If anyone had any doubt about what side to choose for a high-end gaming rig, I think that will sort out that problem nicely. ATI fans, you might not want to watch that
Completely synthetic benchmark which gives very little indication of true in-game performance, pointless video tbh.
What a stupid test. It's a benchmark and the tessellation in that is so hugely over-done it doesn't really even try to represent current games. What ever.
THIS. Personally i prefer nvidia cards as i find their drivers much better than ATis, but just look at the power usage! The nvidia setup uses more power over the ATi cards than the size of my PSU. If your building an ultra ultra high end gaming computer then yeah 4x GTX480 is probably the best option. But If it showed real world benchmarks the results wouldnt be so conclusive imo
As desirable as that kind of power is, look at the power draw... and the price! ...still, I'll try persuade the girl.
Did you post a video link? Cant see it. I presume you're talking a Heaven benchmark, which others have noted is synthetic and not really true to life. I dont think that we have seen any really good application of dx11 yet, so the jury is out. I think that it will take a die shrink for nvidia's cards to appeal to me however. I was tempted by the 480 at last upgrade but it is just too cumbersome.
Why is everyone acting suprised that the 480's are faster than 5870's? For the cost I'd want it to be faster than it is. I personally would have prefered it to be compared to a 5970, as its the ATI card that's level with the 480 in price, heat and power usage.
As abundantly mentioned the Heaven benchmark is far removed from real-world applications. Also, there's that little fact that it's an EVGA-conducted benchmark as per the title of the YouTube video.
so, OP, who is the winner? performance: nVidia efficiency: ATI which one do you consider to be winner? why do ATI fans want to look away? is it because ATI cards use so little power?
Sounds like a couple of butthurt ATI fanbois I joke, I joke! Please don't take it badly I'll try to weigh up things but I know that I'm biased. 1) ATI cards don't seem to scale as well as Nvidia cards and with four way set ups, this is going to be greatly exaggerated. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if three 5870s performed better than four. 2) I have my doubts that four 480s stuck together like that would be able to play the demo in a continuous loop for long. On my cards I've seen temperatures of 102C (admittedly overclocked) recorded after a day of gaming. I'm willing to bet a Furmark run would make them fail. 3) Here's a controversial one: I genuinely believe that the Heaven benchmark is indicative of future DX11 titles and as such look forward to an Nvidia dominance in performance for these aforementioned titles. All I know is that I'm currently damn happy with my purchases at the moment - as I imagine anyone who has a 5770, 5850, 5870 or 5970 is.
No doubt. If I were to run any multi GPU setup with cards that close, I would move right to 3rd party coolers, or watercooling. Although putting the four GTX 480 cards together and utilising the heatsinks as a sort of crude pan, I think that much joy could be had in making a combination gaming/breakfast machine.
Lol - I see the video now ... I was on my iphone ... Could be that this is true ... more fun would be unlimited detail. I think we've covered that super-heavy tesselation isn't useful just yet. I think there's some time - both for nvidia to use a smaller process, and for ATI to re-design their tesselator - before this future comes about. We've had a look at the super-high-end £1600 worth of GPU ... but I hear that the ATI tesselation unit in cypress cards basically remains the same across the range - the 5770 has the same unit as the 5870. I wonder what the comparison is like in the mid-range volume market - GTX 460s (well 465 for now ...) and 5770s? Anyone know?
That is pretty much true. By the time this level of tesselation comes in the form of games, both companies would have something new and different. For the time being, in a real game the difference is less pronounced though the power consumption and heat is fairly accurate. Nvidia has the performance crown but ATI has better bang for the buck. But with the horrible scaling of 4 GPUs, nobody can say that was money well spent. Just a lot of heat produced. 1000W is more than an actual space heater. 1500W is like a toaster oven. Having that on 24/7 is going to spike your AC bill.
That all may be true, including the wattage but then again, ATI produces stuttering FPS at a 1000 watts and Nvidia doubles the frame rate at 400 watts more. I don't know how about you but I would rather have a hugely playable rates with 1400W rig than unplayable for 1000W.
Yes, especially since this is a a synthetic benchmark which has likely been optimized for by nVidia and ATI - scaling in this won't give the results people hope for. I think that tessellation will be a big thing in the future, but it won't happen to the levels that Heaven 2.0 takes it. For example, here is a Heaven wireframe: Yes, there is more detail in the tessellated wireframe, but much of the extra detail could just be added by putting more exaggerated features in the source. If you see the number of (basically) useless polygons added by tessellation, it's pretty obvious that Heaven is overdoing it for effect. So am I
Yes but QUAD??? I really don't see the point of using more than 2 high-end cards - except for big benchmark numbers. I'm not at all upset at AMD for not scaling well at 3-4 cards. Nvidia has done very well to get 80-90% scaling at 2 cards however - that's very cool.
This may claify things (or could just be me making stuff up): Performance Cost Power Total ATI 39.8 1280 950 0.017847534 Nvidia 81.4 1760 1500 0.024969325 Using Performance/(cost+power) The Nvidia total is higher, so although it costs more and uses more power the performance is still very high. Kind of makes sense to me. But I'd still like to see 4 5970's do that just to see what they'd get...
