Fudzilla: GTX 480 Fermi reviewed, finally

Fudzilla gives a fairly in-depth review of Nvidia's new high-end GeForce GTX 480 GPU. Pitted against ATI's high-end Radeon 5870, the GTX 480 outperforms it quite well.

[OpenGL]

This is more or less what I expected. Sure it is a bit faster than the 5870, but its more expensive, very hot, and uses a lot more power than its competition.

Originally Nvidia planned on having 512 stream processors on the GTX 480, but they had to cut it down to 480 due to manufacturing constraints. Perhaps a future revision (GTX 490?) will come with all 512 stream processors, although I wouldn't expect that to improve performance drastically.

Either way this card is good news as it can help bring down the price of ATI's current DirectX 11 hardware.

[ProjectVulcan]

Enabling the last set of shaders and a clock bump would actually bring a pretty good performance boost if nvidia get the silicon working better.

However thats likely what Ati have been doing the past six months. If 5870 had its core and memory clocks bumped 10 percent, shouldnt be all that difficult, then it would be extremely close to GTX480.

5890 anyone? 950mhz core + 5200mhz GDDR5 = GTX480 hurt

[Empire X]

well I will be getting one being I'm not a fan of ATI cards.

[dirthurts]

Why would you knowingly pay more knowing it's not worth the extra $$?

[Vicophine]

Phsyx, CUDA, etc.

[rexus12345]

This card is way ahead of its time ("cutting" edge). Newer games show much more performance improvement over 5870, compare to older games. And Radeon got completely owned in the DX11 tessellation benchmark. However, until PC games start to implement DX11 in masses, I think it's better to wait. By then, both AMD and NVIDIA will most likely come up with better versions of their existing products.

[Charmers]

I have been a long time Nvidia user and even I am less than impressed by the GTX480. The main concerns I have are heat and power usage. I just don't feel the "extra" performance the GTX480 gives over ATI's offerings justify the extra heat and power usage.

I wasn't intending to hop on board with a GTX480 straight away (way too pricey for my tastes) but if Nvidia don't get the power and heat issues under control I can see me switching to ATI when I upgrade from Dx10 to Dx11. Although I will confess it will be a reluctant switch over since I have never been much of a fan of ATI's stuff.

[steve30x]

Its possible tp Physx to do Physx with ATI onboard. There is a patch out there that allows you to use a cheap physx enabled Nvidia GPU while having an ATI main GPU.

[Urmomlol]

Great review. Thanks!

[Cernunnos]

No point in getting rid of my dual 285GTX overclocked editions any time yet then. Expected it to be more powerful than this. I guess it wont be too long until the 600 cards arrive with some newer tech. This technology is reaching it's limits, look at those temps!

[overlorduk]

good lord! 65 degrees when idle? My 5870 only goes to 65-68 degrees (depending on room temperature) after several hours of Crysis, GTA4 etc.

[hoops]

Not enough speed to warrent the extra power and heat and noise these cards produce.