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Hardware Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB Review

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Lizard, 28 Mar 2010.

  1. unaligned

    unaligned What's a Dremel?

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    It's hot and noisy, and compared to the 5870 it's a little power hungry (though not outrageous); but it (1) isn't underperforming - its performance is just below the 5870, which leads to the fact that (2) it's $50 cheaper than the 5870 (sometimes even cheaper), therefore it isn't overpriced either.

    IMO, fix the issues with heat and it's a very solid card. But my question is: why are we comparing the 470 to the 5870? The 5870 isn't the card that the 470 is in competition with; the 5850 is.

    Compare the 480 to the 5870 and it wins, sometimes heftily, especially in tessellation. Compare the 470 to the 5850 and it wins, nearly always heftily. This is to be expected, they are more expensive than their ATI counterparts, but the performance boost is enough to justify the price.
     
  2. PandaMonster

    PandaMonster What's a Dremel?

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    "Performance boost"

    you're kidding, right? It's a performance UNboost. look at the benchmarks again.
     
  3. modfx

    modfx Loft Gremlin

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    I reckon give it a couple of months and Nvidia will release a dual gpu card probably called a 495 in answer to the 5970 which will be hot, noisy and expensive but will blow away the 5970 to take the performance crown. If not, im switching to red.
     
  4. unaligned

    unaligned What's a Dremel?

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    No, I believe you need to look again. Except for Crysis and Stalker, the 480 nearly always beat the 5870 and the 470 nearly always beat the 5850. And the ones they lost they were close in. Look around the web for other reviews/benchmarks besides this one as well, they all show that result.
     
    Last edited: 28 Mar 2010
  5. Ph4ZeD

    Ph4ZeD What's a Dremel?

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    Just a shame that you pay a £100 extra for a 470 over a 5850 and a 480 over a 5870, then you pay extra in additional electricity, noise and heat. For a tiny performance increase.
     
  6. Embattle

    Embattle What's a Dremel?

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    You didn't fancy using the 10.3b drivers then, these see a large boost to certain games which included a 20% boost to Dirt 2.
     
  7. John_T

    John_T Minimodder

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    unaligned - The 470 is being compared to the 5870 and not the 5850 because in this country they're roughly the same price. Check out the prices from Scan:

    MSI 5870 = £317.19 / MSI 470 = £328.38
    Asus 5870 = £319.47 / Asus 470 = £320.15

    Whereas
    MSI 5850 = £234.25
    Asus 5850 = £223.23

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Shop/Computer-Hardware/All/GPU-NVIDIA/NVIDIA-Geforce-GTX470-PCI-E-(448-Cores)
    http://www.scan.co.uk/Shop/Computer-Hardware/All/GPU-ATI/ATI-Radeon-HD5870-PCI-E-(1600-Cores)
    http://www.scan.co.uk/Shop/Computer-Hardware/All/GPU-ATI/ATI-Radeon-HD5850-PCI-E-(1440-Cores)

    I picked Scan, I could have picked any retailer - they're all roughly £100 difference between same manufacturers boards for the 470 & 5850, (give or take a bit).


    Pitting the 470 against the 5850 may have been nVidea's original intention, but you cannot compare a £320 card with a £220 card and be happy with similar performance - and the performances are similar when it's better at some games and resolutions and worse at others. For an extra £100 I really expect the more expensive card to blow away the cheap one at every game and at every resolution.

    On top of the ridiculous overpricing, once you also add in the hunger for power, (& their significant extra running costs) the absurd temperatures and a lack of free earmuffs - and it's really not a very good deal. They'd need to drop the 470 around a £100 to seriously compete and it's highly unlikely they can do that, (at least not without hurting themselves)...
     
  8. Tangster

    Tangster Butt-kicking for goodness!

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    A little power hungry? The 470 needs 44% more power than a 5850 when loaded, the 480 needs 36% more than a 5870. The performance at best is 10-15% faster(at the very best, most benchmarks seem to be inconclusive between the 5870/480 and 5850/470). I'd say that a gain of 10-15% fps for a rise of 40ish % in power consumption is outragous.
    Also the heat issues are a design failure, those aren't issues that Nvida are going to be able to fix with driver updates(as seen by the very hefty heatsinks in the coolers), at best they need another revision of cards to fix that issue.
    Furthermore a £100 difference in price for that aforementioned 10-15%(max) fps gain is not justified.
     
  9. HourBeforeDawn

    HourBeforeDawn a.k.a KazeModz

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    To be honest this is great that the Fermi is doing so poorly, this well allow ATI to get more customers, which will help their budget and R&D and balance things out to be less nVidia scaled which will balance the gaming side of the industry so that there will be less buy offs from nVidia and more proper coding can be done for a change. Im looking forward to what all of this will bring and down the road competition will be more balanced so it will be more intense. All in all the consumer really wins.
     
  10. ssj12

    ssj12 Minimodder

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    umm... why are you guys talking as if this was facing the HD5870? its rival is the HD5850.
     
  11. unaligned

    unaligned What's a Dremel?

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    Well if they're roughly the same price, then it makes sense to compare them. But like I said in an earlier post, the 470 is priced directly between the 5850 and 5870 in the US ($300 for 5850, $350 for 470, $400 for 5870). Conversion to GBP would put the price of a 470 at 236 GBP in the US.
     
  12. knuck

    knuck Hate your face

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    Please read what's directly under my username

    I don't know if this has been mentioned in this thread, but I think a comparison to the current nVidia high/mid range would have been more interesting than just ATI vs nVidia. If I were considering an upgrade from my GTX260 I would love to know how it compares to the 470 and if the upgrade is worth it or not

    just my 2¢. Good job as always
     
  13. outlawaol

    outlawaol Geeked since 1982

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    Fascinating... I have been a nvidia guy for a long time, but the HD 5870 is looking so good. Although it would help to play games that actually use the power of that beast. And currently the most power hungry game I play is crysis. And that isnt that much anymore... Just going to wait I think, my 8800GTX is serving me well. :D
     
  14. LSpaz

    LSpaz What's a Dremel?

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    I'd lke to clarify that the GTX 480 does in fact use a purely digital VR controller, the CHL8266, from CHiL Semiconductor. The GTX470 does not, it uses an older analog controller. This comment is in reference to your statement in this review

    "As with the GTX 480, there’s no digital power switching (something that you will see on HD 5000-series cards)"
     
  15. Claave

    Claave You Rebel scum

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    We did check this when testing, but when we're re-united with our test rigs on Monday we'll delve deeper.

    Cat 10.3b is the beta version of 10.3 WHQL, which is the driver we used. The Dirt 2 numbers we got should be directly comparable to Cat 10.3b numbers on other sites (test rigs allowing).
     
  16. NickCPC

    NickCPC Minimodder

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    We are talking about in the UK for the majority of these comments, especially about prices. In the US you might have better pricing for the 470 but here in the UK, the 470 (as has been mentioned serveral times already) is negligibly cheaper than the 5870. It makes for an incredibly poor value card as the 470 won in almost no benchmark against the 5870.

    Also, since you aimed your comments at me, I'm actually fully aware that a 5970 is a dual GPU solution, thank you very much. However, again, you fail to understand that here in the UK, the 5970 can be had for less than £60 more than a GTX480 (if you don't believe me, I'll link you) - £60 is about 12% difference in cost. As a result, consider the 480 is 6 months late to the market, a sensible person might have assumed that would mean 6 months more development and hence would have dominated the competition (considering 6 months in the graphics world is like a lifetime), and hence it might be fair to make comparisons with the 5970, especially as they have similar power draws. As you can see, considering the 5970 is considerably more than 12% faster (especially averages) than the GTX480, and considering it is only 12% more expensive, cooler, and available now, it makes the value of the 480 particularly poor. So thanks for the flames, but I have actually done my research.

    *Bites tongue from returning flames*

    Furthermore, power draw issues cannot be resolved by a meaningful amount by drivers. But anyway, this article is about the 470. In the UK, its cost is considerably more in the US and hence we are able to heavily criticise it as it is poor value against the 5870 and 5850 and considering how late to market it is, it's not as fast as it should be. If you want to buy a GTX470 or 480, go for it.
     
  17. Aracos

    Aracos What's a Dremel?

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    God I wish I was able to say that, I'll check when I reunite with our 5870, GTX480 and 5970 rigs if Dirt was running in DX9! You my friend have a brilliant job :thumb:
     
  18. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    the card is decent value in US no dout about it. And its prob the card id recomend over the 5850 ( which is priced near it)

    uk pricing is as always **** long live the pound and all that
     
  19. Ph4ZeD

    Ph4ZeD What's a Dremel?

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    I think all UKers welcome other posters from other parts of the world, but Bit-Tech/CustomPC's reviews are ultimately based on the value of the products, and their prices, which are of course UK prices. So the conclusions of reviews on this website are going to be more relevant to Brits than others.
     
  20. boogerlad

    boogerlad What's a Dremel?

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    fermi failed me.
     
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