Fermi comparison across reviews

GoldenTiger

GoldenTiger

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So there's a lot of hoopla about how it's only evenly matched with a 5870 while gobbling power... let's compare across many review sites, eh?

PRICE DIFFERENCE:

5870 costs 84% of a GTX480 ($420 on newegg vs. $500 on amazon). So a 16% price difference. Does the price/performance match? Sure looks it... yes it runs hot and gobbles power, but if that's the price for the performance: I sure don't care.

Found this on XS:


480vs5870final.png
 
Except its not $420 vs. $500, its $390-400 vs. $500, which makes it a ~25% price difference ON TOP OF the increased electricity costs, both from powering the thing and from the extra cooling needed to offset an additional 150w of heat in the room. All that for 7-14% performance improvement over a 6 month old card?

http://www.google.com/products?q=5870&hl=en&aq=f
 
kllrnohj said:
Except its not $420 vs. $500, its $390-400 vs. $500, which makes it a ~25% price difference ON TOP OF the increased electricity costs, both from powering the thing and from the extra cooling needed to offset an additional 150w of heat in the room. All that for 7-14% performance improvement over a 6 month old card?

http://www.google.com/products?q=5870&hl=en&aq=f
Click to expand...

Any decent brand on newegg or other reputable vendors is $400+10 ship or so right now with most at $420. Just showing that people saying "It barely matches! It's overpriced!" are being hyperbolic at best, since there's always a delta for the BEST card in performance/price: and in this case, it's hardly any, the only real price being the power draw.
 
Presenting 8 reviews is not enough considering the number of sites receiving cards...
 
Funny, that chart just confirms what most people were saying.. single digit leads without AA, 15% or so with AA... and almost all the reviews agree the gap narrows at 2560x1600.

And yet I STILL hear people trumpet the fact the card is 25% faster

GoldenTiger said:
Amazon ring a bell? Free shipping on orders above $25, or 2-day air for free if you're a Prime member.
Click to expand...

So... why use Newegg prices for the 5870 then? :rolleyes:
 
GoldenTiger said:
Any decent brand on newegg or other reputable vendors is $400+10 ship or so right now with most at $420. Just showing that people saying "It barely matches! It's overpriced!" are being hyperbolic at best, since there's always a delta for the BEST card in performance/price: and in this case, it's hardly any, the only real price being the power draw.
Click to expand...

Uh, no, click the link and find out. You can get a 5870 for $390 with free shipping. And you can't buy a GTX 480 at all, so that $500 price doesn't mean much.

But even if we go with the $420 price, what exactly made the 6 month wait worth it? Not a damn thing from what I'm seeing. Sure, the performance is about what you'd expect from the price, but its 6 months late and has freaking HUGE power draw (which costs $$$ to run)
 
That 480 won't be out for another 2 weeks. The marketplace has driven the ATI price up not the manufacturing cost. The more realistic price comparison when both are available to purchase is $400 to $500. On top of that, ATI has likely reduced there manufacturing costs in the last 6 months which means their MSRP could drop lower. With competition the market price will hopefully finally drop below MSRP.
 
brownkc said:
That 480 won't be out for another 2 weeks. The marketplace has driven the ATI price up not the manufacturing cost. The more realistic price comparison when both are available to purchase is $400 to $500. On top of that, ATI has likely reduced there manufacturing costs in the last 6 months which means their MSRP could drop lower. With competition the market price will hopefully finally drop below MSRP.
Click to expand...

MSRP for the 5870 (and what I paid) is $380, which makes the GTX 480 30% more expensive if you compare MSRPs. GoldenTiger (who preordered his GTX 480 before the reviews came out) obviously couldn't use that for his comparison ;)
 
kllrnohj said:
MSRP for the 5870 (and what I paid) is $380, which makes the GTX 480 30% more expensive if you compare MSRPs. GoldenTiger (who preordered his GTX 480 before the reviews came out) obviously couldn't use that for his comparison ;)
Click to expand...

If you can't buy it for that, what's it matter what deals were in the past?
 
Golden Tiger, fermi's knight in shinning armor!

Please tell me you at least own stock in nvidia.
 
kllrnohj said:
But even if we go with the $420 price, what exactly made the 6 month wait worth it? Not a damn thing from what I'm seeing. Sure, the performance is about what you'd expect from the price, but its 6 months late and has freaking HUGE power draw (which costs $$$ to run)
Click to expand...

Well I think he had a 5870 at one point.

Obviously buying a 5870 6 months ago is a no brainer in hindsight. I don't think the gtx 480 is a terrible buy in terms of price / performance (power/heat aside)... but not 6 months after you could have had the 5870.

Of course nvidia was forced to price the GTX 480 at $500 (they probably wanted a higher price tag) taking into account the current market, it's not a surprise.

However, I think everyone should be reminded of how the 5870/5850 debuted... It trounced the gtx 285 and was priced... LOWER. I don't ever expect nvidia to force ATI to drop prices, it'll probably always be the other way around.
 
The 480 is the fastest single gpu card going for now. Of course all AMD has to do to match it is get the 5870 up to around 1.1Ghz, and add a bit more, and faster ram. I wonder if they can do that for $80 should they feel like it? Not that it really matters to me. I purchased a 5870 for $380 a couple weeks after launch, and doubt I will be in the market for an upgrade card for at least another 6 months. I would rather ignore the 470 at this point. While the 480 is a decent card, that may become a great card as the drivers mature, the 470 seems a really bad deal at the price point they are positioning it.


GoldenTiger said:
If you can't buy it for that, what's it matter what deals were in the past?
Click to expand...

You can't have it both ways. You can't complain about him comparing a past price to the present, while you sit back and compare a future price to the present. Well, you can, but people will point out the hypocrisy of it. To be honest, I expect a considerable, ($20 to $50), new card on the block, over MSRP premium on the 480, and a similar sized price cut on the 5870. But, if we really want to compare prices, we will have to do it when both cards are actually available and being sold at whatever prices end up being.
 
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ClearM4 said:
My thoughts. The HD5870 can easily be had for $400
Click to expand...

It's still 80% of the cost then, if it makes you happy, for 80% of the performance. What's wrong with that?

Intel_Hydralisk said:
Well I think he had a 5870 at one point.

Obviously buying a 5870 6 months ago is a no brainer in hindsight. I don't think the gtx 480 is a terrible buy in terms of price / performance (power/heat aside)... but not 6 months after you could have had the 5870.

Of course nvidia was forced to price the GTX 480 at $500 (they probably wanted a higher price tag) taking into account the current market, it's not a surprise.

However, I think everyone should be reminded of how the 5870/5850 debuted... It trounced the gtx 285 and was priced... LOWER. I don't ever expect nvidia to force ATI to drop prices, it'll probably always be the other way around.
Click to expand...

I had a 5870 from launch through a week ago when I sold it to wait for the GTX 480 for ~$370 minus fees and shipping to the buyer on eBay. I just want the fastest single-GPU card, period... and the cost/performance ratio isn't much different from ATI. Yes, it's hotter, yes it's more power-hungry, but that doesn't affect performance. Yes, it also is late... but I didn't wait for it, I hopped to it once it was almost out :) so no skin off my nose on that front. Additionally, in my systems, I wasn't having a good experience with the 5870 drivers, so I wanted to switch back regardless to an nV solution. I agree that nVidia doesn't seem to be aiming for forcing ATI down so much as launching flagships at high prices, these last couple launches (GTX 280, GTX 480). In short, it's a good card, just not the kind of "omg it skipped a gen!" performance everyone seems to expect for some reason.
 
GoldenTiger said:
If you can't buy it for that, what's it matter what deals were in the past?
Click to expand...

The 5870's MSRP is $380 vs. the GTX 480's $500

The 5870's price for a card that you can buy *right now* is $390 (w/ free shipping). The GTX 480's price for a card that you can buy *right now* is unavailable since you can't buy the GTX 480 *right now*. But the preorder price is $500.

So you can either compare MSRP vs. MSRP ($380 vs. $500) or you can compare purchase price vs. preorder price ($390 vs. $500). Neither one gives you your $420 vs. $500 comparison.
 
kllrnohj said:
Its 80% of the cost for 90% of the performance.

Did you even read the chart YOU posted?
Click to expand...

80% of $500 is $400, your purported 5870 cost.

So a 5870 is 80% of the price for (EDIT) 87% of the performance of the GTX 480... sounds like you didn't read the chart, actually. Also note that in many games it exceeds this number by a large margin, namely big-name titles.

kllrnohj said:
The 5870's MSRP is $380 vs. the GTX 480's $500

The 5870's price for a card that you can buy *right now* is $390 (w/ free shipping). The GTX 480's price for a card that you can buy *right now* is unavailable since you can't buy the GTX 480 *right now*. But the preorder price is $500.

So you can either compare MSRP vs. MSRP ($380 vs. $500) or you can compare purchase price vs. preorder price ($390 vs. $500). Neither one gives you your $420 vs. $500 comparison.
Click to expand...

You can buy a GTX 480 RIGHT NOW for $500 shipped: http://www.amazon.com/Zotac-GeForce-384-bit-Graphics-ZT-40101-10P/dp/B003DTKU82/ and it will arrive on release. Are you trying to insinuate that Amazon is a scam site? You can buy a 5870 RIGHT NOW for $400-420ish shipped from reputable vendors like Amazon/newegg/mwave. I don't care what the MSRP is, because it isn't what you can buy it at. Find a 5870 for $380 shipped and that's a valid argument: argue it SHOULD be $380, and it's not a valid argument, because you can't get it for that. The cheapest 5870 on Amazon is $415 shipped: http://www.amazon.com/Visiontek-Radeon-HD5870-Express-900298/dp/B002QEBGG0/, with the cheapest newegg one (still a bad brand for US warranty, but it's there...) is $420: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161301 . They have one Visiontek that is on-sale for $395 after a $15 instant rebate which may last a day, but that's it.
 
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GoldenTiger said:
80% of $500 is $400, your purported 5870 cost.

So a 5870 is 80% of the price for 85% of the performance of the GTX 480... sounds like you didn't read the chart, actually. Also note that in many games it exceeds this 15% number by a large margin, namely big-name titles.
Click to expand...

Welll... this is just the math OCD in me, but technically 100% performance vs. 114.84%, is 100/114.84 which is 87%.

Another point of interest though... in the reviews I saw, the GTX 480 actually dropped in relative performance at 2560x1600 compared to 1920x1200. If I recall correctly, GoldenTiger was the one who got rid of his 5870 because he didn't like its performance at 2560x1600. I really can't be bothered to scour the reviews and tally up the 2560x1600 numbers, but maybe GoldenTiger can.
 
GoldenTiger said:
80% of $500 is $400, your purported 5870 cost.

So a 5870 is 80% of the price for 85% of the performance of the GTX 480... sounds like you didn't read the chart, actually. Also note that in many games it exceeds this 15% number by a large margin, namely big-name titles.
Click to expand...

The chart shows 7% and 15% - which gives you about ~90% of the performance overall. And in an equally large number of games it doesn't exceed 15%, indeed it some big-name titles it loses. Amazing how averages work :p

You can buy a GTX 480 RIGHT NOW for $500 shipped: http://www.amazon.com/Zotac-GeForce-384-bit-Graphics-ZT-40101-10P/dp/B003DTKU82/ and it will arrive on release. Are you trying to insinuate that Amazon is a scam site? You can buy a 5870 RIGHT NOW for $400-420ish shipped from reputable vendors like Amazon/newegg/mwave. I don't care what the MSRP is, because it isn't what you can buy it at. Find a 5870 for $380 shipped and that's a valid argument: argue it SHOULD be $380, and it's not a valid argument, because you can't get it for that.
Click to expand...

You can still buy the 5870 for $390 w/ free shipping. And you can't buy the GTX 480 *right now*, you can preorder it. You could also compare the price of 5870s that are out of stock. Its basically the same thing. I'm not saying Amazon is a scam site, I'm saying the GTX 480 isn't available.
 
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GoldenTiger said:
I'm just pointing out the facts, and warding the fanATIcs away ;).
Click to expand...

But your not. I was actually looking forward to buying the next Nvidia cards. However, I'm not going to put anything in my system that makes me rethink PSU output and heat. My cords are neat and shrink wrapped I'm not going to change out that PSU just for a 15% performance boost when I could achieve the same or more with a different product without changing the PSU.

An overclock of the 5870 or the 5850 can easily bring it inline with those cards and would still would be under in heat and power output. 93C isn't leaving much in terms of an overclock at all. Toss in 3 monitor gaming which you need 2 to do with Nvidia and it just doesn't make much sense unless you have to have them.

While I run Linux so I kind of have to have them from a driver standpoint, I can wait until later or until the 260 I have finally dies.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Welll... this is just the math OCD in me, but technically 100% performance vs. 114.84%, is 100/114.84 which is 87%.

Another point of interest though... in the reviews I saw, the GTX 480 actually dropped in relative performance at 2560x1600 compared to 1920x1200.
Click to expand...

You are correct, and it does drop in relative performance. According to one review:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/30297-nvidia-geforce-gtx-480-review-14.html

HWC 480 review: BattleField Bad Company 2 said:
According to our conversations with NVIDIA, their current beta driver (and the one which will be launched with the card) exhibits an issue in this game (and DiRT 2) where framerates take a massive plunge at 2560 x 1600 resolution. They expect a fix to be forthcoming sometime in the weeks following launch.
Click to expand...

So, hopefully it'll improve: we saw the 5870 go up nicely with the 10.3 drivers, and Fermi is a much more immature architecture: I'm sure given a week or two of being released we'll see it gain some, and hopefully those bugs with 2560x1600 which may affect other games as well go away.
 
kllrnohj said:
The chart shows 7% and 15% - which gives you about ~90% of the performance overall. And in an equally large number of games it doesn't exceed 15%, indeed it some big-name titles it loses. Amazing how averages work :p
Click to expand...

The 7% was with no AA... if you get a 5870 / GTX 480 and play with no AA on a single screen, then you're doing something wrong. Reviews have said that the GTX 480 showed less of a hit with AA than the 5870, possibly due to more RAM. This would be interesting in triplehead since right now I literally can't turn AA on at all at 5760x1080 in most games.
 
I think if you are looking for absolute performance from a single gpu, and don't have a 5870 then I don't think there is anything wrong with purchasing a 480. Power consumption is high but so is the performance of the card.

470 on the other hand seems like an absolute flop. I'm just sorely disappointed in this card.
 
QuadMe said:
I think if you are looking for absolute performance from a single gpu, and don't have a 5870 then I don't think there is anything wrong with purchasing a 480. Power consumption is high but so is the performance of the card.

470 on the other hand seems like an absolute flop. I'm just sorely disappointed in this card.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much how I feel... on both points (470 and 480).
 
QuadMe said:
I think if you are looking for absolute performance from a single gpu, and don't have a 5870 then I don't think there is anything wrong with purchasing a 480. Power consumption is high but so is the performance of the card.

470 on the other hand seems like an absolute flop. I'm just sorely disappointed in this card.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Intel_Hydralisk said:
The 7% was with no AA... if you get a 5870 / GTX 480 and play with no AA on a single screen, then you're doing something wrong. Reviews have said that the GTX 480 showed less of a hit with AA than the 5870, possibly due to more RAM. This would be interesting in triplehead since right now I literally can't turn AA on at all at 5760x1080 in most games.
Click to expand...

Very true, but the chart is also only 1920x1200. AA starts becoming more of a pipe dream at 5760x1200 - which is what I game at :)
 
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Digital Viper-X- said:
http://www.ncixus.com/search/?categoryid=0&q=5870


$383 what?
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Plus:

FedEx Express Saver USA $17.60 Usually takes 3+ business days to ship. * plus transit time

= total of $383.72 + 17.60 = $401.32. Your point? It's still $400.

That is the cheapest, slowest shipping option available as well: to get to basic air shipping is another $12. So, uh, what was your point there? You just proved mine, I guess?
 
GoldenTiger said:
Plus:

FedEx Express Saver USA $17.60 Usually takes 3+ business days to ship. * plus transit time

= total of $383.72 + 17.60 = $401.32. Your point? It's still $400.

That is the cheapest, slowest shipping option available as well: to get to basic air shipping is another $12. So, uh, what was your point there? You just proved mine, I guess?
Click to expand...

I just have to chime in and say that alot of the nV guys at nVnews are going w/ ATI after seeing the reviews......

I was curious as to whether the hate on nVidia's gts470/480 release was isolated to several sets of forums and it appears even many nVidia fans are terrible dissapointed.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Plus:

FedEx Express Saver USA $17.60 Usually takes 3+ business days to ship. * plus transit time

= total of $383.72 + 17.60 = $401.32. Your point? It's still $400.

That is the cheapest, slowest shipping option available as well: to get to basic air shipping is another $12. So, uh, what was your point there? You just proved mine, I guess?
Click to expand...

It didn't "prove" your point at all, because you can still get a 5870 for $390 shipped. Which means you can't prove your point since its already proven false.
 
To the guy who created this post:

You've made it completely clear to me that upgrading my GTX 275 to a GTX 480 is hands-down the correct move.

I'll be getting GTX 295 performance numbers, in a DX 11, single solution card, for around five hundred dollars. That is a sweet upgrade from my 275.

I think it's worth noting that the performance gains of the GTX 480 you've demonstrated in this thread become even more exaggerated at lower resolutions, but that at higher resolutions the 5870 and the GTX 480 become more in-line with one another. Great for me, because I game at 1920x1080. :)

People have been calling me a fan boy because I was excited by these numbers.

That's ridiculous. Anybody can plainly see that in many cases the GTX 480 is just plain kicking the 5870's ass. I was prepared to pay a little more for the 5970, but you'd be a bloody fool to do that with these benchmark numbers.

Hell, the GTX 480 is even beating the 5970 in some cases - the recently released Just Cause 2 is the perfect example of what can happen when you have a multi-GPU card, since the GTX 480 is almost besting it by a whopping 20 frames per second.
 
Dear god the price gouging on the 480s. Thanks goldentiger you'll singlehandedly make some reseller way richer. :D
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WabeWalker said:
To the guy who created this post:

You've made it completely clear to me that upgrading my GTX 275 to a GTX 480 is hands-down the correct move.

I'll be getting GTX 295 performance numbers, in a DX 11, single solution card, for around five hundred dollars. That is a sweet upgrade from my 275.

I think it's worth noting that the performance gains of the GTX 480 you've demonstrated in this thread become even more exaggerated at lower resolutions, but that at higher resolutions the 5870 and the GTX 480 become more in-line with one another. Great for me, because I game at 1920x1080. :)

People have been calling me a fan boy because I was excited by these numbers.

That's ridiculous. Anybody can plainly see that in many cases the GTX 480 is just plain kicking the 5870's ass. I was prepared to pay a little more for the 5970, but you'd be a bloody fool to do that with these benchmark numbers.

Hell, the GTX 480 is even beating the 5970 in some cases - the recently released Just Cause 2 is the perfect example of what can happen when you have a multi-GPU card, since the GTX 480 is almost besting it by a whopping 20 frames per second.
Click to expand...

Catalyst AI doesn't have a profile for it just yet. I would bet the same would be happening with SLI'd 480's. Plus, to get the full potential of the 5970, you'd need to overclock it to stock 5870 clocks. You'd be a bloody fool not to do that. They downclocked it to keep it within pci-e spec.
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