NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470: 6 Months Late, Was It Worth the Wait?
by Ryan Smith on March 26, 2010 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Test
With the launch of the GTX 400 series, we have gone ahead and completely rebuilt our benchmark suite. This includes rotating out several games for several new games, giving us a nice mix of DX9/10 and DX11 games. Everything else has been rebenchmarked using the latest drivers, and our power data has changed as we installed an Antec 1200W PSUin order to keep up with the potential power demands of a pair of GTX 480s in SLI.
For the AMD cards, we used AMD’s Catalyst 10.3a drivers along with the latest driver profile update. For NVIDIA’s cards NVIDIA supplied us with their Forceware 197.17 drivers, which only work for the GTX 400 series. For the rest of the NVIDIA cards we used the 197.13 drivers.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard: | Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | OCZ Summit (120GB) |
| Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 5970 AMD Radeon HD 5870 AMD Radeon HD 5850 AMD Radeon HD 5830 AMD Radeon HD 5770 AMD Radeon HD 5750 AMD Radeon HD 4890 AMD Radeon HD 4870 1GB AMD Radeon HD 4850 AMD Radeon HD 3870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 197.13 NVIDIA ForceWare 197.17 AMD Catalyst 10.3a |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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ReaM - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
I don't agree with final words.480 is crap. Already being expensive it adds huge power consumption factor only to have a slightly better performance.
However (!), I see a potential for future chips and I can't wait for a firmy Quadro to hit the market :)
Patrick Wolf - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
6 months and we get a couple of harvested, power-sucking heaters? Performance king, barely, but for what cost. Cards not even available yet. This is a fail.This puts ATI in a very good place to release a refresh or revisions and snatch away the performance crown.
dingetje - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
exactly my thoughtsand imo the reviewers are going way to easy on nvidia over this fail product (except maybe hardocp)
cjb110 - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
You mention that both of these are cut-down GF100's, but you've not done any extrapolation of what the performance of a full GF100 card would be?We do expect a full GF100 gaming orientated card, and probly before the end of the year, don't we?
Is that going to be 1-9% quicker or 10%+?
Ryan Smith - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
It's hard to say since we can't control every variable independent of each other. A full GF100 will have more shading, texturing, and geo power than the GTX 480, but it won't have any more ROP/L2/Memory.This is going to heavily depend on what the biggest bottleneck is, possibly on a per-game basis.
SlyNine - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
Yea and I had to return 2 8800GT's from being burnt up. I will not buy a really hot running card again.poohbear - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
Oh how the mighty have fallen.:( i remember the days of the 8800gt when nvidia did a hard launch, released a cheap & excellent performing card for the masses. W/ the fermi release u would never know its the same company. Such a disappointment.descendency - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
I think the MSRP is lower than $300 for the 5850 (259) and lower than $400 for the 5870 (379). Just thought that was worth sharing.I have to believe that the demand will shift back evenly now and price drops for the AMD cards can ensue (if nothing else, the cards should go to the MSRP values because competition is finally out). I would imagine the price gap between the GTX480 and the AMD 5870 could be as much as $150 dollars when all is said and done. Maybe $200 dollars initially as this kind of release almost always is followed by a paper launch (major delays and problems before launch = supply issues).
AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
...for two reasons: power and die size.So the 5870 and 470 appear to be priced similarly, while the 5870 beats it in virtually every game and uses 47W less at load! That is a TON of additional on-die power (like 30-40A?).
We saw this coming last year when Fermi was announced. Now AMD is better positioned than ever.
IVIauricius - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
I see why XFX started making ATI cards a few years ago with the 4000 series. Once again nVidia has made a giant chip that requires a high price tag to offset the price of manufacturing and material. The same thing happened a few years ago with the nVidia GTX200 cards and the ATI 4000 cards. XFX realized that they weren't making as much money as they'd like with GTX200 cards and started producing more profitable ATI 4000 cards.I bought a 5870 a couple months ago for $379 at newegg with a promotion code. I plan on selling it not to upgrade, but to downgrade. A $400 card doesn't appeal to me anymore when, like many posters have mentioned, most games don't take advantage of the amazing performance these cards offer us. I only play games like MW2, Borderlands, Dirt 2, and Bioshock 2 at 1920x1080 so a 4870 should suffice my needs for another year. Maybe then I'll buy a 5850 for ~$180.
First post, hope I didn't sound too much like a newbie.
-Mauro