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
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
The latest game in the Battlefield series - Bad Company 2 - is another one of our new DX11 games and has been a smash hit at retail. It’s also surprisingly hard on our GPUs, enough so that we can say we found something that’s more demanding than Crysis. As BC2 doesn’t have a built-in benchmark or recording mode, here we take a FRAPS run of the jeep chase in the first act, which as an on-rails portion of the game provides very consistent results and a spectacle of explosions, trees, and more.
Unfortunately for NVIDIA this is another losing game for them, and at times they lose big. The GTX 480 comes in at 20% behind the 5870 at 1920, while the GTX 470 comes in behind the 5850 by a similar degree at the same resolution. Interestingly we’re once again seeing a narrowing of the gap as resolutions increase – at 2560, it’s a 9%/7% gap respectively. Given the popularity of the game this really isn’t a game you want to be losing at, particularly by double-digit percentages at 1920.
As FRAPSing the chase scene in BC2 doesn’t provide us with a suitable degree of reliability for minimum framerates, we have gone ahead and engineered our own test for minimum framerates. In the 3rd act there is a waterfall that we have found to completely kill the framerate on even the fastest systems, and in play testing we have found that this isn’t too far off from the minimum framerates we find in multiplayer games. So we’re going to use this waterfall test as a stand-in for minimum framerates on BC2.
Even with a pair of cards in SLI or Crossfire, at 2560 it’s a struggle to stay above 30fps, with only the GTX 480 SLI regining supreme. In fact the performance on this benchmark is quite different from our earlier benchmark all around. Instead of losing the GTX 400 series wins in a big way - a 9% loss in the chase is a 42% lead for the GTX 480 here, and the 470 attains a 35% lead. At first glance we don’t believe that this is a video RAM limitation like we saw in Crysis, but we’re going to have to wait for AMD to ship their 2GB 5870s before we can fully rule that out.
In the mean time it looks like we have two different outcomes: the Radeon 5000 series has the better average framerate (particularly at 1920), but it’s the GTX 400 series that has the better minimum framerate. If you absolutely can’t stand a choppy minimum framerate, then you may be better off with a GTX 400 card so that you can trade some overall performance for a better minimum framerate.
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mcnabney - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
You make the most valid point.As long as the consoles are in the driver's seat (this isn't going to change) DX11 and the features it provides won't be widely found in games until the next generation of consoles - in 2-3 years.
So really, without growth in the PC gaming market these is no need to upgrade from the last generation. Too bad really.
GourdFreeMan - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Thank you for listening to our feedback on improving your test suite of games, Ryan. I think your current list much better represents our interests (fewer console ports, a selection of games that better represent the game engines being used in current and future titles, fewer titles with GPU vendor bias, inclusion of popular titles that have staying power like BF:BC2, etc.) than the one you used to review the 58xx's when they were released. The only title that I feel that is missing from our suggestions is Metro 2033. Kudos!yacoub - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Good review. The grammar errors are prolific, but I guess this was rushed to release or something.So it's a hot, power-hungry card with a high pricetag. Not too surprising.
Would have liked to see a $150-range Fermi-based card sometime this year so I can ditch my 5770 and get back to NVidia, but the high temps and prices on these cards are not a good sign, especially comparing the performance against the 5800-series.
AznBoi36 - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
Fanboy much?yacoub - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
Fanboy of what?The ATI card I have now that I can't wait to get rid of?
The desire for NVidia to release something competitive so I can get back to a stabler driverset and remove all traces of ATI from this PC?
mcnabney - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
Ah yes, get back to Nvidia whose last trick was releasing a driver that turned off GPU fans causing instant-card-death.With 480, turning off the fan might actually start a fire.
Headfoot - Monday, March 29, 2010 - link
I bet you experienced that fan error IRL right?Just like how everyone who owned a Phemon got a TLB error 100% of the time right?
numberoneoppa - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
You know you have the best tech site around when a product review makes it seem like a ddos is in progress.As far as the review itself, it's very comprehensive, so thanks Ryan! The new NVIDIA cards seem to be just where most people thought they would be. It really makes me anticipate the next HD58xx card and the AMD price cuts on the current line up that will come with it.
Devo2007 - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Great review, although you may want to edit this sentence:"NVIDIA meanwhile had to deal with the fact that they were trying to produce a very large chip on a low-yielding process, a combination for disaster given that size is the enemy of high yields."
Shouldn't it be "large size is the enemy of low yields?" Either way, that end point seems a bit redundant.
SlyNine - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
No, Large size would be a friend of low yeilds. low yeilds are our enemy.