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
Final Words
To wrap things up, let’s start with the obvious: NVIDIA has reclaimed their crown – they have the fastest single-GPU card. The GTX 480 is between 10 and 15% faster than the Radeon 5870 depending on the resolution, giving it a comfortable lead over AMD’s best single-GPU card.
With that said, we have to take pause for a wildcard: AMD’s 2GB Radeon 5870, which will be launching soon. We know the 1GB 5870 is RAM-limited at times, and while it’s unlikely more RAM on its own will be enough to make up the performance difference, we can’t fully rule that out until we have the benchmarks we need. If the GTX 480 doesn’t continue to end up being the fastest single-GPU card out there, we’ll be surprised.
The best news in this respect is that you’ll have time to soak in the information. With a retail date of April 12th, if AMD launches their card within the next couple of weeks you’ll have a chance to look at the performance of both cards and decide which to get without getting blindsided.
On a longer term note, we’re left wondering just how long NVIDIA can maintain this lead. If a 2GB Radeon isn’t enough to break the GTX 480, how about a higher clocked 5800 series part? AMD has had 6 months to refine and respin as necessary; with their partners already producing factory overclocked cards up to 900MHz, it’s too early to count AMD out if they really want to do some binning in order to come up with a faster Radeon 5800.
Meanwhile let’s talk about the other factors: price, power, and noise. At $500 the GTX 480 is the world’s fastest single-GPU card, but it’s not a value proposition. The price gap between it and the Radeon 5870 is well above the current performance gap, but this has always been true about the high-end. Bigger than price though is the tradeoff for going with the GTX 480 and its much bigger GPU – it’s hotter, it’s noisier, and it’s more power hungry, all for 10-15% more performance. If you need the fastest thing you can get then the choice is clear, otherwise you’ll have some thinking to decide what you want and what you’re willing to live with in return.
Moving on, we have the GTX 470 to discuss. It’s not NVIDIA’s headliner so it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. With a price right between the 5850 and 5870, it delivers performance right where you’d expect it to be. At 5-10% slower than the 5870 on average, it’s actually a straightforward value proposition: you get 90-95% of the performance for around 87% of the price. It’s not a huge bargain, but it’s competitively priced against the 5870. Against the 5850 this is less true where it’s a mere 2-8% faster, but this isn’t unusual for cards above $300 – the best values are rarely found there. The 5850 is the bargain hunter’s card, otherwise if you can spend more pick a price and you’ll find your card. Just keep in mind that the GTX 470 is still going to be louder/hotter than any 5800 series card, so there are tradeoffs to make, and we imagine most people would err towards the side of the cooler Radeon cards.
With that out of the way, let’s take a moment to discuss Fermi’s future prospects. Fermi’s compute-heavy and tessellation-heavy design continues to interest us but home users won’t find an advantage to that design today. This is a card that bets on the future and we don’t have our crystal ball. With some good consumer-oriented GPGPU programs and developers taking up variable tessellation NVIDIA could get a lot out of this card, or if that fails to happen they could get less than they hoped for. All we can do is sit and watch – it’s much too early to place our bets.
As for NVIDIA’s ecosystem, the situation hasn’t changed much from 2009. NVIDIA continues to offer interesting technologies like PhysX, 3D Vision, and CUDA’s wider GPGPU application library. But none of these are compelling enough on their own, they’re merely the icing on the cake. But if you’re already in NVIDIA’s ecosystem then the choice seems clear: NVIDIA has a DX11 card ready to go that lets you have your cake and eat it too.
Finally, as we asked in the title, was it worth the wait? No, probably not. A 15% faster single-GPU card is appreciated and we’re excited to see both AMD and NVIDIA once again on competitive footing with each other, but otherwise with much of Fermi’s enhanced abilities still untapped, we’re going to be waiting far longer for a proper resolution anyhow. For now we’re just happy to finally have Fermi, so that we can move on to the next step.
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ol1bit - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
I thought it was a fare review. They talked about the heat issues, etc.You can't compare a 2 GPU card to a single GPU card. If they ever make a 2 core GF100, I'm sure Anandtech will do a review.
IceDread - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
You are wrong. You can and you should compare single gpu cards with multi gpu cards. It does not matter if a card has one or 30 gpu's on the card. It's the performance / price that matters.These nvidia cards are very expensive in performance / price compared to the ATI cards, simple as that. It's obvious that nvidia dropped the ball with their new flagship. You even need 2 cards to be able to use 3 screens.
This is bad for us customers, we are not getting any price pressure at all. These nvidia cards does not improve the market since they can not compete with the ATI card, only nvidia fans will purchase these cards or possibly some working with graphics.
I hope nvidia will do better with their next series or cards and I hope that won't take to long because ATI will most likely release a new series in half a year or so.
xxtypersxx - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
I will be interested in seeing the performance gains that will likely come from revised Nvidia drivers in a month or two. In some of the tests the gtx470 is trading blows with the gtx285 despite having nearly double the compute power...I think there is a lot of room for optimization.I am no fanboy and even owned a 4850 for a while, but Nvidia's drivers have always been a big decision factor for me. I don't get any of the random issues that were common on catalyst and aside from the occasional hiccup (196.67 G92 fan bug) I don't worry about upgrades breaking things. I admit I don't know if all the 5xxx series driver issues have been fixed yet but I do look forward to driver parity, until then I think raw performance is only part of the equation.
GourdFreeMan - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
Ryan, have you checked performance and/or clocks to see if any of the cards you are testing are throttling under FurMark? I recall you mentioning in your 58xx review that ATi cards can throttle under FurMark to prevent damage, and while most of the power numbers look normal, I notice a few of the cards are consuming less power under FurMark than Crysis, unlike the majority of the cards which consume considerably more power running FurMark than Crysis...MojaMonkey - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
I can turn off one light in my house and remove the power consumption difference between the GTX480 and the 5870.I thought this was an enthusiast site?
I lol irl when people talk about saving 100 watts and buying a 5870. So saving 100 watts but building a 700 watt system? Are you saving the planet or something?
I think nVidia is smart, if you fold or use cuda or need real time 3d performance from a quadro you will buy this card. That probably is a large enough market for a niche high end product like this.
PS: 5870 is the best gaming card for the money!
Paladin1211 - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
No, the 5850 is.p/s: I misclicked the Report instead of Reply button, so pls ignore it T_T
kallogan - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
Seriously i wonder who'd want gpus that power angry, noisy and hot...Nvidia is out both on mobile and desktop market...The only pro for Nvidia i can see is the 3D support.beginner99 - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
This is kind of bad for consumers. 0 pressure on ATI to do anything from lower price to anything else. they can just lay back and work on the next gen.Well, that at least made my decision easy. build now or wait for sandybridge. I will wait. hoepfully gpu marekt will be nicer then too (hard to be worse actually).
C5Rftw - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
I was waiting for the fermi cards to come out before my next high end build( looking for price drops), but I actually did not expect this card to be this fast. The GTX480 is ~15% faster than the 5870, but for $100 more, and it is just gonna be a Nvidia loyal card, and the 5870 will probably drop just a little if at all.. The 5850 and and 5830 should drop $25-50, hopefully more(2x5850 at ~250$ each would be FTW). Now, would I like to have a fermi?, well yeah for sure, but I would much rather have a 5870 and down the road add another. A GTX 480 uses the same, if not more power than (2) 5870's. Now this reminds me of the last gen of the P4's. or as we know em, the Preshots. Basically, Nvidia's idea of a huge chip approach, with yes impressive performance, was just the wrong approach. I mean, their next-gen, if based on this same "doubling" SPs, cuda cores, would draw 300w+ easily and almost require water cooling because the next TSMC process is going to be 32nm and that will not allow them to "cut the chip in half." ATI's theory started with the 4000 series has proven to be a much better/efficient design. I think they could make a 6870 using 40nm TSMC right now, but ofcourse it would be a hot chip. Now when they get the 32 TSMC FABs running, Nvidia has got to re-design their chips.. And with how hot the GTX 480 is, I dont see how they could make a GTX 495. Also, the 5890 is right around the corner and that should give the final punch to KO Nvidia in this GPU generation. On a side note, Thank " " that there is some healthy competion or AMD might pull what Nvidia did and rebrand the 8800 5 or 6 times.Belard - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
Keep in mind, the GeForce 480 (GTX means nothing, see any GTX210 or GT 285?) is already the most power hungry card on the market, just under 300watts under full load.... if the GF480 had all 512 Cuda Cores running and clocked higher... the card will easily surpass 300watts!This in turn means MORE heat, more power, more noise. There are videos on the 480/470s & ATI cards... the 480's fan is running very fast and loud to keep it under 100c, about 2~3 times hotter than a typical CPU.
We will see the ATI 6000 series on 40nm, but it may not be with TSMC.
If the upcoming 5890 is 15% faster and can sell for $400~450, that would put some hurt on the GF480.
Not sure how/why ATI would do re-branding. The 4670 is almost like a 3870, but is easily a more advanced and cheaper GPU. The bottom end GPUs have all changed. 2400 / 3450, 4350, 5450 - all different.
Nvidia has been doing re-branding for quite a long time. The GF2mx was re-branded as the GF2MX 400 (These were bottom end $150~190 cards in 2001) and then for some bone-head reason, during the GF6 era - they brought back the GF2MX but added DX8. Huh? Add a function to an OLD bottom end GPU?
The GF2-TI came out when GF3-TI series was launched... they wanted "TI" branding. The GF2-TI was a rebranded GF2-Pro with a slight clock upgrade.
Then came the first big-branding/feature fiasco with Nvidia. The GF8 was the first DX8 cards. Then the GF 4 series came out. The GF4ti were the high end models. But the MX series were nothing more than GF2 (DX7) with optional DVI... to take care of the low end and shove the letter names to the front.
GF4 mx420 = GF2mx, but a bit slower.
GF4 mx440 = GF2 Pro/TI
GF4 mx460 = ... faster DX7 card, but it was about $20~35 cheaper than the GF4-TI4200, a DX8 card. The Ti4200 was a #1 seller at about $200. Some of the 440se & 8x models may have 64 or 128bit RAM... ugh.
Then they had fun with the TI series when AGP 8x came out... NEW models! Either thou the cards couldn't max out the AGP 4x bus. Even the future ATI 9800Pro only ran 1~3% faster with AGP 8x.
GF4 Ti 4200 > GF4 Ti 4200 8x
GF4 Ti 4400 > GF4 Ti 4800 SE
GF4 Ti 4600 > GF4 Ti 4800
Yep, same GPUs... new names. Some people would upgrade to nothing or worse. Some even went from the 4600 to the 4800SE which was a downgrade!
GF5 5500 = 5200
Since the GF5... er "FX" series, Nvidia kept the DX# and feature set within the series. All GF5 cards are DX9.
But the 5200s were a joke. By the time they hit the market at $120, the Ti4200s were also $120 and the 4mx were reduced to $30~60. But the 5200 was HALF the performance of a 4200. People actually thought they were upgrading... returns happened.
Funny thing once. A person bought a "5200" at walmart and was confused by the POST display of "4200". Luckily he had posted to us on the interent. We laughed our butts off...! What happened? Batch & switch... someone bought a 5200, took it home - switched cards, took it back to Walmart for a refund. hey, its usually a brick or a dead card, etc. he got used card, but a much better product.
Like the ATI 5450 is too slow for gaming today for DX11, the GF5200 was horrible back in 2003 for DX9! The 5200 is still sold today, the only thing left.
Pretty much the entire GF5 series was utter garbage. 4 versions of the GF5600 ($150~200) were slower than the previous $100 Ti 4200. It was sick. This allowed ATI to gain respect and marketshare with their ATI 9600 & 9700 cards. The GF 5700 series (2 out of 5 types) were good Ti4200 replacements. The 5900 went up against the ATI 9800. I've owned both.
Since then, ATI pretty much had the upper hand in performance throughout the GF6 & GF7 era. AMD buys out ATI, then the GF8 and core2 wipes out ATI/AMD with faster products.
While ATI had the faster cards during DX9.0c (really MS? Couldn't make 6.1, 6.2?) era over the GF6/7... Nvidia *HAD* the lower end market. The GF6600 and 7600GT were $150~200 products... ATI products in that price range were either too slow or cost too much.
With GF 8800 & 8600s, ATI had lost high & mid-range markets. The HD 2000 series = too expensive, too hot and not fast enough... (sound familiar). The ATI 3000 series brought ATI back to competitive position where it counted. Meanwhile, Nvidia milked the G92~96 for the past 2+ years. They are code-name & model number crazy happy.
As long as ATI continues doing engineering and management this way, nVidia will continue to be in trouble for a long time unless they get their act together or count on the server market to stay in business.
End of short history lesson :0