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Im waiting for the 32nm refresh of the cards, hopefully the price will go down by then. $600 for a video card is insane.
It as a single GPU card already rapes ATi's dual GPU monster, what more could you want?
By all accounts the GeForce GTX 480 is not the beast we were hoping it would be, and in many cases it was not a great deal faster than the six-months-old Radeon HD 5870. That's not to say it isn't an impressively fast graphics card. After all, the Radeon HD 5870 is no slouch, so beating it in almost every test is a real accomplishment.As we understand it, at $499, Nvidia will already be selling the GeForce GTX 480 well below its intended price. The problem is that even at this price the card will still be some $80-110 more expensive that most Radeon HD 5870s. On average when Nvidia's new flagship managed to outperform the Radeon HD 5870 it was only around 16% faster. While any improvement is always welcome, we are not sure gamers will want to pay a 20% premium for this.Here is a quick break down of how the GeForce GTX 480 compared to the Radeon HD 5870 while running each game at 2560x1600: It was 16% slower in Battlefield Bad Company 2, 13% slower in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat and 5% slower in Wolfenstein. The GTX 480 was only slightly faster in Batman Arkham Asylum, winning by a 4% margin, just 1% faster in Resident Evil 5, 10% faster when testing with CoD: Modern Warfare 2, and 11% with Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.Moreover it fared rather well in Metro 2033 with a 13% lead, Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts with 14%, World in Conflict Soviet Assault with 22%, Crysis Warhead with a nice 24% advantage, and finally Far Cry 2 with a huge 35% margin. Nevertheless, as you can see, there were only a few instances where Nvidia's latest and greatest graphics card truly shined and managed to outperform the Radeon HD 5870 by a 20% margin or greater.The GeForce GTX 480 appears to offer a somewhat balanced value, fitting right between Radeon HD 5870 and the Radeon HD 5970 in terms of both price and performance. Unfortunately we can't help but feel that if Nvidia had priced it closer to the 5870 then AMD would really have something to worry about. That's what makes the GeForce GTX 470 such an interesting prospect. At just $349, the card is around 30% cheaper than a GTX 480, but we are not really expecting it to be that much slower -- sadly, Nvidia was unable to provide a sample.Pricing concerns aside, there are a few solid facts that are not going to change about this card. First and foremost the GeForce GTX 480 is a power addict in desperate need of some rehab. The card sucked down a whopping 28% more power compared to the Radeon HD 5870 when put under load. Given that it rarely offered a similar performance bump, it's fair to say that the GTX 480 is considerably worse than AMD's product in terms of efficiency.The other negative impact all this power has is heat. The GTX 480 is one of the hottest -- and noisiest -- graphics card available. In terms of operating temperatures it's able to make even the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 look rather tame.The GeForce GTX 480 is indeed a very fast product, and as the drivers have time to mature it's likely to become even faster. I'm going to reserve my opinion on whether this card is a good buy until it hit shelves to review the pricing. But for now we know it offers the fastest speeds along a few compromises in power consumption and heat production.Widespread availability of both GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 cards will happen the week of April 12, 2010. Although the first cards to hit the market will all be Nvidia-designed, it will also be very interesting to see what upgrades Nvidia's board partners will offer down the road to help keep temperatures under control.
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Topic: Nvidia 480gtx video demo. (Read 950 times)
