[Tech News] Guru3D GTX 470/480 Review

[*Daedalus]

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforc...0-480-review/1

Yup, that'll be my next card. It might be more expensive, but where it does pull ahead, it pulls ahead a lot.

They sum it up pretty well in a paragraph on the final page:

Even so, when we tally up the results out of all titles tested, the GeForce GTX 480 wins nearly everywhere except in Anno 1404 and ironically 3DMark Vantage. There are scenarios where the GTX 480 is very close to the 5870, but there are also scenarios where the GTX 480 completely and utterly kicks the Radeon HD 5870 in the proverbial nuts. What surprised me was the fact that say from 1280x1024 up-to 1920x1200 NVIDIA seems stronger than the competition. And at 2560x1600 things tend to equalize a much more.

Funnily enough, in HardOCP's review, 480 SLI scales a LOT better than the 5970.

It must also be remembered that ATI have had months to refine their drivers while NVIDIA's cards are running betas.


Comments?

[Mr. Pedantic]

I have a comment: given that SLI is so good in Fermi and the rest of the card is merely mediocre, if you have the money then go with SLI. If you want a single card I'd still go with a 5870.

[kow_ciller]

Looks like the 5870 is running out of vmem at super-high res in comparison to the 480.

[Superfluous Curmudgeon]

Doesn't look half bad... I won't be surprised if prices change in the near-ish future...

[*The.Doctor]

My biggest problem with the 480/470 are how incredibly hot they get, and how much power they use. Anand has the 480 hitting 94C while playing Crysis, while the dual-GPU 5970 only hits 81C, while the 480 uses more power, and the 470 uses close to the 5970. They also say the fan on these is the loudest they have ever tested.

[Mr. Pedantic]

Yeah, the HardOCP review has some videos of the fan noise, and they are really loud. Granted, all of them are loud under furmark load, but Fermi is the loudest and even that doesn't stop them from having by far the hottest cards. EVGA's already advertising the cards with waterblocks instead of the normal air cooler, I expect them to make a killing from that, it's really the only way to go if you have more than one Fermi card.

[>Omen<]

From what I've read db is around 42 at load on the 480 with the stock 60% fan speed setting. Supposedly, adjusting it to 70% brings it down from 95c to 80c and is still within tolerable noise levels, depending on the case used of course.

I can't help but think after all I've read that they should have just came out with a 300 series with added units to compete with 5000s better, then kept R&D going on Fermi until they could make a working 32nm one. That would have solved most of the heat issues bringing the 480 down to maybe 200 TDP or less.

What forced their hand most no doubt is insisting on launching their DX11 line with this extremely radical architecture. Fermi seems to be a work in progress until they can shrink the die further.

[*The.Doctor]

Yeah, i think with a die shrink Fermi would have outright stomped the 5800's, but by the time a 32nm version is ready, ATI will either likely have the 5800 refresh cards out (5890 ect..), or the 6000 series ready to go. Also, i'm not sure if i'm buying those fan speed claims. Dropping 15C from just 10% more fan speed seems like a bit much.

The 480 is not even a full spec Fermi card. According to Anand, It has one shader cluster disabled to bring it to power use spec and manageable heat levels.

[*Daedalus]

Originally Posted by *The.Doctor

The 480 is not even a full spec Fermi card. According to Anand, It has one shader cluster disabled to bring it to power use spec and manageable heat levels.

The shader cluster was disabled so that NVIDIA would - will - have enough cards on launch day. The 512SP version will be released, some time in Q3 I believe. It won't much hotter than this card, and it'll draw 295W. Think 260-216.

[kow_ciller]

Originally Posted by The_Daedalus

The shader cluster was disabled so that NVIDIA MIGHT have enough cards on launch day. The 512SP version will be released, some time in Q3 I believe. It won't much hotter than this card, and it'll draw 295W. Think 260-216.

Changed for you

Judging by the amount of people that might buy it along with supply it might look to be more of a paper launch on the 12th. Will have to see though and see if there are actually cards in stock or if they will sell out in 10mins like the 58xx cards did.

And "much" hotter isn't really a good sounding thing. Especially considering how much heat this thing already throws off. Even 20w more might push it over the edge. Nvidia start throwing out cards with a 3x120 rad kit and full cover block in the price if they keep it up.

I want to see some REAL overclocking from these cards. I've heard guys are having problems keeping this thing cool enough with LN2. FFS if LN2 cant keep it cold enough to bench properly. But supposedly if you can get it cool enough they scale extremely well with additional core frequency. Too bad the cards need to be -100*C to clock.