The Official GTX480 & GTX 470 Thread

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by rjbarker

Zero...you have tried this I take it? XFire 5870 vs SLI 470's.....? I don't see things as black n white as you my friend..I look at the big picture....you say may as well go 2 5870's....well I woul say..if your going to now spend more...may as well go for the SLI 480's.....so wtf?!

To be honest I'll be sitting on my 280's for likely the Fall and wait n see how things unfold......

Two 480s will still cost you considerably more than a pair of 5870s. A 5870 is ~$30 more than a 470, while a 480 is about $130-150 more than a 5870. So you're looking at a $60 premium to go for a pair of 5870s as opposed to a $300 premium for a pair of 480s.

Originally Posted by Sushi Warrior

It is pretty easy to lose 20W of heat, it is a few Mhz in core clock or even just RAM clock. Also dual GPU cards don't scale linearly anyways, they don't have "double everything". That's why the PCB isn't twice as long/as full as a single GPU card...

Like I said, they would have to use crippled GPUs to make the card fit into a reasonable power envelope. Something would have to give.

[burebista]

History repeats?

Blast from the past?

[rjbarker]

Two 480s will still cost you considerably more than a pair of 5870s. A 5870 is ~$30 more than a 470, while a 480 is about $130-150 more than a 5870. So you're looking at a $60 premium to go for a pair of 5870s as opposed to a $300 premium for a pair of 480s.

As I said Zero.....in a respectful manner of course.....the big picture.....I had and loved my Tri Sli arrangement (280's)....if I go 2 x 470's now or a few months from now, it will be an option as well as very likely as prices come down that I will give 470 Tri Sli a go.......not sure if XFire offers a Tri solution for 5870's or if the Scaling / Drivers are as mature at this level as nVidia......I know from past experience tha nVidia made huge gains with Tri Sli technogy....my Benches proved that indeed.

Either way....I'll decide which way to go by Sept / Oct.....my Mobo and PSU are both built for Multi GPU Madness ;)

Tri Sli 480's I'll leave to the complete WB heads

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by rjbarker

not sure if XFire offers a Tri solution for 5870's or if the Scaling / Drivers are as mature at this level as nVidia......

ATI has 3-way and 4-way CrossfireX. Scaling depends on the game, but on average, Crossfire scales just as well as SLI does.

[rjbarker]

Crossfire scales just as well as SLI does.

I have no idea as I haven't tried it.......would have to see some Benchmarks comparing Tri XFire to Tri Sli as I certainly wouldn't want to experiment with $1300 worth of GPU's.....that fact is I kno how well the Tri Sli and Drivers worked for me ;)

Now...just hammering again throuh the GTX 470 Review and looking at the Bench numbers again....more carefully and concentrating on the 1920 x 1200 Full Tess / AA / AF yada yada yada...thier are some Posts here whereby I question how carefully these numbers were looked at....

1. In all cases 480 ahead of both 470 / 5870 (obviously)

2. In at least more than half of the runs the 470 even finished ahead of the 5870......

The Evga GTX SC version is $399

Diamond / Radeon 5870 $459

...nah....I think I see the best value / performance here indeed.

[_dangtx_]

actually the best priced one is the 5850. loses to the others, but bang per buck wise its top

[Sushi Warrior]

Originally Posted by Zero82z

ATI has 3-way and 4-way CrossfireX. Scaling depends on the game, but on average, Crossfire scales just as well as SLI does.

Not with the GTX480. Look at some of the reviews, Nvidia has put some extra work on scaling. SLI scales at ~60% while Crossfire is ~45-50%.

[ipaine]

Originally Posted by _dangtx_

actually the best priced one is the 5850. loses to the others, but bang per buck wise its top

Well I'm not totally convinced with that. If you look at Sky's charts on $/fps you will see that actually the 470 is on top.

Now with actual prices I see at, for example NCIX, I would say it is even more in favor of the 470.

See this
XFX 5850 = $344.99 up to $409.99 for the black edition. @NCIX

EVGA GTX 470 = $379.99 up to $399.99 for the SC version. @NCIX


So really only a small price difference between the two but there is a noticeable difference in the fps. Now I know that when you get to 2560x1600 there is not a huge difference but according to Nvidia drivers will make a difference there at some point (hopefully soon).

Myself I have been looking mostly at 1680x1050 since that is what I game at. I also want to have as high settings as possible and that is where the 470 beats the 5850. 21% percent increase in min framerates and 16% in average.

I would think that 16% increase in performance is good considering only a 9% increase in price.


Now I know that there are cheaper 5850's than the XFX, but they are the only ones that I know of that have a warranty that is even close to what eVGA has.

[rjbarker]

^^^ Excellent.....that was exactly what I as looking at as well....summed up very nicely ;)

[_dangtx_]

Originally Posted by ipaine

Well I'm not totally convinced with that. If you look at Sky's charts on $/fps you will see that actually the 470 is on top.

Now with actual prices I see at, for example NCIX, I would say it is even more in favor of the 470.

See this
XFX 5850 = $344.99 up to $409.99 for the black edition. @NCIX

EVGA GTX 470 = $379.99 up to $399.99 for the SC version. @NCIX


So really only a small price difference between the two but there is a noticeable difference in the fps. Now I know that when you get to 2560x1600 there is not a huge difference but according to Nvidia drivers will make a difference there at some point (hopefully soon).

Myself I have been looking mostly at 1680x1050 since that is what I game at. I also want to have as high settings as possible and that is where the 470 beats the 5850. 21% percent increase in min framerates and 16% in average.

I would think that 16% increase in performance is good considering only a 9% increase in price.


Now I know that there are cheaper 5850's than the XFX, but they are the only ones that I know of that have a warranty that is even close to what eVGA has.

you can find the 5850 under 300 bucks(280 and over) at a few places. now for ~80-100 more you do get better performance, yes









there may be a bug or two left i nthere but it gives you an idea.



best performance out the two? yes. bang per buck? no. when you spend 300 you can spend another 50 i think, lol.