Widescreen Gaming Forum

For those of you who wants to see an early review for the gtx 480/470, click on the link below

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?high=&m=259013&mpage=1#259128

Scroll down to see a plethora of benchmarks

http://www.overclock.net/hardware-news/697843-hexus-nvidias-geforce-gtx-480-finally.html

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=248255

Hexus broke NDA.

To be honest, GF100 looks OK in all but two areas: power consumption and heat.

The game performance is all over the shop (Far Cry 2, HAWX, Dirt 2 doing great; Bad Company 2, Crysis doing not so great when compared to a 5870) and I don't know whether to think drivers will improve that or not, given that nVidia said they wanted their release drivers "perfect"... however, that's neither here nor there - software can always be improved. It is the scale of the improvements that is important.

But I cannot justify the purchase of something that draws that much power. And drivers aren't going to help power draw. Only a die shrink and refresh will do that. Not to mention that if those cards are hitting 93*C in the UK, in March... one of those would hit 120*C in my computer room in a summer afternoon, when if I've had my i7 rig on for the day, the ambient hits 40*C.

The Chinese review I'm dubious about, the ATi numbers look a bit low, but right now that's the only SLI review.

Will be very interested to see what Anandtech, Hardware Canucks, HardOCP and Xbit Labs have to say. If their power and heat numbers match, I won't be buying GF100.

Here is Clubic's review (in french) concerning power draws:
http://www.clubic.com/article-332014-9-nvidia-geforce-gtx-480-directx-11-nvidia.html

Anandtech

HardOCP

Toms Hardware

Hardware Canucks

Well looks like the GTX470 absolutely FAILS in comparison to the 5850.


The 470 performs +/- 10% compared to the 5850, costs $50 more and uses over 100 more watts under load which tacks on another $10 PER MONTH or so compared to the 5850. It also pumps out an extra 10*C. (granted I live in canada so thats not a bad thing for over half the year ;) )

Honestly, I'm disappointed, but not really surprised. I have been looking at a video card upgrade around April/May this year with the intention of grabbing a GTX275 1792MB, and the Fermi launch has done nothing to change my plans. I've toyed with the idea of a 5850 but haven't found a card with greater than 1GB VRAM. Has anybody seen one? EF is a non-tipping point since I have a TH setup, and my long experience with NVIDIA makes me reluctant to jump ship without a serious justification.

Also, this from HardOCP:

SLI will be required for NV Surround 3x1 gaming, but you will be able to use 3 DVI displays natively. No DisplayPort required.

Hold the phone. Am I correctly reading that NV Surround is only possible with multiple cards? If so that's a significant obstacle to grabbing EF market share away from ATI. Am I missing some information, here, or is this really a fail on NVIDIA's part?

Hold the phone. Am I correctly reading that NV Surround is only possible with multiple cards? If so that's a significant obstacle to grabbing EF market share away from ATI. Am I missing some information, here, or is this really a fail on NVIDIA's part?

Thats about as clean cut as it gets, Grab that 1.2K PSU!

HardOCP measured up to 900 watts with an overclocked core i7 920 and a pair of these bad boys in SLI.

SLI is required for Surround.

That automatically counts me out - no way I want to spend £900 on graphics cards that increase my electricity bill further above a 4870X2 (which is already plenty power hungry...)

...

I've only read the Canucks review so far. While they go into a lot of detail, and I will reserve judgement until I've read other reviews to see if another reviewer mentions it...

...there are no GTX4x0 cards available retail. The Hexus, PCInlife and HW Canucks review cards all seem to overclock like demons.

Why does this set "cherrypicked review cards" alarmbells ringing in my head?

I want to see retail cards all being able to reach the same overclocks. But obviously that's going to take time for them to become available.

Warning ! I didn't read all the review yet but still, let me pass on this info :

according to hardware.fr review, be wary of announced crazy overclocks
the software seems to dynamically adapt (read "limit") the GPU frequency when said GPU hits 105°C hence defeating any overclock in place ...
a temperature which was hit by hardware.fr @Stock BTW ... (room temp 26°C // GPU temp 106°C @load)

edit: they are not able to closely monitor frequencies to watch this effect in action however a load stress test of a SLI of GTX480 started @1500FPS
and ended @800FPS with 110°C and stability problems ...

All other reviews I've seen say that the cards overclock very well indeed - from 600MHz to ~720MHz for the 470, from 700MHz to 770-780Mhz for 480.

Call me cynical but I think cherry picked cards have been sent out as review samples.

whismerhill - doesn't surprise me. It wouldn't be very good if the card had a 'hard' limit at 105*C at which point the card just shut down. Downclocking first makes sense. But it will make any overclocking results dubious in their accuracy.

...

The other interesting thing is... how long did it take for DX10 titles to really appear after Vista launched? There are more DX11 titles available now (what, six months after Windows 7 launched?) than there were DX10 titles a whole year after Vista launched.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the future brings with DX11.

But I do think that the only way GF100 is going to become truly viable to anyone who watches their bills at all is after a die shrink. It's not so much of a problem in the States where energy is fairly cheap, but the cost of electricity isn't that cheap everywhere. The idea of putting two 95*C cards in the same case concerns me a little. At least without watercooling. Now I know why there are those holes in the PCB for air. Although triple and quad SLI (eVGAs special trick on their Classified boards) will have the middle cards absolutely melting...

That and several review sites (including TechPowerUp!, who are very, very good when it comes to working out how much power something is drawing) think nVidia have fibbed about the power draw of the GTX480. With all else being equal, there is no reason why a 250w TDP card should draw more than a 294w TDP card (ie: 5970).

according to hardware.fr (which noticed the same thing)
nvidia invokes a TDP of 250W being the maximum load observed in standard gaming usage ...

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1258/15/

This is bloody scary.

Idling at 90*C... due to having two monitors plugged in! :shock:

not surprising
when I activate my second screen (which is pretty rare given that it's an old 1024x768 panel)
frequencies increase up to 3D ones on my GTX285

still I can't believe nvidia still went the same route, it seems to me it's currently a bad trend for nvidia and a good trend for ATI
ATI simplifies more & more & get more performance out of the chip surface...
Nvidia complexifies more & more & get not that much performance increase while chip surface goes crazy along with power & heat dissipation requirements...
So in the end, sure there is a performance improvement, but I see nothing amazing to it...
I mean... If I were to feed my GTX285 that much power I could probably increase frequencies quite a bit, couldn't I ?
thereby lessening the GTX480 "advantage" (except for DX11 or DX10.1)

Intel P4 anyone ?
I just hope the next nvidia is a "Core 2 Duo" in this case :wink: :mrgreen:

Well at least we may see some interesting cooling solution with this new power challenge ...

Well at least we may see some interesting cooling solution with this new power challenge ...

We've already got a great cooling tech for GPUs in the forum of Vapor-chamber cooling like the Sapphire VaporX system. Unfortunately, Sapphire are ATi only and they've patented Vapor-chamber stuff up the wazoo...

Honestly, I'm disappointed, but not really surprised. I have been looking at a video card upgrade around April/May this year with the intention of grabbing a GTX275 1792MB, and the Fermi launch has done nothing to change my plans. I've toyed with the idea of a 5850 but haven't found a card with greater than 1GB VRAM. Has anybody seen one? EF is a non-tipping point since I have a TH setup, and my long experience with NVIDIA makes me reluctant to jump ship without a serious justification.

Sapphire has recently announced a 5850 TOXIC 2 GB.

It's not so much of a problem in the States where energy is fairly cheap,

Oh my, if our rates are cheap to you, I don't think I want to know what you guys are paying for your service. :shock:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1258/15/

This is bloody scary.

Idling at 90*C... due to having two monitors plugged in! :shock:

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez. That nails the coffin shut, IMO. There's no way my system would survive the summer weather where I live with temps like that, even with the 6 120mm casefans I've got running.

[quote]Honestly..my long experience with NVIDIA makes me reluctant to jump ship without a serious justification.

Sapphire has recently announced a 5850 TOXIC 2 GB.
Thanks for the heads-up! I'm off to read a review of this card right now. The VRAM bump is very important to me since I game in surround, which is why 1GB models didn't really pull me in. If this Sapphire card does the job (which it should), I might jump ship to ATI provided the price is right. It would be nice to have a DX11 card, even if I'm still on XP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_tariff :mrgreen:

edit: however I don't know how 2006-7 prices are related to nowadays for some countries including USA ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_tariff :mrgreen:

edit: however I don't know how 2006-7 prices are related to nowadays for some countries including USA ...

Hmmmmm...according to my latest utility statement I pay an average of 23.32 cents/1kWh. Maybe I should move to the UK! ;)

Hmmmmm...according to my latest utility statement I pay an average of 23.32 cents/1kWh. Maybe I should move to the UK! ;)

that's not cheap at all !
alternate energy sources FTW!
I wish we had the money to get a "green" house (no heater/cooler necessary + solar panels and can even resell energy surpluses :mrgreen: )

Anyway to come back to the main subject the main point for me is not power consumption but noise ...
I can't bear noisy gfx cards ... well I guess I'll at least wait for summer it's said GF104 might be interesting...

Equivalent of $0.18 for 1 kWh for leccy in the UK? In 2009? Damn, someone should have told my electricity supplier... I'm sure it was easily twice that.