For the same price I could get a 5970... Hmmm. I'm not sure nVidia are going to win this battle for the generation, no matter how hard they try. I hope they have something up their sleeve for the next.
£510? Are they mental?!? IIRC, the last single GPU card to cost that much was the 8800 Ultra.
The issue with the fan shroud is completely unforgivable, especially at that price. I hope Zotac do something about this pronto. On the other hand, the temperatures are finally sensible - although you'll also need a case with good airflow.
As for overclocking, I think I'll stay with Afterburner.
When designing new graphics cards, get in a design team who specialise in designing coolers (in the aftermarket sense of the word). They invariably do a better job at it than you!
Haven't read the article yet (will do so in a moment), but is Paul the new whipping boy at the bit-tech office? Seems every article these days is by him. Give the lad some rest! :)
Originally Posted by azrael- Haven't read the article yet (will do so in a moment), but is Paul the new whipping boy at the bit-tech office? Seems every article these days is by him. Give the lad some rest! :)
Originally Posted by memeroot far to expensive I'm afraid, esp for a gimped chip....
when are the next round of chips coming? both ati and nvidia have failed to break with the previous gen this time round.
Agree with your first point but how can you claim Ati have failed this gen? Their cards tick all the boxes at prices that make Nvidia's poor poor offerings look just like expensive oddities!
I have a question since whenever the GTX480 gets reviewed/mentioned there's always someone saying to ignore it and to rather get the 5850/5870.
Let's suppose I buy the 5870 based on one of these recommendations and later decide that I need/want CUDA (Physx etc). I end up getting a GTS250 or maybe even a GTX260.
Would the extra power required and heat produced by this extra GPU not negate the power/heat benefit offered by the 5870 over the GTX480?
On top of that, there’s the driver side of things and the fact that you need a motherboard with 3x PCI-e slots should you wish to do CF at a later date...
Also does dynamic occlusion work if the nVidia card is the secondary one instead of the primary one?
(I suppose dynamic occlusion/CUDA etc means little or nothing to 80% of people but on my GTX275 I leave both DO and Physx enabled since I don’t really see too big a performance hit with it enabled)
I had a 4890 but replaced it with the GTX275 when it died and TBH I really like the extra effects in the games (granted VERY FEW games) that does support it.
Personally I’d get the GTX480...
(Post not meant to offend/start flame war, just wondering about the power/heat aspect of things)
Well speaking of power/heat aspect. My current system with GT8800 is generating about 98watt on the wall when doing absolutely nothing but showing the desktop. When i start a game it jumps to about 290 to 320 watt, depending on the workload of the GPU.
I'm just to damn scared to buy a 470/480 to just see it doing 200watt on the desktop all day and costing me oozes of money on electric bills. It's like having turned on the microwave all day in the kitchen for nothing. It is wasting energy and money.
Originally Posted by DarkFear I suppose dynamic occlusion/CUDA etc means little or nothing to 80% of people but on my GTX275 I leave both DO and Physx enabled since I don’t really see too big a performance hit with it enabled
I'd forgotten about being able to force AO in games through Nvidia drivers. Definitely adds to visual quality; ti's hard to miss its benefits when activated in Half-Life 2.
ok the 5850 was a good card at its launch price but all the cards acn be matched by the previous gen and for less cash... I dont think that was anywhere close to being true with the last get where the gtx285 was better than the 9800gx2 for instance.. here the 5870 is much less good than a gtx295.
I've just had more luck with Nvidia cards. Whenever I've had an ATi card I've had games crashing to desktop, games not working untill a new patch or driver come out, Nvidia seems to just work for me. If the performace was worse than the 5870s I'd be tempted to give ATi another go, but it's not, it's on par or better.
The price is quite amusing as last week I pick up a XFX 5970 BE £470 on Scan. Considerably more performance for less money, lower power consumption and also overclocks very well .... It also dumps most the heat outside the case rather than into it as this card does.
ok. Well first, the 4890 (and 275) sits nicely between the 5830 and 5850 in most gameing benchmarks I've seen. I think it's a bit unfair to start Xfiring cards to beat a single card from this gen and the 295 is a dual chip, so again, not a fair comparison. So your comparisons fall down just a tad!
Then of course there's the whole point of this latest gen of cards which DX11... which none of the previous gen have.
If you want to argue that this gen of cards is too expensive, go ahead. But I doubt you'll find an ATI accountant who'd agree based on their sales figures over the past nine months!
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ReplyThe issue with the fan shroud is completely unforgivable, especially at that price. I hope Zotac do something about this pronto. On the other hand, the temperatures are finally sensible - although you'll also need a case with good airflow.
As for overclocking, I think I'll stay with Afterburner.
@Yakyb: Two reasons: PhysX and SLI scaleabiltiy.
as for SLI i havent really spent much attention on this but surely crossfire performs just as well
The upside of the review though is that if you dont want to watercool, but want to tame the heat of the GTX480 the zalman cooler is a no brainer imo.
When designing new graphics cards, get in a design team who specialise in designing coolers (in the aftermarket sense of the word). They invariably do a better job at it than you!
I think ATI already got that memo! :)
when are the next round of chips coming? both ati and nvidia have failed to break with the previous gen this time round.
Agree with your first point but how can you claim Ati have failed this gen? Their cards tick all the boxes at prices that make Nvidia's poor poor offerings look just like expensive oddities!
Care to expand on your claim?
Let's suppose I buy the 5870 based on one of these recommendations and later decide that I need/want CUDA (Physx etc). I end up getting a GTS250 or maybe even a GTX260.
Would the extra power required and heat produced by this extra GPU not negate the power/heat benefit offered by the 5870 over the GTX480?
On top of that, there’s the driver side of things and the fact that you need a motherboard with 3x PCI-e slots should you wish to do CF at a later date...
Also does dynamic occlusion work if the nVidia card is the secondary one instead of the primary one?
(I suppose dynamic occlusion/CUDA etc means little or nothing to 80% of people but on my GTX275 I leave both DO and Physx enabled since I don’t really see too big a performance hit with it enabled)
I had a 4890 but replaced it with the GTX275 when it died and TBH I really like the extra effects in the games (granted VERY FEW games) that does support it.
Personally I’d get the GTX480...
(Post not meant to offend/start flame war, just wondering about the power/heat aspect of things)
I'm just to damn scared to buy a 470/480 to just see it doing 200watt on the desktop all day and costing me oozes of money on electric bills. It's like having turned on the microwave all day in the kitchen for nothing. It is wasting energy and money.
I wait for a "IDLE" solution first...
ok the 5850 was a good card at its launch price but all the cards acn be matched by the previous gen and for less cash... I dont think that was anywhere close to being true with the last get where the gtx285 was better than the 9800gx2 for instance.. here the 5870 is much less good than a gtx295.
- btw I exclude power usage as it don't matter
5870 < gtx295
5850 < 2x 5770's < 2x4870's
5830 < 4890 (ok debatable) <275
5770 < 4870
5750 < 4850
Then of course there's the whole point of this latest gen of cards which DX11... which none of the previous gen have.
If you want to argue that this gen of cards is too expensive, go ahead. But I doubt you'll find an ATI accountant who'd agree based on their sales figures over the past nine months!
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