sup guys, now i've been waiting months as most of you have for the release of fermi, i even sold my ati4870x2 in september 2009 and have been using a 8600gt since.... now i didnt buy the 5870 simply because i was waiting for nvidia's response i.e. gtx480 before deciding which card to buy. now before buying a product i read some reviews as most ppl do but today my heads been drilled thru one side n shot thur the other heres why..... the two reviews i always look forward to are obv custom pc's & guru3d but can someone explain why one says the gtx480 is a complete flop n the other says its absoulty amazing.... normally both reviews are somewhat similar but this time.... Guru 3D Custom PC any 1 got a solid decent review for the card?
GTX480 is not a complete flop, it is faster than 5870 in every game bar 1, and it is very good at Dx11 tessellation. but at current price, only worth buying if you a purist who want the fastest single GPU no matter what cost. otherwise a 5870 will give you plenty of bang-for-buck for all current latest games.
The price of the Nvidia cards needs to come down to compete with Ati. The nvidia card seems to have the edge when tesselation starts otherwise it's on par with the 5870. If their is going to be alot of heavily tesselated games coming out then I think the Nvidia card could excel. It's just not attractive at the huge price that Nvidia have put on it, for that money you expect it to completely knock out Ati and it doesn't.
Just noticed the 480 demos are available on the website- Super sonic sledge, real time raytraced car and the hair one. I got a sexy raytraced car wallpaper.
Another thing to take into account is the heat. The bit-tech one is more down on it because it turns the inside of your PC into an oven, where as the Guru3D one is more its fast and thats it. Especially if you want to add a second card in the future, the 480 is certainly not the way to go I think
Nvidia Fermi is not ready yet, - Overheating big time - Way Too noisy - 3D stereoscopic 3D on 2 or more displays doesn't work at the moment. - Overheating even more (90 idle - outside of case) when you plug 2 monitors on it. - Uses mini-HDMI which no one has an adapter for. Why not display port, or simply leave 2 DVI with a provided HDMI converter like it did in previous generation? It most likely cost them more to implement mini-HDMI port, as not only it's a plug but also circuit implementation to have it, PLUS big fat royalty fees to pay. - Not a full Fermi (it's been cut down). If you fold or use software that uses CUDA or GPU processing then have the GPU water cooled. EVGA sells watercooled GPU version for the same price as the fan version. If you don't have a water cooling system, and don't use software that uses the GPU, than get the ATI one. If Nvidia is what you really want, I would say wait for the next version where they fix all these problem with a new revision of the chip.
NVIDIAs favouredness of larger chips has resulted in a much more expensive, hotter running (and therefore louder) and more power hungry chip, I don't see the point of buying a GTX 480, unless the price drops by £100 or so I don't see many people buying it and even then, the performance isn't that much better than the 5870 but it runs hotter, you have three choices 1.) Wait for the next set of drivers in the hope that they may yield a greater performance difference 2.) Buy a 5870 and end the waiting nonsense 3.) Buy a GTX480 and pray that the drivers boost performance by another 10-15% (and spend some money on making sure your computer can cope with the nuclear reactor that is the GTX 480)
I'd buy a 5870 card. Only buy the GTX 480 if you want to save money by keeping your central heating switched off. The GTX 480 will heat your room up instead lol
The GTX480 is faster, but substantially more expensive and runs so hot the card's lifetime is unlikely to be very long. There's evidence that Nvidia burned up more than a few of their test chips trying to figure out what they need to keep the chip cool and how much performance they can eek out of it. The 5870 delivers performance levels that are acceptable in almost every game at almost any resolution you'd likely be gaming at while using less power and running at a lower temperature (less cost over time, especially if card lifetime means anything to you).
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A dual GPU fermi or GTX 480 SLI is pretty much disaster. I had ATI 850XTs in crossfire a while back. Thouse were the loudest things you ever heard. You might not think of noise but if you buy a really loud card and a few months down the line you are given a chance to return it for 100% money back. I assure you, you would be gladly return for a quieter video card. As for heat. My computer is crazy hot. Thats with the 5970 which actually somehow runs cooler and uses less power than the GTX 480 under load. My room is on the hot side. Kinda unplesant if you ask me but not a deal breaker since you can turn heating off and save money XD or more simply open a window at all times. Still given the option, I would get something that runs cool. But still the 5970 being dual GPU runs quieter and cooler than anything Crossfire or SLI so I don't think I can do any better. Should have waited for the i5s instead of getting the i7 which catches on fire.
Expect to see board partners come up with better coolers than run the card considerably cooler. EVGA do waterblock models, but that isn't practical for most people. Then expect to see increased performance from the next couple of drivers, this usually happens, well it did on the most of the new upper end cards i've bought before. Still, the power consumption and price are ridiculous, compared the ATi's offerings, unless you fold.
