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
Crysis: Warhead
It’s been over 2 years since the release of the original Crysis, and “but can it run Crysis?” is still a common question even today. With a mix of dense foliage, long draw distances, and high quality textures, Crysis is still a game that can bring any machine to its knees, and is our first choice for testing any video card.
As far as this first game is concerned, things are looking so-so for NVIDIA. For the GTX 480, it’s in a solid 10-12% lead over the 5870, and unsurprisingly losing to the 5970. For the GTX 470 things are less rosy; it basically is breaking even with the 5850. Furthermore there’s an interesting pattern in our averages: the gap between the GTX 400 series and the Radeon 5000 series shrinks with resolution. Keep an eye on this, it’s going to be a repeating pattern.
We’ve also gone ahead and recorded the minimum framerates for Crysis, as in our testing we’ve found the minimums to be very reliable. And in doing so, we have some data even more interesting than the averages. The GTX 400 series completely tramples the 5000 series when it comes to minimum framerates, far more than we would have expected. At 2560 Crysis is approaching a video RAM limitation in our 1GB and under cards, which gives the GTX 480 cards a clear lead at those resolutions. But even at lower resolutions where we’re not video RAM limited, the GTX 480 still enjoys a 33% lead in the minimum framerate, and the GTX 470 is well ahead of the 5850 and even slightly ahead of the 5870.
For whatever reason AMD can’t seem to keep up with NVIDIA when it comes to the minimum framerate, even at lower resolutions. Certainly it’s obvious when the 1GB cards are video RAM limited at 2560, but if we didn’t have this data we would have never guessed the minimum framerates were this different at lower resolutions.
Finally we have a quick look at SLI/CF performance. CF seems to exacerbate the video RAM limitations of the 5000 series, resulting in the GTX 480SLI coming in even farther ahead of the 5870CF. Even at lower resolutions SLI seems to be scaling better than CF.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
196 Comments
View All Comments
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