Omg, can't you people count, again?! There's clearly 5 heatpipes, as is with the 480, which you also failed to notice.

So much lol at the Crysis scores :D

Can't see any reason why you'd want to buy one of these tbh, slower than the 5870 and same price, and still with the same crazy temperatures. Still some people must want them I guess.

It looks to me like Nvidia got too obsessed with proving to Intel that the GPU is a viable alternative to the CPU for computational purposes, and forgot to focus on the main use of the high-end GPU - as a game rendering tool, and then got caught in-between the 2 at the last minute. I was hoping for a price drop of the 5800 series, but i'm not sure that Nvidia can afford to force the pricing down much (if at all).

I'm surprisingly disappointed with both cards. Was hoping for something really good, maybe in 4 years or so... *sigh*

Wow, NVidia is basically forcing me to buy ATI no matter how hard I don't want to do it.

Only fanbois will buy this or the 480. If you were serious about using either you'd also need to invest in a serious watercooling setup unless you don't mind being deafened by loads of fans, and then the price becomes ridiculous and unjustifiable. It's really disappointing from the green team - but bets on nVidia marketing these cards with their "sideline" technologies (CUDA, PhysX...) as main selling points? I'm going to keep recommending AMD cards.

Bah... I've already spent all my best material on ridiculing the GTX480 in its review comments.

I can see these new nVidia cards being outlawed in the polar regions, though. Polar ice caps be gone...

If you had used the lastest Ati driver 10.3 instead of 10.2 your results would have been even more conclusive

Originally Posted by Mraedis
Omg, can't you people count, again?! There's clearly 5 heatpipes, as is with the 480, which you also failed to notice.

+1.

There are VERY visibly 5 heapipes.
Same as on the GTX480, except these are copper instead if Nickel plated.

@technogiant - true true... makes it a bit worthless?

regardless on these numbers 470 looks quite good - but in need of a price drop... which ati would then match....

me I'll go for an old nvidia card 2nd hand I think and wait it out.

They're also 'direct contact' heatpipes on both coolers.

That makes aftermarket coolers virtually impossible to produce, unless its Watercooling blocks.

The heatsink is already one of the best you can get....

would like to see what a GTX480 cooler could do for a 5870/5850....

So annoying.....this was the card i had always intended to get if Fermi turned out to better than hoped.......but it isn't, its much worse than we feared.

Currently have an ATI 4850, and have used ATI for the last 6yrs, but just fancied a change back to Nvidia.

Shame....now definitely going to wait for the refresh from ATI later this year.....

Originally Posted by technogiant
If you had used the lastest Ati driver 10.3 instead of 10.2 your results would have been even more conclusive

We did use 10.3 - the test kit page had a typo. Thanks for flagging it.

Waiting 6 months for this... Fermi FAIL!

I was hoping to see some competition before I decide which GPU to buy... but now I think I may be better off just holding off GPU's all together until ATI/Nvidia see sence and lower prices

if I see a 5850 2GB going for between £190-£200 then I might be tempted to buy, but at current prices, the latest GPU's just look sh*t *sigh*

to me, gtx470 seems very good value compared to 5870. it is similar speed to 5870 (480 is always faster, 470 is trading blows constantly) and in both Dx11 games, gtx470 beats 5870 at 1920x1200.

also, don't forget it's got CUDA, PhysX and 3D (not that im interested in the last one)

all nvidia has to sort out will be the thermals, im sure they will get it right when the actual products become available.

So far it seems to be really disappointing, i was hoping that the cards would offer a much better performance / price ratio and thereby forcing atis to drop in price, so an eyefinity setup would become a bit cheaper, but as it is ill stick to my 4870x2, its fast enough for anything anyway...

multi monitor only with sli ? absolutely a no go there....

Originally Posted by technogiant
If you had used the lastest Ati driver 10.3 instead of 10.2 your results would have been even more conclusive

We did - a last minute switch thanks to ATI launching 10.3 on thursday! Will edit.

@wuyanxu: My guess is that 98% of people will NEVER use CUDA applications, so it's a non-feature for me. PhysX? Yeah, great... every game has that right. If you consider how much extra it's going to cost you to run a GTX4 card in terms of electricity, plus a case upgrade if you don't have an Antec 1200 or TJ07 (as you *WILL* need a high airflow case), as well as living with the high-speed fan, I think it's starting to look exceptionally poor for value. Add that it's >6 months late to market, not conclusively faster than the HD5 series (the GTX480 should be ahead of the 5970 given the extra development time, which it absolutely is not) and the fact that AMD will probably drop prices of the 5870/5850 when the nVidia cards are actually available to buy off the shelf and, in my eyes, you have a clear flop. Don't get me wrong, I'm no ATI fanboy, but I think it's very very hard to defend nVidia with Fermi.

It has been fairly obvious for a while that this generation for nVidia was going to cause them problems but I never considered it was going to this bad, no way in hell I would consider putting one of this series of cards inside one of my rigs.

On a random note anyone else notice this, apparantly my calenders wrong:
We’ve waited ages to get out hands on Nvidia’s first DX11 graphics cards – even the product announcement made back in September 2010 was late

These really a joke considering. Nevermind. I've been nvidia since my 8800gtx that's still going strong and dabbled with the 4870x2s and 5870s on launch. Looking at driver support now I would be inclined to believe that maybe I should switch back to ati. Nvidias drivers are far from brilliant at the moment and I have not updated my 295s drivers for months as support has been horrendous. I'm selling the cards and buying a 5970 as the dream pm custompc made proved that a single 5970 is roughy as quick as a pair of 295s anyway. Gives me the opertunity to purchase a 5870 to crossfire with it or another 5970 should I want to. Nvidia have lost custom here in excess of £1000 a year from me, more fool them!


Andy

@NickCPC.
i used to own gtx260 before getting 5870, and CUDA/PhysX features are very noticeable: video scrolling is not as smooth as on nVidia; Just Cause 2 doesn't look as good with explosions; NFS Shift crash doesn't feel as fatal without the debris; haven't played BatmanAA in ages, but it is a lot less immersive without PhysX effect.

i think it was the hype that made people expect too much, i've always expected GTX470 to be about the same as 5870, and GTX480 to be 20 to 30% faster, but a lot slower than 5970 which is a dual-GPU solution. both GTX400 are performing as expected, with driver tweaks to come.

don't get me wrong, im not a fanboy of either camp, i go for good deals (5870 for £234, yes please) but i do feel 470 at same price as 5870 is justified after seeing bit-tech's Dx11 benchmarks.

I have no favourites with either brand. But I regret selling two cards 8800GTS 512mb and my last one the ATi4890 which was so smooth in games and photoshop even the resource eating CS4.

But I made a good decision in getting the 5870 instead of waiting for the nVidia. First time where my patience has paid off.