remember how after 1-2 years your current generation card didn't do good with new games. Now, a 8800GT like I have runs decently any game. I blame consoles. I remember how upgrades in DirectX translated to better looking games. But since DirectX 9 I haven't seen much difference. Is like games are bounded to consoles (DirectX 9) and we aren't getting the goodies anymore. You can see what Im saying by looking at reviews, cards are being pushed to insane resolutions because showing resolutions like 1280x1024 or 1680x1050 won't show a difference. Is like instead of graphics they are just upgrading video cards so you can play at higher res, but not higher graphics. This tendency began IMO when the XBOX 360 and PS3 arrived, after that, next generations of video cards can run any game. (8000 series, HD 2000) I say until next gen consoles arrived, we'll see the same level of graphics with no major improvements save 2-3 games. So, in the end, buying a GTX480 just makes your e-pennys bigger, and that's it.

 

[baris_]

DiRT 2 looks better than any console game I have ever seen and I think that's pretty blatant.

 

[Douken]

DiRT 2 looks better than any console game I have ever seen and I think that's pretty blatant.

Any PC game looks better than consoles, even Half Life, but I ain't discussing that.

 

[JDawggS316]

So as the self-proclaimed "casual enthusiast", and with a build coming up as soon as I can sell my Alienware would 2 x ATI 5870's be of a greater value than 1 x GTX 480?

Or...

Would 1 x ATI 5970 beat all of the above?

 

[don'tknow]

Guys, if you notice, you remember how after 1-2 years your current generation card didn't do good with new games. Now, a 8800GT like I have runs decently any game. I blame consoles. I remember how upgrades in DirectX translated to better looking games. But since DirectX 9 I haven't seen much difference. Is like games are bounded to consoles (DirectX 9) and we aren't getting the goodies anymore. You can see what Im saying by looking at reviews, cards are being pushed to insane resolutions because showing resolutions like 1280x1024 or 1680x1050 won't show a difference. Is like instead of graphics they are just upgrading video cards so you can play at higher res, but not higher graphics. This tendency began IMO when the XBOX 360 and PS3 arrived, after that, next generations of video cards can run any game. (8000 series, HD 2000) I say until next gen consoles arrived, we'll see the same level of graphics with no major improvements save 2-3 games. So, in the end, buying a GTX480 just makes your e-pennys bigger, and that's it.

That's what has been happening for the past several years; consoles are increasingly more in 'control' of how game graphics evolve. Or, more like almost not evolve. There will be a few games to try to 'push' for sales of next gen GPU's (such as Metro 2033 to push sales of GTX480's), but the vast majority of games (99%+) have been and will be based around console hardware, with small improvements for the PC versions. Well, at least DX11 allowed for much easier multi-threaded coding and with its backwards compatibility, any semi-decently well informed game developers should be using DX11 instead of DX9 for their main development platform now (with a few exceptions such as id Software using OpenGL).

So as the self-proclaimed "casual enthusiast", and with a build coming up as soon as I can sell my Alienware would 2 x ATI 5870's be of a greater value than 1 x GTX 480?

Or...

Would 1 x ATI 5970 beat all of the above?

I would say wait til the new 5970's release soon. The 4GB ones with better coolers and higher clock speeds. See if their price isn't ridiculously high. Most likely better to (assuming you're concerned about price : performance) go the 2x 5870 route, but wait and see what happens; even if unlikely, there's some chance that ATI may even reduce the 5870's and regular 5970 prices by a little, we'll see.

 

[xilix]

Mark my words, if you build another system, you will not see any practical performance increase over what you have now. It won't be noticeable. The only reason you would see the increase is because the new rig would have better gfx cards.

Simply adding a solid state drive for your OS and most important games, and a new gfx card would net you way, way more performance than building an entirely new rig.

If you have the cash flow and build rigs every year, then OK, I wish I was you and more power to ya, but if you have any instinct to preserve money, then building a new rig would be pretty pointless considering what you have right now.

 

[don'tknow]

I'm guessing he meant that selling the Alienware and building a new system with similar specs would actually earn him more $ (since Alienware are known to be expensive and selling it slightly below retail price shouldn't be hard) to put towards a better GPU in the new system, so he'd end up losing 0$ but gaining performance.

 

[JDawggS316]

Well I would like to build again for a performance gain and to water cool my system. I get bored easily. This isn't to say I have a lot of money either lol

I would like to get the following for a new rig:

Motherboard: ASUS P6X58D Premium
CPU: Core i7 975 Extreme Edition (water-cooled)
Memory: 6GB Kingston Hyper X T1 2000MHz
GPU: Undecided - ATI 5970 or GTX 480
Case: Corsair 800D
PSU: 1000W
SSD - Intel 80GB

I know it will cost a little even once I've sold my Alienware but I'm looking to build again and gain some performance along the way.

 

[BossBorot]

you can forget about a dual chip card; without a shrink it simply wont happen with this power/temp/noise envelope

I'm glad to see that nVidia launched a performance wise competitive card this round so we don't have price gouging from one side (like 9800pro and g80 eras). However I don't think that these cards will force ATi to drop prices all that much if at all unfortunately.

 

[diaz]

you can forget about a dual chip card; without a shrink it simply wont happen with this power/temp/noise envelope

I'm glad to see that nVidia launched a performance wise competitive card this round so we don't have price gouging from one side (like 9800pro and g80 eras). However I don't think that these cards will force ATi to drop prices all that much if at all.

I dont even think a dual card solution would even stay within 2 slots without a shrink either. Can you imagine a 500watt card?

Even lowering the clocks to GTX470 speeds, your still looking at a 400watt card. In this case, a 3 slot card would make most sense.

 

[jgv115]

Well I would like to build again for a performance gain and to water cool my system. I get bored easily. This isn't to say I have a lot of money either lol

I would like to get the following for a new rig:

Motherboard: ASUS P6X58D Premium
CPU: Core i7 975 Extreme Edition (water-cooled)
Memory: 6GB Kingston Hyper X T1 2000MHz
GPU: Undecided - ATI 5970 or GTX 480
Case: Corsair 800D
PSU: 1000W
SSD - Intel 80GB

I know it will cost a little even once I've sold my Alienware but I'm looking to build again and gain some performance along the way.

Get the 980X instead

 

[Hardin]

Guys, if you notice, you remember how after 1-2 years your current generation card didn't do good with new games. Now, a 8800GT like I have runs decently any game. I blame consoles. I remember how upgrades in DirectX translated to better looking games. But since DirectX 9 I haven't seen much difference. Is like games are bounded to consoles (DirectX 9) and we aren't getting the goodies anymore. You can see what Im saying by looking at reviews, cards are being pushed to insane resolutions because showing resolutions like 1280x1024 or 1680x1050 won't show a difference. Is like instead of graphics they are just upgrading video cards so you can play at higher res, but not higher graphics. This tendency began IMO when the XBOX 360 and PS3 arrived, after that, next generations of video cards can run any game. (8000 series, HD 2000) I say until next gen consoles arrived, we'll see the same level of graphics with no major improvements save 2-3 games. So, in the end, buying a GTX480 just makes your e-pennys bigger, and that's it.

I don't agree. I can max out mass effect 2 and mw2 and they look great, but I can't max out bad company 2 or call of pripyat. I can get close, but if I tried to max it out I wouldn't even get 30 fps.

 

[Omsion]

Well, consensus on gaming is pretty clear by now (aka 470 is worthless at that price, 480 is good but you pay for it in $/heat/noise).

So what about the other stuff Fermi was directed at...GPGPU? No one seems to have approached that yet in depth, not that I expect many to be able to do so.

 

[Douken]

Well I would like to build again for a performance gain and to water cool my system. I get bored easily. This isn't to say I have a lot of money either lol

I would like to get the following for a new rig:

Motherboard: ASUS P6X58D Premium
CPU: Core i7 975 Extreme Edition (water-cooled)
Memory: 6GB Kingston Hyper X T1 2000MHz
GPU: Undecided - ATI 5970 or GTX 480
Case: Corsair 800D
PSU: 1000W
SSD - Intel 80GB

I know it will cost a little even once I've sold my Alienware but I'm looking to build again and gain some performance along the way.

IMO

Motherboard: ASUS P6X58D Premium U_U..
CPU: Core i7 975 Extreme Edition (water-cooled) U_U!!............................
Memory: 6GB Kingston Hyper X T1 2000MHz
GPU: Undecided - ATI 5970 or GTX 480 u_u...
Case: Corsair 800D
PSU: 1000W U_U!!.............................................
SSD - Intel 80GB

I don't agree. I can max out mass effect 2 and mw2 and they look great, but I can't max out bad company 2 or call of pripyat. I can get close, but if I tried to max it out I wouldn't even get 30 fps.

I'll make a sloppy question. Do those games look better than Crysis? If not, they are simply bad coded or since they're new the graphics drivers aren't mature. I heard from the BC2 Senior Designer "CPU is more important than gpu in BC2 Hey that rhymes!". And now that I remember those 2 games you mentioned are more CPU biased than GPU. And BTW, at what resolution you're playing?

 

[don'tknow]

I don't agree. I can max out mass effect 2 and mw2 and they look great, but I can't max out bad company 2 or call of pripyat. I can get close, but if I tried to max it out I wouldn't even get 30 fps.

Must be some kind of driver problem, or something not running properly. I max out BC2 with my system very easily, but prefer playing with mostly high + a few tweaked settings and bloom off. Not really all max but a combination of different settings for best visual/performance ratio. With my inferior CPU I get 110 fps avg. in 32 player servers, and my GPU isn't a hell lot better either.

 

[ratbuddy]

Man, some of those reviews are really shoddily done. Seems like some of the sites just went through the motions and collected their free GTX 480. ExtremeTech, I'm looking at you.

Legit Reviews needs to buy themselves a 2560x1600 monitor if they want to be taken seriously as a GPU reviewer.

The 'Tweakdown' link in the OP is just a press release, not a review.

I'm fed up enough with sites which can't be bothered to test more than a few cards and a few games. They just aren't worth including in my comparison.

edit: Metro 2033 is definitely the new Crysis. It's eating cards alive. I can't even include the results from Tom's because the 5-series Radeons ran under 1fps at higher resolutions.

 

[Hardin]

No there's no driver problems here. I'm playing on 1920x1080 and I haven't played Crysis in years. Crysis did look good, but it wasn't some mystical this is the best looking game ever. don'tknow a 5850 is a much better card than what I have. Call of Pripyat might be more boring looking than Crysis with all the brown but Bad Company 2 has beautiful jungles.

 

[Marshmallow64]

Man, some of those reviews are really shoddily done. Seems like some of the sites just went through the motions and collected their free GTX 480. ExtremeTech, I'm looking at you.

Lol I agree, extremetech just compared 2 gpus and used a fairly simple excel spreadsheet graph. Tsk tsk.

 

[nightelph]

Metro 2033 is definitely the new Crysis. It's eating cards alive. I can't even include the results from Tom's because the 5-series Radeons ran under 1fps at higher resolutions.

Seriously? What engine does it run on? Playable maxed at 1920x1200?