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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nyran125 - Monday, April 12, 2010 - link
Im going wiht the less power hungry ati 5000 series. I know a 5850 card will easily fit in my Case aswell. There no way id choose the GTX 470 over any of the ati s870 or 5850 cards. So that only leaves the GTX 480 against either the 5870 or the 5850. The performance increase and power increase is NOT worth me paying for a nvidia card thats higher in price over the 5870.I meen even looking at the games. The games ill probably play Crysis adn BAttlefield bad company 2 come out on top of the nivdia 480 GTX. so bla.
Nvidia you need to make a much bette rcard than that fo rme to spend money on a GTX 470 or GTX 480 ove rthe 5870 or 5850.
nyran125 - Monday, April 12, 2010 - link
oh and secondly, if your buying a 200 series nivida card or the GTX 480 it isnt fast enough to future proof your computer. You might aswell go spend less money on a 5970 or a single 5870 you know it will last for the next 2 years and the GTX 480 will NOT last any longer than teh 5000 series with its 10-15% performance increase. I didnt like the 200 series nvidia cards and im not interested in even MORE power hungry cards that. I want less power hungry cards and efficiency. To me a game plays bugger all different with 60 FPS average and 100 fps average. If you have a 200 series card save your money and wait for the next gen of cards or at least wait till a DX 11 game actualyl comes out not just Just cause friggin 2..vagos - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
ok all theese cards are nice. new technology is very welcome. but where is the games to push them?? if i spent 400$ or 500$ on a new card where i could see a really big difference against my old 8800GT?? they sell hardware without software to support it...2 or 3 games makes no difference to me. ps3 an xbox360 have very old graphic cards compared to ati 5800 series and nvidia 400 and still tha games are looking beautifull. an in some cases mauch better than on pc...make new games for pc and then i will buy a new card! until then i will stuck with my xbox360...
Drizzit101 - Sunday, May 9, 2010 - link
I have been running the GTX 295. The plan was to buy a second GTX 295. Looking at the prices, I was thinking about just buying two GTX 470's. What the better move?Krazy Glew - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link
See http://semipublic.comp-arch.net/wiki/Poor_Man%27s_...In particular
US patent 7,117,421, Transparent error correction code memory system and method,
Danilak,
assigned to Nvidia,
2002.
http://semipublic.comp-arch.net/wiki/Poor_Man%27s_...
Matt Campbell - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
Ryan, what was the special sauce you used to get Badaboom working on Fermi? My GTX 460 won't run it, and Elemental's website says Fermi support won't get added until Q4 2010. http://badaboomit.com/node/507niceboy60 - Friday, August 20, 2010 - link
I have the same probleme on my GTX 480 , Badaboom does not work on fermi ,according with my own experience and Badaboom official web siteI dont think this benchmarks are accurate
niceboy60 - Friday, August 20, 2010 - link
I bought a GTX 480 based on this review as I do a considerable amount of video convertingJust to find out ,dispite the GTX 480 is showing very good resaults when using Badaboom
The truth is Badaboom is not compatible yet with any GTX 400 series according with The badaboom web site .
adder1971 - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
The Badaboom website says it does not work and when I try it with the GTX 465 it does not work. How were you able to get it to work? I have the NVIDIA latest release drivers as of today and the latest released version of Badaboom.wizardking - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
I bought this card for it only ! I used badaboom with number which you use !!!!!!