Which card is better all around GTX 480 or 5870.

Best card overall of the two.

  • ATI 5870

    Votes: 214 83.3%

  • GTX 480

    Votes: 43 16.7%
  • Total voters
    257
I tend view that ATI did a rather stunning job all things considered, more so than NV.
 
I would go with ATI 5870 or 5850 which is best price and performance right now. GTX480 might be the fastest single GPU on the market but the cost is high and generate too much heat...kinda difficult to tri-sli.
 
We need to dump the concept of calling dual GPU cards as 'dual cards'.

They are not. They fit in a single slot so they should be classed as single cards.

5970 is a single card.
 
the 5870, for the price, less heat. the 480 is a "newer" technology but i don't know...:(

i have a crossfire motherboard, i could get 2 5870s.

can someone tell me, i have a 1050w psu, is it enough for 2 5870s? i think it is.
 
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while the 480 is technically a better card, when it comes to power consumption, chipsize, cost, the 5870 is a better all round card
 
I still haven't wrote off the 480 yet... I might or might not get one... don't know yet. As for the poll, I voted on the 5870 because it's a much better balanced card for most people. But if money is of no concern, then the 480 is the CLEAR winner, hands down.
 
Wow I didn't expect the results to be that far apart...5870 is obviously the go to buy.
 
I am surprised by ATI's lead in this poll.
I would have thought that NVIDIA fanboys would have been more aggressive.
 
5870 here. It performs on par against the GTX 480, it performs slower and faster in some games against the GTX 480. Right now, the GTX 480 isn't worth it and I'm not going to get a card that uses more power than a 5970, and its bullshit that the GTX 480 isn't faster than the 5970, generates more heat and a loud fan when gaming. Avoid.
 
I never expected it to match the Radeon HD 5970. I don't know why anyone would have expected that from a single GPU card.
 
GTX 480 is faster no doubt, but unless you're gonna watercool it and don't care about the power draw it's hard to recommend it over the 5870.
 
There are a lot of games I've seen using 1200-1400mb of memory at 2560x1600 with 4x or 8x AA on. So, if you want to game at that resolution, the 480's competition is a 2GB 5870 or 4GB 5970. I think the 480 compares extremely favorably to those cards in terms of price/performance/features, especially if you're doing multigpu.

For multimonitor, can't say. If 1.5GB is still enough for that since you'd presumably be using no or low AA to drive all those pixels, then the 480 still wins. If games actually will use over 1.5GB then ATI wins obviously.

For 1920 and below, the 480 is competing with the 1GB 5870 and 2GB 5970 and it doesn't fare as well. If you wanted physics/tesselation its worth it but otherwise probably not. As a general matter I don't think either card is that great of a buy right now though. If you're looking to upgrade and a new card comes out that is reasonably priced, either buy it at launch or wait until the next round. People paying like $420 for a 5870 right now are gonna take a big loss in a short amount of time.
 
5870. I've had both and had an opportunity to bench both. I sold the 480 right after I benched it. Just not all that faster, way hotter, way louder.
 
I'll put it this way, I'm upgrading my GPU this summer and I plan on purchasing a Ati 5870.
 
Overall, the HD 5870 IMHO is the better card. It offers great performance in an allround efficient package.


The GTX 480 is a great card too. It offers raw power and performance, and I'm pretty sure the drivers will be able to extract a lot more performance out of the card in the future. However, this performance comes at a price in the shape of power consumption, heat and noise.


The GTX 480 is a monster, regarding performance as well as power use, it does not pretend to be anything else. For pure performance the 480 is very likely the way to go.


===


The HD 5870 is all around better, as it seems more balanced in every way.
 
ATI 5870 181 84.98%
GTX 480 32 15.02%


i think theres no competition, u can get 2 used 5870 for the price of 1 gtx480.
 
aintz said:
ATI 5870 181 84.98%
GTX 480 32 15.02%


i think theres no competition, u can get 2 used 5870 for the price of 1 gtx480.
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Let's be honest 6 out of 10 people voting have neither card, the other 3 have 5870's. They read a lot of articles and fell into the 480 haters brigade (mob mentality). Owning a 480 myself, it all seems overblown. My psu is holding up just fine, the card ain't loud.... I guess I prefer Nvidia enough to pay an extra amount I'd never notice on my utility bills. I suppose I'm surprised the fastest single gpu gets shit on so much. And now better all around card means the one that saves you peanuts a day... whatever suits peoples argument I suppose. Btw I prefer Nvidia, but will gladly pay someone 250 for a 5870......... just hit me up.
 
texuspete00 said:
Let's be honest 6 out of 10 people voting have neither card, the other 3 have 5870's. They read a lot of articles and fell into the 480 haters brigade (mob mentality). Owning a 480 myself, it all seems overblown. My psu is holding up just fine, the card ain't loud.... I guess I prefer Nvidia enough to pay an extra amount I'd never notice on my utility bills. I suppose I'm surprised the fastest single gpu gets shit on so much. And now better all around card means the one that saves you peanuts a day... whatever suits peoples argument I suppose. Btw I prefer Nvidia, but will gladly pay someone 250 for a 5870......... just hit me up.
Click to expand...

Well, for a start, I don't think the main argument is the increased cost to run the 480 over the 5870, it's the $100 price difference but not really a $100 worth of performance between them . The heat/noise extra cost to run are only minor things really and probably wouldn't be an issue at all if the 480 stomped all over the 5870.
 
Ive owned both and I'll say the HD5870 is a great value. The GTX 480 has potential but the drivers aren't there yet. Id have to say 5870 to most people unless you need to be on the cutting edge and can deal with driver bugs for awhile
 
I voted 480. I am not replacing my 5870 with one because: it is not that much of an upgrade, I am hooked on Eyfinity, and I am not buying two 480's to keep triple monitor support.

However, it is the fastest single gpu card out there right now. I have a good case with plenty of airflow, live in an area where elctricity is fairly cheap, and wear headphones when I game. So many of the biggest problems most have with the 480 would not bother me much. But it is still great fun to poke at Nv with the dustbuster/frying pan jokes.
 
I normally go for nVidia because their cards traditionally run cooler, quieter and are more energy efficient. And they also ran fairly fast.

So I find myself rather surprised that this describes ATI cards nowdays and nVidia is the hot running, loud, energy inefficient one.

For people who want sheer raw performance regardless of everything else, the GTX480 is the fastest single GPU card around, and you could say this fits the [H] thinking. But it's clearly not the better "all round" card if you stop and think about it. And even when money is not an issue, there are valid reasons to consider the 5870 the better "all round" and balanced card. And yes I expect at least some GTX480 owners, who own the fastest single GPU card around, to recognize this as well.
 
When you factor in most major PC games in the last 8 months are co-devloped or strait consol ports with modest PC graphic improvements, the 5870 is more than enough grunt for probably some time to come, at least until the next gen of consoles move us away fully from DX9 (like it or not).

The modest extra grunt of the 480 is not worth the power, heat and extra cost, although cost is overstated, really whats a 100 bucks extra for your favorite hobby.
 
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