GeForce GTX 480 Real World Temperatures & Sound @ [H]

King Icewind said:
I'm just afraid ill be missing out on Physx. :(
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I was afraid of missing out on PhysX, too. But then I just put a floor fan in my study blowing scraps of paper and cloth around, and I get roughly the same gameplay experience, with better FPS.
 
Balthazor said:
I was afraid of missing out on PhysX, too. But then I just put a floor fan in my study blowing scraps of paper and cloth around, and I get roughly the same gameplay experience, with better FPS.
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Bwhaha. Classic
 
Awesomedude said:
I won't argue that its late

But does a card coming out late make it a worse card? Everyone keeps saying ZOMG IT'S 6 MONTHS LATE ZOMG!!

I don't see how its relevant now that the card is out (sort of). 6 months late doesn't change its performance. You can talk about heat and noise all you want, but the 6 months late doesn't make it a worse card. I don't know why people keep bringing it up.
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Because I'm a functional thinker these days. I look at performance as a function of time, and while it's true that in reality the function is discrete (cards aren't released continuously) there should always be a direct correlation between cards coming out later and cards performing better (at the high end of the market). Any time a card comes out six months later it should perform better, period. But I'm forced to interpolate backwards and when I do that with the 480 I see a card that, had it been released 6 months ago, wouldn't have outperformed the 5000 series AT ALL.

Likewise, if there was a refresh of the 5000 series now (I would liken it to the comparison of the 4870 with the 4890) it would perform on par with the 480, at the very least.
 
Dark Shroud said:
Because of "life cycles." Many of us for various reasons did not upgrade at the launch of the 5800 series. Now it looks like ATI will be releasing their 6000 series later this year. Add into that Nvidia EOLing their GTX 200 series cards leaving little to no competition so prices have gone up. So we pay a higher price now or wait for the next series. Some people can wait, I'm dying on a 4760.

Unless Nvidia can pull off a miracle they're going to have more delays while ATI rolls out refreshes and a new series. Which will probably mean higher prices for us.
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Not entirely sure why anyone thinks the HD6XXX series will be released this year.
 
NoOther said:
Seriously? I mean seriously? You have got to be kidding me. You know it isn't April 1st anymore right? I guess you should be concerned about your HVAC vents, your dryer, your hair dryers, your oven, your stove, your TV, etc. etc. Really if someone is that concerned, why put it behind the sofa? Why not build an enclosure for it, put it in a desk, or put it in an AV rack?

I think this just means more people that want to use an SLI configuration in a tight case or MB should consider water cooling. I have been using it very successfully for 2 and 3 card SLI configurations.

Also for those comparing it to the FX5800, it wasn't long ago that there was another card with high heat and a problematic fan causing errors...the HD5850. All card manufacturers have to adjust to the heat output of their new devices and try to compensate the best they can. More power generally means more heat and the same cooling solutions will not continue to work. In addition both the manufacturer and the third party vendors will start coming up with better cooling solutions, just like they did with the HD5850.
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5850 have high heat? what are you smoking :confused:

this thing is even cooler than 5870....
 
This is just sloppy engineering. 250W TDP, 50+C idle, nearly 30 watts more of waste energy at idle than the corresponding ATI part. A fan that's audible all the time?

I just don't get it. People want quieter/cooler components. That's why all of these class D etc. high efficiency amps are really taking a foothold in the home audio market. What if I want to use this in a media room with a projector? Combined with the projector heat and all the other components, I would need additional cooling and my noise floor would be horrendous. The heat dump from this piece of crap would probably make the projector fan go bonkers. One of the great things about my old 8800GTS was the fact that it was quiet most of the time... even overclocked. I could get it to kick up playing certain games, but that was generally rare.
 
THANKS Kyle for another great review.. although as other have mentioned, a summary table of your findings would have been nice. Didn't like the video just abruptly ending and missed your "happy overclocking" signoff!!

WOW.. entertaining thread!! With all the hatred filled comments and personal attacks, you would have thought this was a thread about Apple!!

To quote Devo, just glad we have "freedom of choice"!! Pick the card that bests suits your needs and don't care what others think!! All Kyle or any other website can do is give you the facts to go about making an intelligent choice on where to spend your hard earned $.. sometimes personal statements and opinions are beneficial in making those decisions but, it comes down to each of us figuring out the pros and cons, and deciding which facts weigh the most in determining what to buy.

After reading this thread, I was reminded of the beginning of Disney's Peter Pan.. "All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again." Probably in 6 months or so!!

peanut_butter_salmonella1.jpg
 
It's a big bummer no matter how I look at it. I can't stand integrated soundcards, and how do you make room on 99% of the SLI/Cf motherboards out there for a PCI soundcard? You install it in the bottom.

And then a dedicated ethernet card, because integrated nics are shit too, just a bit less than integraded sound but still worth replacing with proper hardware.

And you need SLI to use NvFinity in the first place. How do you say it. Yes, "Doh!"
 
MrLonghair said:
It's a big bummer no matter how I look at it. I can't stand integrated soundcards, and how do you make room on 99% of the SLI/Cf motherboards out there for a PCI soundcard? You install it in the bottom.

And then a dedicated ethernet card, because integrated nics are shit too, just a bit less than integraded sound but still worth replacing with proper hardware.

And you need SLI to use NvFinity in the first place. How do you say it. Yes, "Doh!"
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There are motherboards on the way designed for what you are describing like the Asus Rampage III Extreme. All the slots are double spaced and it's what I'll be using for my new 3x SLI GTX 480 rig. Though it's still possible that I'll be using some other GPU solution, perhaps even an AMD set up.
 
Breath_of_the_Dying said:
If it helps, my 5870 idles at 59C running 3 1920x1200 displays running 10.2 i think. I live in Dallas, Texas, so running those 3 monitors and my PC I notice lot of heat in my room even as we approach spring weather. Not sure if there is a thermal difference between running extended desktops and eyefinity profiles, I'll test it out tonight
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480 runs higher clock speed in dual display then in single, that was intented to decrease flickering.
 
Balthazor said:
I was afraid of missing out on PhysX, too. But then I just put a floor fan in my study blowing scraps of paper and cloth around, and I get roughly the same gameplay experience, with better FPS.
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This needs quoting again, great reply.

On topic somewhat, I just hope for nvidia's sake that these heat issues do not affect the entire series. I know some people will be looking for these in notebook's or passively cooled versions of low-mid range desktops and this does not bode well for them
 
My 5970 is idling at 70c but the damn case temp is 110F. This Cosmos case sucks for air flow. Still I don't hear it and have not issues, so I really don't give a shit.
 
Just checked my 5870, idling at 44 C. I already hate the heat this thing puts out in the computer room. Especially because my kids leave it on all the time. Not sure why anyone would buy this new Nvidia card but it's your money.
 
shansoft said:
5850 have high heat? what are you smoking :confused:

this thing is even cooler than 5870....
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Sorry, I meant to type 4850 there. When it first came out, they had some problem with the fan and fan control on the card, causing it to overheat frequently. They later put out a revision to the card to fix this problem. Also in the CPU market, AMD was well known for their chips that would scorch themselves to death. It is just a matter of tweaking things until you get it right when you put out a branch new architecture.
 
Thanks for the informed review of the temps on the 400 series cards Kyle.

Alot of butthurt in this thread over some painful truth. I can't believe how hot this card gets .. I wonder if around the summer time will we be seeing alot of forum posts crying of "470-480 card failing" and temps being the direct cause. I'm glad I didn't wait to grab one of these cards , they perform very well but at that those temps it just seems impossible for there NOT to be long term damage to the chipset.
 
For me the heat is the pretty well equal to the heat that my BFG 8800GTX puts out. I runs around 89c under load and has been doing it for as long as I have owned it. (Bought it about 2 weeks after release)

I am going with an SLI setup for the fact that only Nvidia currently supports three D-DVI output.

I have been itching to try out water-cooling, so after I see which blocks work the best, I will setup a loop for the two GTX480's and this will take care of any worries of cooking up the cards (which really doesn't matter as they are under warranty) and will certainly eliminate the fan noise issues.

Also, the P6TD Deluxe that I just bought, has the two PCIe x16 slots spaced apart.
 
GPU cards idling at 73º
All time internet connection DRM for single player games
Developers getting the mayority of games console exclusive
Valve not releasing EP3 whatsoever
Paying $$ to unlock content already found on your game disc
Games not getting LAN options anymore

Welcome to PC gaming 3.0
 
EvilNando said:
GPU cards idling at 73º
All time internet connection DRM for single player games
Developers getting the majority of games console exclusive
Valve not releasing EP3 whatsoever
Paying $$ to unlock content already found on your game disc
Games not getting LAN options anymore

Welcome to PC gaming 3.0
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Welcome to me headed back to the consoles 100 percent of the time if this is really how it's going to be. No point in throwing any more money in this direction. That's part of the reason why I'm on the fence about any upgrade at all. What for?

Cynically I look at my current rig and I wonder if it's the last stop for me in PC gaming or not the way some of that's going and especially the DRM.

The bolded item being far and away the worst thing in my eyes. That kind of DRM is just going to kill PC gaming in the long run. Ubisoft has earned my contempt at this point.

I'm probably more forgiving vs. some other people on some of those other things but Draconian DRM is where I'll be stepping off if that sort of thing ends up being the norm.

I think I might be best served waiting a few months to really see which way the wind is going to blow on some of that and especially the whole DRM thing.


It's very discouraging to me. It's taken a lot of wind out of my sails. I love PC gaming but I really feel like I've got to wait and see here.
 
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None of y'all can bitch about this. Coming from quad SLI 295s to SLI 470s will be a life saver
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A couple of things you did wrong Mr.Kyle :

1- When measuring the intake temp you took measurements from the bottom (Always cooler).
2- When measuring the heat-pipe & exhaust temp, why oh why did you measure the "TOP" card !? obviously it will run hotter for two reasons
A- Heat rises on that card
B- Its blocked completely by the lower card.

3- How come we never saw a comparison using the exact same method with two 5870's in CF ?!?!? Please don't put the 5970, i want two card like Nvidia & i bet you anything it will run very "close".

Now that would be a fare compare.


P.S: I never said that card isn't hot, i have it right here & in-fact its a little too little too late but i still think you made it look "worse" then it actually is & you didn't show how CF will compare to it.
 
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I am considering the GTX 480 mainly due to the CUDA support in the upcoming Adobe CS 5 suite. I can live with some noise when I utilize the card much. Most of the time I am using office kind of applications. What will the noise level be for this kind of activity?

I have a Cool Master Stacker 810 case, wondering if I should put in a side fan to increase air flow, will that help on the noise you think? I am running one screen at 2560 x 1600.

Thanks for any advise!
 
Naser, the ambient temp was taken from the middle of the case, the intake temp was the one at the bottom.

Regarding 2. he probably wanted to show the worst case scenario, which would be the one most people would be interested in.

3. Perhaps he did not have the cards or the time to do as you ask. Only so many hours in the day.
 
necrophile, sorry i meant the intake temp. Yes maybe he did want to show worst case scenario but im sure he could have waiting for "another day" to show it against two 5870's in CF.

I am telling you any two high end cards will run crazy hot in such tight space, i tried it with crossfire 5870 and one of them was even a Vapor-X "better cooler" yet it run very hot.
 
Don't know if anyone said this yet but those are K thermocouples, they are not thermistors. Thermocouples are much more accurate, FYI...
 
veritas7 said:
If anyone here had a 9800GX2, from reading what Kyle wrote, I'd say it's really not much of a difference.
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Had a 9800GX2, my temps were never anywhere near that bad. It idled at 40 and under load got to 65.
 
NoOther said:
Sorry, I meant to type 4850 there. When it first came out, they had some problem with the fan and fan control on the card, causing it to overheat frequently. They later put out a revision to the card to fix this problem. Also in the CPU market, AMD was well known for their chips that would scorch themselves to death. It is just a matter of tweaking things until you get it right when you put out a branch new architecture.
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huh...

4850 issue is the fan speed is WAY TOO SLOW..

I had one, and both 4850 and 4870 have the same issue..

when the heat is exceeding its limit but the fan still not spinning up.. that is the real issue there.

its nothing relate to GTX 480, totally different...
 
anyone remember the "elite" 7800GTX512 they released with the cherry picked cores,concidered improbable to buy shortly after debut? they had a good failure rate with running hot on a very good cooling solution like this situation...

lets hope its not the same case.
 
BBA said:
Don't know if anyone said this yet but those are K thermocouples, they are not thermistors. Thermocouples are much more accurate, FYI...
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Duh on me there. Dunno why I was calling them termisters...
 
Naser said:
A couple of things you did wrong Mr.Kyle :

1- When measuring the intake temp you took measurements from the bottom (Always cooler).
2- When measuring the heat-pipe & exhaust temp, why oh why did you measure the "TOP" card !? obviously it will run hotter for two reasons
A- Heat rises on that card
B- Its blocked completely by the lower card.

3- How come we never saw a comparison using the exact same method with two 5870's in CF ?!?!? Please don't put the 5970, i want two card like Nvidia & i bet you anything it will run very "close".

Now that would be a fare compare.


P.S: I never said that card isn't hot, i have it right here & in-fact its a little too little too late but i still think you made it look "worse" then it actually is & you didn't show how CF will compare to it.
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Just, lol.. I mean some people
 
@ Naser

Actually, if you've kept tabs on all the reviews for the Thermi across the web, from what I've seen, many other reviews seem to have duplicated HARDOCPs results as well.

Did you also go and challenge other web sites results as well in the forums or did you just create your new account here as some sort of troll attempt?
 
snowden said:
Just checked my 5870, idling at 44 C. I already hate the heat this thing puts out in the computer room. Especially because my kids leave it on all the time. Not sure why anyone would buy this new Nvidia card but it's your money.
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and fermi idles at around 45-50c, big whoop
 
I don't want to be taken out of context here, ATI clearly has a better array of gaming parts on the market right now and the Fermi products are crazy inefficient. I simply posit that ridiculous heat and noise are nothing new in the performance segment.

The big cards should be water cooled with full coverage water blocks, regardless of ODM. Issues like 48xx vddcs and nVidia fan speeds never come into play.
 
All I'm saying is that we never saw the "worst case scenario" with the 5870 even though these cards have been out for much longer already. Just a lot of bragging about eyefinty which is useless so its clear how Kyle is leaning to wards Ati in this round-up, he always did that "Lean to wards one company" check the history.

Again I'm not saying it is as hot cause it isn't but then again it isn't as fast either & CF scaling isn't as good as SLI in "most" games.
 
Naser said:
All I'm saying is that we never saw the "worst case scenario" with the 5870 even though these cards have been out for much longer already. Just a lot of bragging about eyefinty which is useless so its clear how Kyle is leaning to wards Ati in this round-up, he always did that "Lean to wards one company" check the history.

Again I'm not saying it is as hot cause it isn't but then again it isn't as fast either & CF scaling isn't as good as SLI in "most" games.
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You are putting way too much feelings into the vendor. Your complaints doesn't seem to be about Kyle bringing out his observations about the heat and noise, but that you feel its a bad publicity towards Nvidia. Nvidia and ATI is just vendors creating products.Kyle like or dislike the products like any other consumer. History has shown he doesn't care which vendor as much as what product.

My Asus 5870 just got bricked and I needed to buy a new DX11 card. GTX480 was new and shiny, so I naturally considered that one. But, I am using the card also for 2d tasks like surfing and occationally video watching. I have put much effort and money into creating the machine silent, while maintaining good gaming capabilities.

The GTX480 reportadly has:
* A fan that goes up and down in speed often, which is annoying in 2D.
* Goes up 50W in power usage from idle to opening a webpage.
* Idles at 73C with two screens attached and above 50C with one screen attached
* Has a very high fan speed at load with high noise

If I wouldn't have info like Kyle and others bring about the noise and heat, I might face several problems:

1. I would have very little to go on in order to silence the card with profiles in 2d, because the default is so hot already with such high fan speed.
2. Power usage would put much higher strain on my PSU, making it more noisy too.
3. The gtx480 thermal threshold is 105C, so it doesn't take much before the system becomes unstable (a hot summer day?)
4. I am going multimonitor once the Samsung Eyefinity monitors or better are available, meaning would I need a second GTX480 down the line and will attach more then 2 monitors. Seeing that the idle is 73C, its not a good scenario.

You might think that when Kyle attached a second screen, it became "worst case scenario". its not. Many game with two screens, one to keep teamchat or other info and one to game in. Some use the second screen for other tasks and even movies, while grinding in WOW and similar games. Even those that only use one screen might want to know that Idle goes up to 73C if they should ever attach another screen.

If i would have bought the GTX480, I would have had to return it by the criterias above. Articles that talks about this saves me for a lot of problems after I have bought the product. This doesn't mean its bad, since there are those that don't share my criteria. But, I think most would like to know this info regardless.

Kyle did put such info on the 5800 series as well. He included temps and described noise levels as well. But, on the 5800 series, temps, power and noise is very good. Here is their review from september 2009:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/22/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5870_video_card_review/12

You can read about power in the link and here is a quote about fan and noise:

During full load we never saw the fan go above 37% of its maximum rotational speed on automatic. Fan noise is not noticeable at idle or full load, especially inside a case up to 45% of its rotational speed. Once you raise the fan to 50% it becomes noticeable. When you set the fan to 75% you cannot deny that it is there, it overpowers all other fans. At 100% it is a tornado, but thankfully there is no silly whine!
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wolfman3k5 said:
I'm sure that NVIDIA would love to downplay this review as an April's Fool Joke :eek:

A Couple of Things:

  1. Fermi is better at Scientific Computation using folding@home and Tessellation than current ATI 5XXX cards. Then again, how good does Tessellation really have to be? And how much can game developers really use Tessellation in their games? I guess not much more than most ATI cards can handle. With that being said, the bottom line is price/performance ratio, and ATI has NVIDIA beat.
  2. Fermi should have been called Thermi. I'm no engineer, but I think that the only thing that can fix "Thermi's" leakage problems is a die shrink to maybe 28nm. The problem is that by then ATI will have a new generation of cards out.
  3. I can only wonder what went trough the "heads" of NVIDIA. A corporation is a mirror of the people's minds that run it, and their products are a mirror of their employees. Someone must have realized how wrong it was to squeeze 3 billion transistor on a 40nm die, and on top of that an immature manufacturing process.
  4. Everyone is wondering to why XFX won't be selling Fermi cards. And everyone is speculating. Here is my speculation: XFX is greedy, more so than any other graphics card manufacturer. Keep in mind that ASUS and MSI are selling ATI cards as well, but they didn't get "punished" by NVIDIA. Recently I had a GeForce 8800GTX go bad because of the NForce 196.75 driver (you know, the one with the fan speed issues...). I've sent it to XFX and they've replaced it with a GTS 250 /w 512MB GDDR3 without even asking me if I would agree. When I protested, XFX ignored me. Now I will escalate the issue to the BBB. I can only wonder how some of you that own an ATI 5XXX series card from XFX will feel in 2 to 3 years when the cards will fail, and XFX will replace them with whatever low end card ATI has out at the time. The only thing that I've asked for when I was talking to XFX was that they either send me another GTX 8800 or a card that can match its performance. A GTS 250 /w 512MB GDDR3 can't match the performance of a 8800GTX when I crank up the resolution or the AA level because it has less RAM. As far as I'm concerned, XFX can go to hell in a hand basket, because I for one will never buy one of their products again or recommend them to anyone. Their lifetime warranty is a joke. And just to make a point, in 2009 I had an EVGA 8800GTX that went bad, and I've RMAd it. Guess what EVGA sent me as a replacement? Another EVGA 8800GTX that works perfectly to this day.
Kyle, thank you again for the review. I for one will not be buying a Fermi ("Thermi") card. I will skip this one, even do I do like NVIDIA products, and yes, I also like what ATI has to offer. But Fermi is a fail (for now) in my opinion.
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sorry had to correct number 1 on there.. the only scientific computation that nvidia is faster on is F@H.. ATI beats nvidia hands down on every single other scientific computation program and distributed computing program.. while F@H is 10 years behind in distributed computing programming and ATI is looking to the future with directcompute and openCL while nvidia has continued to build their architecture toward the older programming used in F@H for cuda.. if you want some examples go take a look at the top DC'ing rigs on Milkyway@home, RC5-72, collatz.. 3 prime examples of the performance difference between nvidia and ATI when it comes to distributed computing and scientific calculations..

as for the rest i agree with you..
 
Naser said:
All I'm saying is that we never saw the "worst case scenario" with the 5870 even though these cards have been out for much longer already. Just a lot of bragging about eyefinty which is useless so its clear how Kyle is leaning to wards Ati in this round-up, he always did that "Lean to wards one company" check the history.

Again I'm not saying it is as hot cause it isn't but then again it isn't as fast either & CF scaling isn't as good as SLI in "most" games.
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He tends to lean twords the company that gives him the best gaming experience. You say that Eyefinity is useless is fairly baseless, did you ever look at the threads here? tons of people are getting Eyefinity set ups, it was the first thing Kyle did when he got the card to begin with and has been its #1 fan and critic, he praises but he doesn't get on his knee's for it either.

And I will agree with the SLI scaling being better, it usually is better off the bat ... this coming from an ex-CF user.

Heh I remember using SLI'd 6800GT's, back when people were confusing crossfire term with the SLI term and getting everyone confused int he forums :p
 
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