Comment Thread for GTX 480 and GTX 470 Reviews

[ipaine]

Originally Posted by thorn

you also have to take into account psu efficiency. If you have 85% efficiency for example and your UPS shows 275W, your PSU is only using ~234W. I would imagine your monitor is 50-70W by itself.

I was thinking that as well, so really I should have enough headroom to go to the 470. That is my main concern, but this PSU has been rock solid so I'm not that worried.

[thorn]

Originally Posted by _dangtx_

not sure what quality settings you use but 1920x1200 on a 4870 must be weak on the heavy ones

generally I just stick to what the game defaults at. I only change it if the game is sluggish or things annoy me. Like motion blur, I find it distracting and a generally cheap effect. But I have no problems running BC2 at 1920x1200 and whatever default settings BC2 provides me. Could maybe use some more AA, but I only really notice it while I am dead and waiting for the timer to hit 0.

Red Faction: Guerrilla when I am near a large building coming down my fps does drop below 'playable' levels but it was never a problem.

Crysis runs fine (all settings on high but no AA). Mass Effect 2 at max settings was smooth as well. The only game that is out now that would likely be trouble is Metro 2033, fortunately for me I have absolutely no interest in it.

[thorn]

Originally Posted by ipaine

I was thinking that as well, so really I should have enough headroom to go to the 470. That is my main concern, but this PSU has been rock solid so I'm not that worried.

Looking at the test system used and the power draw of the 470 in the article I think you would be safe with the HX620 (have the same model myself, have not been disappointed)

[rapmaster]

Originally Posted by _dangtx_

not sure what quality settings you use but 1920x1200 on a 4870 must be weak on the heavy ones

Even my 4890 isn't enough at that resolution. I had to tune down the setting on a lot of games, like BFBC2, Just Cause 2, Crysis, Stalker...etc. I wish I have money for Evergreen or Fermi.

[DANGERDOOM64]

i don't get how people are considering this a fail? 3 billion transistors of coarse will get very hot. bout a 60 or so watt difference from the 5870 vs 480. its not that bad, IMO. i like Nvidia because of their technologies, like cuda, physx, and some other cool things with their new card. it is a DX11 card, and is better than ATI's card in tessellation. and i'm sure that new drivers will pick up those FPS's. And im not saying ATI is a bad company, they obviously aren't, cause they are still in business. They make good cards at good prices, just not as appealing to me. just remember, you get what you pay for, just my 2 cents.. :)

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by ipaine

I was thinking that as well, so really I should have enough headroom to go to the 470. That is my main concern, but this PSU has been rock solid so I'm not that worried.

You have easily enough headroom for a 470 or even a 480.

[chrisk]

I get a kick out of gamers who cry that this card is 'fail'; I am not sure what kind of gaming performance they were expecting. Could it be better? I would say yes, especially in the power and heat dept. Gaming benches are right where I would have expected, and the heat and power issues were known long before launch. I really saw nothing that surprised me at all, and I am not that smart.

I think folders should be more disappointed; I was hearing some incredible numbers, and a 30-40% increase in PPD is not so impressive right now. I think for folders Fermi is still a waiting game, as I would guess that nVidia was more worried about gaming performance on launch. If this architecture was GPGPU-focused, then I would hope that there is more PPD to be found in drivers and Cuda/F@H Core refinements. A GTX 475/485, or maybe even the 500 series will help with the power and heat, prime concerns with 24/7 folders. Again, more waiting.

I think the troublemakers coming out of the woodwork in this thread signals that HWC is certainly on the map now in the hardware world. Otherwise, they wouldn't take the time to come here.

[_dangtx_]

i guess the auto setting detects the capabilities of the card.

[Sushi Warrior]

Why is it a fail for folding? GTX470 = GTX275 power wise, and it definitely pulls in more PPD.... I am really not sure on the whole heat issue though, it does run at 95C or w/e but AFAIK that is at fan speeds far below maximum and at Furmark load, not F@H.

[Canzara]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

I've stayed out of this conversation for a while simply because some of the comments boggle my mind. For the vast majority of the time over the next few days, I won't be commenting in this thread or in the other GTX 480 threads simply because I believe these products have brought out the worst in everyone. Period.

If you have any questions pertaining to the review itself, I will answer them. I refuse to get involved in this childish bickering.


There are however a few things that should be stated:

A) The GTX 480 accomplished a ~15% increase over the HD 5870. Ok, great. But we have to remember it did this with 480 out of 512 shaders enabled and seriously gimped GDDR5 memory (which is actually rated to run at 4Ghz by the way).

B) Yes, it does run hot and take gobs of power. Don't act like that surprises you. It was known form the start.

C) The 15% performance increase is based off of the combination of DX9 / DX10 AND DX11 games. If you single out DX11 performance at the resolutions most people play at (1680 and 1920) the GTX 480 simply eats the HD 5870 alive, especially when it comes to minimum framerates. Seriously, what fool buys a DX11 card and cares about DX9 performance when 99.99% of today's $200 GPUs don't have an issue in DX9 High Quality?

D) If you have a HD 5870, you shouldn't upgrade to a GTX 480 unless you don't like money.

E) The vast majority of other sites have proven that they don't have a clue how to properly benchmark DX11 some games. VERY specific config file changes have to be done in DiRT 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in order to use DX11 mode and not have drivers allow for DX9 mode rendering. I don't know why this is but the issues are everywhere and are quite glaring.

F) Getting burned by the top heatsink on a GTX 480 hurts like hell

could of, should of, would of...but alas...it didn't
to top it off, if DX 11 requires all these special tweaks, then all these benches mean nothing to the average joe cause they don't know how to do them.
Therefore, ******* is more accurate for most by what your saying here.