Hardware Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB Review

I don't know what you folks in the UK use for heating, but over here (Can/USA) we use natural gas, which is multiples cheaper per BTU than electric heating, so fermi even fails at keeping the house warm.

If I were ATI, I'd offer a 30 day $15- $25 instant rebate or a nice game bundle across the whole 5xxx lineup just to pick up the last of 'I'm waiting for fermi' people. It would kill the hype and the sales increase would more than pay for the discount (lets just hope that ATI can actually keep stock).

 

ok, now i have a technical question. I have a 700w PSU. I see it states it recommends a 600w PSU. I'm running an 9600GT and an 8800GT for Physx. No problem removing both.

Now i have 4GBs (2GB x2) for DDR2 1066Mhz ram
An AMD 7750BE
Ill just say middle of the road motherboard. Its far from high-end but its does have gigabyte;s dual-bios on it with two PCi-e 2.0 slots.
a blu-ray drive
a dvd burner
2 HDDs
my case is a NZXT Tempest with 6 fans and 2 front case LEDs.
And a 3rd party heatsink

Can I run the GTX 480 in my system? or do i have to upgrade my PSU?

 

Wait WHAT?! Hey don't generalized!. Quebec has cheapest electricity, thanks to our so many hydro-electric power plants. Almost everyone, and about all new homes uses electricity for heating.

Well we know that the GTX 470/480 is not a full Fermi GPU. So I guess these are mid range GPU's. If a high-end model from Nvidia comes out (the full Fermi GPU), than the current models are pretty sweat. HOWEVER, the price suggest otherwise. If teh 480 was 300-350$, NOW we are talking, but it's 500$!!!!

 

http://ht4u.net/reviews/2010/nvidia_geforce_gtx_480/index43.php I guess that answer's that question. Losing over a third of your framerate to anti-aliasing and having a 5770 end up faster than a 480 is just humiliating.

Still, why didn't Bit-tech acknowledge that Fermi is having trouble with anti-aliasing in Stalker? A simple footnote that said "Call of Pripyat had unusually low performance with anti-aliasing and hasn't been included in the test suite" would have sufficed, but instead the article reads "While we have admittedly not tested with 4x or 8x anti-aliasing due to STALKER’s very high performance requirements, it’s disappointing to see the GTX 480 come up so short."

This stinks of a PR effort to remain in Nvidia's good graces by not posting results that portray their card in a bad (worse) light. If that's why the anti-aliasing results were not shown, that's just dishonest journalism.

:EDIT: one last question: were the GTX480 and 470 running Dirt 2 in DirectX 11 mode or DirectX 9 mode?

 

There's a reason for that: GF100 was originally supposed to an HPC-only design, but "GT300", or whatever it would have been called, got scrapped. This is pretty evident in the way NVIDIA decided to utilize general purpose shaders for tessellation and the like (though it's technically a better approach on a single-feature performance basis).

Overall, the 480 performed a bit better than I expected but still nowhere near fast enough to justify the price or the wait.

 

I'm going to go ahead and assume you're not paying $0.035 /kWh , which is a very generous break even point, given the current natural gas prices.

But anyways, as I recall, we were talking about how big a failure fermi is, not gas prices. Carry on.

 

Fan noise/power test:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/7
LOL!

This is what happened at Nvidia:

 

A sad day for graphic cards

I am an Nvida fan but for the price, energy consumption, performance and heat I would get a 5870. When the 2GB 5870 will come out it will perform equally and the normal 5870 will be cheaper.

Nvidia had the same time as ATI plus 6 months to get Fermi out as a BFBC2 player I would say Epic Fail.

Hope this and the economic crisis won't damage Nvidia as that is what I am seeing in the near future. The only thing that might save this product is that when it will be available there will be better drivers but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

I will wait, why?

Because this reminds me of the whole 2900XT fiasco, they'll probably do a die shrink on the chip and then have something similar to the HD3870 except the Nvidia version.

 

Yes i do and my crystal ball(s) tell me that ATi will push out HD 6xx0 series in 6-8 months, while nVidia still tries to fix Fermi. It will be Fail 2.0 for nVidia all over again. That is that from my crystal ball(s).

 

oh dear, i wonder what the nvidia fanbois will do to explain away the failings of this card (failings that Charlie has been citing for MONTHS now).

the BBQ feature is an added bonus
it produces so much noise you cant hear any of the other sounds the PC makes
you wont need central heating because the card will heat your entire home

just wait

 

They will do and say just about anything, as you can see all over the internet.

Oh, and you forgot one more thing. A Fermi owner can even have a nice meal because of it. Just pour liquid nitrogen over Fermi and you will get an instant hot soup with C,U,D, and A letters floating around.

 

I'm surprised no one else is noticing these numbers are REALLY screwed up. There is some SERIOUS driver problems going on here so I wouldn't take any of these numbers as meaning anything. I'm sure bit-tech did a great job with the drivers they were given but the Nvidia results are whack.

Just look at the GTX 295 numbers for Crysis Very High 1680x 0xAA:
295 review (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2009/01/08/nvidia-geforce-gtx-295-quad-sli-review/9): AVG 50, MIN 31
Fermi review: AVG 40, MIN 0

GTX 295 Crysis Very High 1680x 4xAA:
295 review: AVG 42, MIN 27
Fermi review: AVG 37, MIN 6

I'm sorry, but these Nvidia drivers are FUBAR. I'm withholding any judgement on Fermi until I see results with a driver that isn't obviously broken.

 

Yeah, if only they had had some extra time to sort that out... Like say, 6 months...

 

I'd rather see more great games being developed for PC that actually make good use of the current available power house hardware. I feel like we've been fighting a battle to make hardware run the software. Sooner or later we'll be at the point where it will be the other way around.

I was about to purchase a new g5 series card, but decided upon a new i7 so I could run my PS2 and GC emulators perfectly. Best investment ever.

 

Ger an Enermax Galaxy 1250 and it will be the last PSU you need. I never understood the idea around people getting 600 to 800 watt PSUs. This beast will last you forever, through several computers and you will never have to worry.

Yours in "More than enough" is better than "Hmmm, im not sure its enough" Plasma,
Star*Dagger

 

http://www.enermaxusa.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=181

 

Whoa. In fact, the ATI results for Crysis don't make any sense either. The 5970 actually GAINS frames when going from 4xAA to 8xAA. Either that's one weird graphics architecture, or more likely, I'm thinking that bit-tech's Crysis installation is basically hosed somehow...

 

BAHAHAHAHAHA,
nVidia isn't even good for bringing ATI prices down. For shame. Can't wait to buy ATI.