Evening Reading: Listen to the Podcast
See you, Monday!
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Official NVIDIA GTX 480 / 470 thread
NDA has been lifted and the first few offical reviews are out... here is a quick roundup:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=24000
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=888
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-470-480-review/
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3203/nvidia_geforce_gtx_470_video_card_tested/index.html
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1258/1/
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review
http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-480-GF100-Has-Landed/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_480_Fermi/
http://www.elitebastards.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1388&catid=17:previews&Itemid=31
Still waiting for Tech Report to put up their article.
Thoughts? Is anyone other than valcan_s planning on getting one two?
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Thoughts? Too hot, too expensive - some good speed at times though and nice minimum frame rates in Crysis at least.
I'll wait for the GTX475 which is refreshed in 4 months, runs cooler, uses less power and costs less.
I hope for nvidia's sake that ATI don't release the ATI 6870/6850 though because I got a feeling a lot of people are still going to hold off.
(My 4890 is still fine :/ ) -
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GTX 480 is the fastest, but the price and power are too much. The 5850 is the better value over the 470 (and easily overclockable to above 5870 speeds), the 5870.
I see it as thus: The top 3 card to choose from are
5850 (Best bang for buck if you overclock)
5870
480
Between the 480 and 5870? I like some of the stuff I see in Fermi, but the power and HEAT makes the 5870 slightly better looking. I wouldn't sneeze at a 480 though. -
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Obviously that intertube guy from a few weeks ago was full of shit, clearly the 480gtx outperforms ATI's stuff.
At the same time Nvidia the whole thing is obviously out late, and thus priced somewhat higher than what might be perfectly competitive. If these cards had been out 3 months ago things might have been dead even against the two, if not with a slight favor to Nvidia -
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ATTN: Potential 5850/5870 buying menz.
If you've looked at Fermi and decided to buy ATI instead, here are a few things you should know about the 5850/5870 series
1.) The 5870 and 5850 are essentially the same card with the 5850 having some shaders clipped off and running at lower clock speeds.
2.) You do no have to flash the BIOS on the 5850 to overclock past 900 core.
This was true months and months ago, but you can use MSI Afterburner (works on all 58** cards) to overclock well past 900. Afterburner lets you change voltage as well, something you'll need to tweak to get the highest overclock. My 5850 is overclocked to 950/1200 at 1.237 volts, well past the standard clocks for the 5870 (meaning my card out-performs a stock 5870 when I overclock).
3.) On the 5850/5870, core overclocking in king. You'll get the most out of overclocking core over memory. You'll want to do both, but the biggest advantages come from overclocking the core, so try that out first.
4.) The 5870 and 5850 OC pretty much the same, but you'll get a higher memory overclock on the 5870 because it uses better quality memory. With equally overclocked 5850 vs 5870, the 5870 will use it's little extra memory overclock and extra shaders to be about 5-7% faster.
Finally, check out these benchmarks showing overclocked 5850 vs 5870 for the best idea of what to expect.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18112756
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Holy crap, my 5850 smokes the 480 on BC2 at 1680x1050 even before I overclock it.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783&p=14 -
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And when nvidia was king from 2006-2007. Stagnant prices with no product refreshes for a year because the other guy has no competing parts sucks.
We'll be stuck here for a while too, there is no reason for ATI to boost performance or drop prices right now, not when they currently offer comparable performance at lower prices.
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tl;dr: I would like to upgrade to an ATI but have personal suspicions against doing so. Help convince me otherwise.
I would like someone to break down my brand loyalty with nVidia. I'd like to upgrade sometime in the next few months. I currently have a GTS250 and an Intel E6600. It's obvious that nVidia won't have a lot to offer when upgrade times rolls around but I haven't puchased an ATI/AMD card for my computer ever. Every time a friend or my dad requested one I had nothing but horrible software issues with it. I can remember one specific example where I was trying to get CCC to install because he needed to to control the secondary output on the card. I would continually try to install and then crash with no error. After searching around I discovered that a specific version of Visual C Runtimes needed to be installed to run their installer. These were not included in the disc and not mentioned in the readme. I've been in driver hell with ATI several times in the past where it would routinely unload the driver at boot. I remember watching people have visual texture glitches while playing counter strike and it was always an ATI card in the machine. I remember all the little patches for ATI cards around the DX7 and DX8 days. The current game of interest (BF:BC2) sports slow load times for ATI users for instance. At the same time I have barely had any problems with any of my nVidia products, starting with the TNT2 Ultra. So I've been using nVidia exclusively for over 10 years now and would like to upgrade, but this loyalty is preventing me from doing so.-
Wait another 3-6 months dude. Honestly. I've switched back and forth between ATI and Nvidia over the (Rage 128, Radeon 8500, Nvidia 6600, Nvidia 6800gt, Radeon 4770) years and realistically you get what you get and there isn't any magic voodoo. Keeping in mind I've never experienced any video card crippling drivers, so I'm lucky in that respect. But you will be better off served to wait to see what else comes out (Ie 58xx 2gb?)
Your processor should be your focus for upgrading though, realistically. You will get more mileage out of going to a quad core in the next 6 months to a year. Check the numbers for BC2 to see what I mean. -
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And I don't mean for that to sound like a dick post (well okay maybe a little). If you like NVIDIA and you feel more comfortable with their products then I'm not sure what anyone could say here to sway your opinion. You can read reviews and benchmarks and product analysis as well as we can; go read up and decide for yourself. FWIW the last three ATI cards I've used (9700 Pro, 512MB 4870, and 1GB 4890) have all been great and given me zero problems. I had more issues with my 640MB 8800GTS than with the three ATI cards combined.
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I flip-flop between Nvidia and ATI, about every "new computer" cycle, 2-3 years. Recently bought a 5770 (pretty good board), but I wanted a 5850. I would still have a hell of a time advising a Nvidia card at the heat/power cost.
The real question is how much is PhysX worth and do you own an 8xxx series Nvidia card? You can hack it to do PhysX with an ATI graphics board.
I have had driver issues with both (I bought a Nvidia card due to HDMI issues with my ATI card on my last rig), but the 57xx and 58xx ATI cards are great, drivers get updated frequently enough. For price/power/heat performance a 5850 would be the best buy.
I don't have my hands on a Fermi, so I can speak for Nvidia side. PhysX is a bigger deal than better tesselation perfomance, but the better minimum framerates is damn good thing the Fermi have going for them.
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Gah, I want to believe so badly. I know it was forever ago but I never had so many problems as I did with the Radeon 9800 Pro I had for six months in 2003. Fucking hell, I never got so many BSOD in any post-Windows 98 operating system. I went to an Nvidia again the day the 6800GT dropped and never looked back.
I know it is completely irrational for me to think that ATI still has driver issues but that's how bad my experience with them was.
So, no problems eh? :)
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Honestly, I've had less problems with ATi drivers than Nvidia ones.
I've had two NVidia cards and now 3 ATi cards.
With my 9700, I had zero issues.
With my X800 Pro, zero issues until I needed a SM3.0 card. :(
With my 7600 GS, I had TONS of 2D problems. The 2D performance on that card was absolute shit. 3D performance was fine, though.
With my 8800 GTX, I had crazy driver crashing and overheating issues up the wazoo until I got RivaTuner and cranked the fan up to 100% literally all the time. Then it was smooth sailing.
So far with my 5850, I've had no problems at all.
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Looks like all those dire predictions for Fermi held up. Roughly the same performance ATI introduced six months ago, but for more watts and dollars. The only tangible benefit is with 4x/8x MSAA at extremely high res, except that will cost you $1000 for an SLI setup. Considering that the real money to be made is with mid-range solutions, Nvidia is just not going to be competitive with this generation of hardware. They need a die shrink, stat.
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I think that's what everybody is hoping, that this is just growing pains based around a radically new part.
Fermi isn't the absolute clusterfuck that the GF 5000 series was, but it isn't wowing anyone based on the fact that it is so power hungry and gives similar performance to a six-month old part while costing more. Who knows, maybe in a year it'll all pay off. -
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Not really.
They're both being fabbed by the same 40 nm process by TSMC.
The problem with the Fermi chips is that they're fuckin' huge. So whenever they spit out a wafer, the larger the chip, the more chance there will be errors.
The smaller the chip, the less chance there will be errors on it. The 58xx series is a bit smaller than Fermi, so yields should theoretically be better.
I think this is right.
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