NVIDIA Fermi - GTX 470 - GTX 480 - GTX 480 SLI Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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NVIDIA Fermi - GTX 470 - GTX 480 - GTX 480 SLI Review - Fermi is finally here! We put the new GeForce GTX 470 and GeForce GTX 480 video cards through the paces in four of the latest and most demanding games recently released. We find time for GeForce GTX 480 SLI as well. We compare these to the Radeon 5850, Radeon 5870, and the Radeon 5970.

NO QUOTE FOR YOU! You gotta read it. ;)
 
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Yay, time to go read!

From what I've seen so far: GTX 480 -- Not worth the money if you alreaady own a 5870.

Also, Kyle what about 2x 5870 in CF? Since the 5970 is 2 downclocked 5870, would it be more even to include 2x5870 as well?
 
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Great review, I think that 2x GTX 470 vs HD 5970 would be a better comparison in term of price. 2x GTX 480 should be up against 2x HD 5870.
 
So it's faster and offers more features than the 5870 but that's not good enough? Wow.... OK.
 
refraxion said:
Yay, time to go read!

From what I've seen so far: GTX 480 -- Not worth the money if you alreaady own a 5870.

Also, Kyle what about 2x 5870 in CF? Since the 5970 is 2 downclocked 5870, would it be more even to include 2x5870 as well?
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I'd say its a fair bet you will see that comparison from us in the future, also including two 2GB cards.
 
I was hoping for a bit more performance from Fermi to pressure price drops in ATI's 5 series....ugh. Time to start trying to scope deals on 5850's and/or 5970's.

As always thanks for the great game based apples to apples guys! Definately appreciate the hardwork so we can make better choices!
 
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Was kinda disappointed that you had a 480 SLI for testing, but no 5870 Crossfire? Would that have not been a better comparison against the 480 SLI instead of the 5970?
 
PRIME1 said:
So it's faster and offers more features than the 5870 but that's not good enough? Wow.... OK.
Click to expand...

I'm not going to argue this, but more features? What are features if the experience is the same in games? If you want to call out features, I'll say Eyefinity.
 
lol poor 5970 went against 480 sli how about at least putting 5870 cf or ocing 5970 to 5870 speeds ? sounds more fair to me. anyway nice review nothing impressive about fermi i am suprised it even got award with that power con.
 
Glad I didn't wait to buy my 5850. GTX470 isn't any faster and uses 120w more at load, sad.

Fixed, thanks - Brent
 
I'd like to see how a single 480 compares to a 295. Also, apparently neither card can output audio at all be it bitstreaming or PCM? That's kind of a disappointment.
 
eric66 said:
lol poor 5970 went against 480 sli how about at least putting 5870 cf or ocing 5970 to 5870 speeds ? sounds more fair to me. anyway nice review nothing impressive about fermi i am suprised it even got award with that power con.
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Sorry, but we have limited time and resources so we made a call to go with what you have there. More will be seen in the future though.
 
Well that ended up being a "meh" experience.

I'll wait for some danish prices for the GTX 470 and see how they are compared to the HD5850 and what the release will do to prior generation prices. :)
 
Damn nice review! I really like the addition of the videos of the power draw. I was hoping you guys would mix in some of those, and you didn't dissappoint. :)

Holy crap on the noise level of the 480. However, the performance boost using a pair of those bad boys might make it worth the noise and power draw.
 
you were so quiet about this Kyle....and BAM! Here's a review. Printing for some "on the pot" reading :)
 
I have a small question, why isn't Crysis benchmark including with this review?
 
I would of rather seen the 480 sli vs 5870 crossfire. Otherwise, I'm amazingly disappointed in nvidia, but great review and thanks for being straightforward with us as always.
 
PRIME1 said:
So it's faster and offers more features than the 5870 but that's not good enough? Wow.... OK.
Click to expand...

It's faster, but it's not exactly changing the way you're going to experience a game. It took 6 months to bump up a level of AA? And, to do so, it costs more, uses more power, runs hotter (etc., we've had months of this already).

And you still can't run Nfinity on a single card, right?

No, Fermi is not good enough. It's not as bad as a lot of people thought it would be, but it's not good enough.
 
NIce review. Hopefully the large numbers of cards NVPR mentioned will come to pass in a couple of weeks. Can't wait to get my SLI 480s! Thanks again for getting this review out there on time and to the point.
 
This is exactly what I was waiting to make my decision. Good bye 8800gts, hello to crossfire 5870's. The only problem is finding the 5870's in brick & mortar. It seams frys and bestbuy are sold out. Either way it's the same price for retail and etail+shipping.
 
Fermi is actually much better than I imagined but it's still nothing extraordinary. I'm glad that everyone from the green camp is finally going to be able to join us in DX11 gaming. I hope this does good things and we see DX11 become the new standard faster than it already is.

The cards run pretty hot. I bet the fermi refresh is gonna be something awesome. I can't wait for Fermi 2 vs. HD6800 :D
 
Great review and exactly the type of breakdown I've come to love from [H].

Those typos were fixed, thanks - Brent
 
No folding benchmark, no GPGPU benchmarks in general, no tessellation benchmark - the [H] may know hardware, but this is hardly a fair representation.

If you thought gamers were going to be blown away by Fermi, you haven't been paying attention to Nvidia's discussions about Fermi architecture.
 
styx0r said:
No folding benchmark, no GPGPU benchmarks in general, no tessellation benchmark - the [H] may know hardware, but this is hardly a fair representation.

If you thought gamers were going to be blown away by Fermi, you haven't been paying attention to Nvidia's discussions about Fermi architecture.
Click to expand...

The heaven benchmark isn't a game.
 
I'd be curious how SLI'd 470's do, and more importantly how they do in multi-monitor gaming (3d vision surround or whatever they are calling it when it comes out)

Or if one 480 with a slower card (say one of the 250's) does (if that's even possible)
 
Metallikat said:
Was kinda disappointed that you had a 480 SLI for testing, but no 5870 Crossfire? Would that have not been a better comparison against the 480 SLI instead of the 5970?
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I agree.

2x 480 = $1000
2x 5870 = $800
1x 5970 = $600

Clearly 2x discrete 5870 vs 2x discrete 480 would have been a more fair comparison.
Although the 480 SLI should theoretically win since a single 480 is about 5-10% faster than a single 5870.
It would come down to how well the sli/cfx was scaling.
But perhaps they didn't have a pair of 5870s lying around to test?

I would also like to see an Nfinity vs Eyefinity review to see which video cards handle multi-monitor rendering better.

OMG I just watchted the power consumption/noise videos.
The GTX 480 has got the be the most expensive, power hungry blow dryer ever invented! LOL. 480W @ load!!!
 
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Clear victory for those already owned 5870. I didnt have to wait, I've been enjoying mine for months now. FERMI - too hot, not enough performance for the power or price. Charlie was right all along.
 
styx0r said:
No folding benchmark, no GPGPU benchmarks in general, no tessellation benchmark - the [H] may know hardware, but this is hardly a fair representation.

If you thought gamers were going to be blown away by Fermi, you haven't been paying attention to Nvidia's discussions about Fermi architecture.
Click to expand...

Metro 2033, AvP and DiRT 2 all use Tessellation, and it was enabled in each game, with the highest in-game settings.

Folding and GPGPU isn't relevant to gaming. We use games to evaluate the gaming experience, pretty simple.
 
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