DISCUSSION: GTX400 vs HD5xxx Series

[stevefd]

I think it's fantastic for all of us that they are competing so hard against each other. For the consumer that is a largely positive thing apart from the fact that tech can change too quickly for our own liking which makes old tech "old" much quicker.

I was just as much of an Nvidia fanboy as everyone else but I decide to grab an ATI when Nvidia started creating heaters as opposed to GPUs :P
In terms of what I need the 5970 is for me the best way to go at the moment, though that could always change with the next batch of cards.

[anthony256]

Originally Posted by stevefd

I think it's fantastic for all of us that they are competing so hard against each other. For the consumer that is a largely positive thing apart from the fact that tech can change too quickly for our own liking which makes old tech "old" much quicker.

I was just as much of an Nvidia fanboy as everyone else but I decide to grab an ATI when Nvidia started creating heaters as opposed to GPUs :P
In terms of what I need the 5970 is for me the best way to go at the moment, though that could always change with the next batch of cards.

Exactly, it's the best for us customers

My 5970 I have from

725/1000
to
878/1220

Furmark - native res, 8xAA - 88C max temp

Stock settings barely goes above 70 - 75C

[Tyrannize]

This might sound strange, but the heat these 480s produce, keep me warm during my late night gaming sessions. Not looking forward to summer though

On a side note, EVGA have released a new version on the GTX 470 with a high flow cooling bracket and backplate. Makes me wonder if these rumours of the 470 being discontinued is actually true?

Source: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...012-P3-1475-AR

[TOX]

Originally Posted by stevefd

I think it's fantastic for all of us that they are competing so hard against each other. For the consumer that is a largely positive thing apart from the fact that tech can change too quickly for our own liking which makes old tech "old" much quicker.

I was just as much of an Nvidia fanboy as everyone else but I decide to grab an ATI when Nvidia started creating heaters as opposed to GPUs :P
In terms of what I need the 5970 is for me the best way to go at the moment, though that could always change with the next batch of cards.

Originally Posted by anthony256

Exactly, it's the best for us customers

My 5970 I have from

725/1000
to
878/1220

Furmark - native res, 8xAA - 88C max temp

Stock settings barely goes above 70 - 75C

I run my HD 5970 @ Stock on an i7 920 @ Stock :P

I'm so boring; but for me it's great BC2 when I want to play 6048 * 1200 @ Medimum and a constant 60 FPS+.

I mainly work on my PC but I have a Press account for Steam which means I get all games for free. I've been grabbing a few more lately but again don't have heaps of time.

Originally Posted by Tyrannize

This might sound strange, but the heat these 480s produce, keep me warm during my late night gaming sessions. Not looking forward to summer though

On a side note, EVGA have released a new version on the GTX 470 with a high flow cooling bracket and backplate. Makes me wonder if these rumours of the 470 being discontinued is actually true?

Source: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...012-P3-1475-AR

GTX 470 SLI made me hot on a 16c night in Perth; I worry about 40c+ days and 30c nights.

[Hom3br3w]

Originally Posted by Tyrannize

This might sound strange, but the heat these 480s produce, keep me warm during my late night gaming sessions. Not looking forward to summer though

On a side note, EVGA have released a new version on the GTX 470 with a high flow cooling bracket and backplate. Makes me wonder if these rumours of the 470 being discontinued is actually true?

Source: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInf...012-P3-1475-AR

Dustbuster FX anyone?

[klownkill]

Here is some 480 SLI(2GPU's) vs 5870 + 5890 in Crossfire(3GPU's) peoples thoughts.

quotes:

Temps of the 480 so far have been fine, overclocked it to 800 with fan set at 70%, and temps under load are 70-80 range, 40's idle. Power use can get up there with 720-800w measured at the socket. Noise in not any worse than my 5970, but crank it to 100% and you have a hair dryer. Right now I am leaning to keeping the 480's and ditching the ATI cards, will play some more tonight and see if my opinion changes.

One of the reasons I considered buying the 480's was that in certain circumstances the ATI cards would drop frames, pause, studder, in areas of intense graphical rendering/lighting. With three top end gpu's that is not acceptable. It was not often (except in AVP, then too often), but annoying none the less. The 480's so far have not exhibited this issue, the larger framebuffer just bulls through the tough areas.

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m...namitedata.com



and a good read:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2068091

[baronnight]

Originally Posted by klownkill

Here is some 480 SLI(2GPU's) vs 5870 + 5890 in Crossfire(3GPU's) peoples thoughts.

quotes:





http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m...namitedata.com



and a good read:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2068091

lol klown stole my link from the other thread

[anthony256]

Just think of this...

For years, we've all been used to normalish cards... they were ~75 - 150W. Then we hit the ceiling at 150W, then a next gen comes out and is 300W maximum, a few hit it quick (NVIDIA GTX295, etc).

ATI only really got to that ceiling with the 5970 able to breach 300W, only if overclocked.

The Fermi's GTX490 has to smash through that to 375W of power just to solidify it's leadership. If ATI beat that at say 250W, would NVIDIA require 500W of power alone to run? Pushing minimum PSU for your i7 system's overclocked (to not bottleneck the card) to say 1000W?

Where ATI you could easily have top of the line graphics (at lower prices because of the better scaled -up and down- GPU?) on the market for the mainstream where all the users are?

This will push NVIDIA too far and they'll have to completely redesign a GPU to come out and save this company.

I've run NVIDIA hardware for most of my life, a 9700PRO/X1800 cards are the only ATI cards I've owned, else I've had nearly every generation of NVIDIA cards from Geforce 256 DDR to current GTX2x0 series TRI SLI... I only changed with the 4870X2 and from there it's just gotten better with ATI.

Take it as "ATI fanboy" as a few of the members say about me - but only a fanboy would think NVIDIA are not in trouble.

Just after I posted:

http://www.kitguru.net/components/gr...ing-pub-crawl/

That would smash the upcoming next-gen consoles... with console gaming becoming the first preference to games, this would heavily affect the GPU market. NVIDIA and ATI could be in for a world of hurt - or this will give us our precious PC-gaming back to it's former glory???

[flu!d]

Personally, I think GPU's are hitting the very same brick wall CPU's hit not that long ago....

....No longer is it about how fast a single CPU (core) is, but how well you an scale applications across multiple CPU's (cores).

While ATi took the small die, low power consumption approach, and NV took the large die, high power consumption approach, both are going to hit a brick wall sooner or later, and I personally think that ATi's conservative approach isn't going to help them any more than NV's 'balls and all' approach is....

You all go on about ATi's 6xxx series and how groundbreaking it's going to be, personally, i'm not holding my breath.

I personally think the next generation of GPU's is going to be more about innovation than raw performance.

[anthony256]

Originally Posted by flu!d

You all go on about ATi's 6xxx series and how groundbreaking it's going to be, personally, i'm not holding my breath.

I personally think the next generation of GPU's is going to be more about innovation than raw performance.

That's the thing, the ATI 6xxx series doesn't even need to be that much better than the Fermi to compete. That's all Fermi did to the conservative 5870, even with 9 more months...

And, on top, the second bit - I think so too. But the market needs to change before that happens. Console gaming is eventually going to limit us from jumping any further in into a serious graphics quality change to PC hardware because of it's cost compared to cheaper console GPU's.

[flu!d]

In regards to the performance of NV's 4xx series compared to ATi's 5xxx series I really think that you need to take into consideration that in many benchmarks NV's 480 beat the 5870 by a good 25 - 30 FPS, it beat the 5870 in, on average, 7 out of 10 benchmarks....

....Yes, the 480 cost more, but yields were low, very low - the 58xx - 59xx series of cards weren't much cheaper than the 4xx series just after launch due to price scalping.

Make no mistake, the 480 and even an overclocked 470 has the horsepower where it counts....Just look at the Tessellation peformance, which is 'real' DX11.

....And it's only early days for the drivers, remember, it took 6 moths to sort out the shitfight as TSMC, it's highly unlikely NV took 6 months developing the perfect 4xx driver.

Having said that, the 5870's and the 5970's are amongst my favorite cards....So much bang for your buck....

[anthony256]

I think NVIDIA is doing something right - from a 9 month delay... the cards are here, in plenty of stock, with rapidly diving prices.

They are faster than the 5870, but not twice as fast as their previous top end. The 295 can beat the 480 in some somethings - and in the biggest redesign they create and it's previous top end can still beat it, even in a few games?

Where the 5870 is the same speed as the DUAL GPU 4870X2 (the 295 competitor) and the 5970 is more than 2 times the speed of the 4870X2, all while only requiring <250W.

But, they can't just continue to throw higher power requirements on it, as ATI is much better at the power requirement/heat and performance ratio.

Originally Posted by flu!d

Having said that, the 5870's and the 5970's are amongst my favorite cards....So much bang for your buck....

And that's the thing - in the mind of MUCH more ATI users than ever in the high end than they've ever have. NVIDIA are now trying to claw that back - obvious by crazy things like 375W GPU's.

[flu!d]

Lets not forget that the GTX295 can also show it's heels to a 5870 at times....

And ATi deliberately held back the clocks on the 5970 to keep it below the 300w gentleman's agreement....Maybe they shouldn't have been so conservative?

[theDarkHorse]

Am I allowed to make a post from my personal experiences?

I chose a GTX 470 over a 5870 because I'm an eye candy fanboy and want to play Just Cause 2 at 32x AA on my screen (22", 1680x1050). Am happy. That is all.

Unfortunately, neither GPU transcoding (with MediaCoder) nor folding are working properly on the 470 yet

[anthony256]

Originally Posted by flu!d

Lets not forget that the GTX295 can also show it's heels to a 5870 at times....

Yes, but not that often. All while running hotter and using more power - so it's not equal in terms of efficiency.