MSI’s GeForce N470GTX & GTX 470 SLI
by Ryan Smith on July 30, 2010 1:28 PM ESTFinal Thoughts
When the GeForce GTX 470 first launched we recognized that NVIDIA did an appropriate job on pricing it purely on a performance basis. Based on performance alone it was priced correctly versus AMD’s cards, so that it performed in-line with the price. With its much greater power consumption (and the consequences of that) this didn’t make it a must-have card, but it did at least keep the GTX 470 on the table as a practical card to buy.
Today we’re seeing the devolution of a structured pricing strategy in to an all-out war, and MSI is leading the way. Coupled with NVIDIA’s recent driver improvements, GTX 470 cards like the N470GTX are now very close to being performance competitive with AMD’s top-end Radeon 5870 while costing significantly less. As far as reference-derived cards go, the N470GTX brings to the table all the things we like and dislike about the GTX 470, along with a fantastic set of overclocking tools and a free game for a price that’s competitive with the slower Radeon HD 5850.
Ultimately this makes for a very straightforward verdict on MSI’s N470GTX: at $300 (or $280 after a MIR) it’s a heck of a deal, and like the rest of the GTX 470 family at that price it has no peers when it comes to performance. However the caveat about power and heat still remains – it’s a very fast card for the price, but it’s also significantly hotter and louder than the Radeon HD 5850 it’s priced against. When performance is the only concern the choice is clear, but if you need to worry about power and noise then you need to decide whether you value performance or power more.
Meanwhile the GTX 470 SLI situation takes everything we’ve said about performance and power and amplifies it. When it comes to the GTX 470, NVIDIA clearly has a multi-GPU scaling advantage over AMD’s Radeon 5800 series. Two GTX 470s can beat a 5870CF setup the bulk of the time, but the noise is immense and the power difference is no less.
Wrapping things up, we will have more about SLI and Crossfire scaling next month when we take a comprehensive look at SLI/CF scaling. The GTX 400 series in 2-way SLI is only half the story – there’s still the matter of 3-way SLI and Crossfire to look at, so stay tuned.
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erple2 - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
Normally I'd agree with you, but I think that Ryan hit the nail on the head. I can recall when NVidia and ATI were optimizing the specific internal compilers specifically for 3Dmark. Tuning for one specific engine (which is what they had to do) is very time consuming and difficult, and takes more time away from optimizing the drivers in general (or for a more "worthy" cause - another popular game).I seem to recall the optimizations were things like:
if product executable matches 3dmark.exe
then
do special tweaks that work only for the 3dmark app
else
do nothing
endif
I think that's the situation we're trying to avoid nowadays - optimizing specifically for a single executable (ultimately where you end up when you want your numbers to look "best"), hurts everything else but that one thing you're optimizing for.
There's a difference between optimizing for the API vs. the specific executable...
mapesdhs - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
I've spent some time trying to find out why my 8800GT SLI setup was the
same or faster than a friend's 4890 CF system. Using 3DMark06 did prove
very useful in working out the reason (shader performance). See:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/pctests.html
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/stalkercopbench.txt
Thus, though I agree with Ryan about the dangers of GPU makers
optimising for these metrics, they can be revealing sometimes, in my
case coming to the conclusion that, if one is still playing older games,
then buying a newer card might not give that much of a speedup since
the newer design may focus on newer features.
What about including the Vantage results as a point of interest, kindof
a 'by the way' addition, but downplaying the importance of such data?
Focus on the game results, but include Vantage as an 'appendix' in
terms of presentation.
Ian.
Porksmuggler - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
Wait, you're trying to find out why your 8800GT SLI is faster than 4890CF? You need to look elsewhere than the GPUs, 8800GT SLI is not even as fast as 4850 CF, I have both on otherwise identical setups. Your links show testing of just 3DMark06, and you tested with two entirely different systems?Ryan is spot on, don't use synthetic benchmarks to compare similar generation GPUs. They are primarily used for testing when the GPU is the constant.
It seems from the replies above there is confusion about how the coding/engine of a synthetic benchmark (so-called? really?) is very different from actual games. Reviewers do far better with a battery of games, as Anandtech uses for their articles.
imaheadcase - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
Thats listed in THE TEST, but its excluded from graphs.Would like to compare that to it, considering upgrading to this card from that.
anactoraaron - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
Yeah I noticed that also. More importantly I'd like to see 2 of those in SLI along with 2 5770s in CF. I think the 2 5770's in CF has been the best bang for your buck for awhile now, especially 2 can be had for $270AR. As I recall, the 5770 (single card setup) was ~5% less than what a 260 core 216 would get you but it was cheaper (about $30 less ATM at newegg). If you have the ability to do CF/SLI having 2 lower priced cards makes the 460/470 & 5850 decision easy IMO. However since SLI scales performance better it would be interesting to see if the added $60 for 2 260's is justified against 2 5770's.Maybe for the next article?
Kyanzes - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
MORE minimum frame rate measurements in the articles please!!! That's the whole essence of it! Ofc, for sheer comparison, max FPS could also be included for sure, but the MIN FPS is the real interesting part.Keep it up pls!!!!
One of the reasons I tend to check out HardOCP is that they include MIN FPS.
Please, please do it often. Do it every time.
Tunnah - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
awesome review as usual but how come the focus on the 470 ? i thought with the release of the 460 the 470 was kind of like..its the core i7 940 to the 920 - sure it's faster but the price difference doesn't warrant the minor speed bump, and it OC's like a dreamalso, from what i've read the 460 has amazing scaling with SLI..and the temperatures are better
but this is just what i've read in 1 review so waiting to read it here before i start to believe it :D
ggathagan - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
RTFA3rd sentence:
"As part of a comprehensive SLI & CrossFire guide we’re working on for next month we needed a second GTX 470 for testing GTX 470 SLI operation, and MSI answered our call with their N470GTX."
Tunnah - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
yeah i read it, was just saying it seemed a little redundant to do a full article on an overpriced card that was being overshadowed by a cheaper, newer revisionMatrices - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
The 460 numbers are still there, so what's to complain about?And the 470 can be had for $275 now rather than the $350 MSRP.
If you actually read the benchmarks, you'd see that it's hardly 'overshadowed' by the 460 on performance. It's noticeably faster in more demanding titles.