AT fermi review is up!

[pmv]

I don't understand all the bashing. If they gave you one for free, I'm sure you'd all want it.

Don't understand your reasoning, sorry. There are all sorts of things I'd happily accept if they were free, but it doesn't make them good products. Being able to give something away is not setting the bar very high!

Besides, if they were giving them away for free they'd have no resale value, and I'd want to resell it because I wouldn't be able to stand that level of noise nor pay for all that electricity and a new PSU.

So if they gave just me one free, I'd take it and resell it and buy a 5870. If they gave everyone one I'd probably have to throw mine away.

 

[Zebo]

At is most generous review but all AMD has to do to beat it is increase clocks 100Mhz on their 2GB 5780.

 

[edplayer]

I'm impressed. It's faster than I thought it was going to be.

What were you expecting?


for them to be 1% faster than the ATI cards?

 

[Hacp]

A question I have is why no OC'd 5870 vs OC'd 480 comparisons.

 

[pmv]

its not funny for anybody really. now we will have shitty prices for most of the year.

Yeah, its not at all funny, its quite unfortunate.

I'm betting nvidia will come back though - their next card will probably be very competitive and I'm betting the one after that will be another G92 (not literally a G92, at least I seriously hope not)

 

[edplayer]

I don't understand all the bashing. If they gave you one for free, I'm sure you'd all want it.

I'm not understanding your post.


They are not giving them away for free. They are charging for them, a lot.

Do you understand that?

 

[dguy6789]

A single 480 uses more power than the 5970 at full load. That's crazy.

 

[toyota]

At is most generous review but all AMD has to do to beat it is increase clocks 100Mhz on their 2GB 5780.

depends on what game and review you look at. at pcgh the gtx470 and 480 beat the 5870 and 5850 pretty bad in Metro2033 and GTA 4. no amount of overclocking is going to catch up those 2 games. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...Fermi-performance-benchmarks/Reviews/?page=13 http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...Fermi-performance-benchmarks/Reviews/?page=11

 

[Skurge]

I wonder where the NASCAR troll is?

 

[extra]

Good god that's a lotta power.

I don't know. I just can't see how the 480 is competitive at that price vs spending $100 more for a way faster 5970 that takes *less* power....but meh...

However if the price on the 470 makes it to about $300 then that's damn nice and will make a lotta people happy...

And it looks like it could be the best thing to ever happen to gpu accelerated video encoding, wow, it just craps all over everything else for that. Very nice.

I wonder if photoshop CS5 will be able to take advantage of this kinda thing?

 

[psychoticdream]

Crash and burn. Down goes NV. How funny.

thats not good for us the cards arent priced competitively thus we likely wont see price drops yet
moreover nvidia's gonna be kept afloat by their other endeavors remember tegra chips on laptops and handheld devices including a possible show in the next nintendo 3Ds?

also their lawsuit with intel will get them some good money (which btw i doubt they'll lose the lawsuit)

nearly forcing their vendors to carry gtx2xx and gtx3xx parts to qualify for carrying the gtx4xx series cards was a dick move but it'll get them some more profit too

 

[TekDemon]

I don't understand all the bashing. If they gave you one for free, I'm sure you'd all want it.

Yes and in the meantime in the real world where we pay for things, buying a 5850 or 5870 and saving money on your electricity bills and getting to keep your hearing is more attractive to most people. To be honest I don't own a PSU that would let me run a 480 or even a 470 comfortably, and frankly there's no damned reason to buy a super-high-wattage PSU since it'd wreck my efficiency at idle (which is about 99% of the time when my computer isn't gaming).
To be honest since most games run fine on just a single 5770 unless you need to run a much higher resolution it's OK just to buy a 5770 then add another one in Crossfire when it's not cutting it anymore. A lot cheaper than having to upgrade your PSU and continuing to wait for a card that isn't even in retail yet and won't be for a while. And with supplies so short I doubt they'll be much cheaper than MSRP.

I have no problems with nVidia...many of my favorite video cards were nVidia cards, and in fact 3 out of my last 4 video card purchases were nVidia (and 4 out of the last 6) but Fermi just isn't going to succeed-the yields are horrible so even if it was a hit they couldn't make that many of them, it costs a crazy high amount of money (and nVidia is probably still losing money since their costs were so high), and frankly it's a terrible design when you take power, heat, and noise into consideration in the least.

 

[scooterlibby]

I wonder where the NASCAR troll is?

Well the Wreckage troll is back in the 'What happens if Fermi is awesome?' thread:

Looks awesome to me. Fastest chip out there with the most features. What's not to love?

I guess heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Can't believe this guy. I love Nvidia, but there is no way to sell Fermi as anything other than a big dud.

 

[Barfo]

I wonder how it compares to the 5800 ultra in terms of noise.

 

[thilanliyan]

I have to say I'm disappointed with the power consumption. I'd only consider the GTX470 and that consumes ~100w more than the 5850??!! That's unacceptable IMO relative to the performance over the 5850. My PSU can handle it but I don't know how well my watercooling system would since I run low speed fans to keep things quiet (especially if I wanted to overclock...I could overclock the 5850 to 5870 levels and still consume around the same as a 470). Thankfully I'm not in the market right now...none of the DX11 cards out right now seem to be great bang for buck.

 

[Maximilian]

its not funny for anybody really. now we will have shitty prices for most of the year.

Not for us who got a 5850 for a decent price at launch

 

[JSt0rm]

I see nvidia let wreckage off the leash again.

 

[SmCaudata]

A question I have is why no OC'd 5870 vs OC'd 480 comparisons.

I wonder this as well. With the temperature differential I would like them to push the ATI to similar temp, load, and volume and see how they perform. I'm guessing ATI would pass them up.

Edit: I find the Dirt 2 performance interesting. Hard OCP has the ATI cards beating the Nvidia cards because they play with the AA and AF to get to highest possible settings. It seems that the ATI cards are better able to add these features in this game but in other games it seems to be the other way around. I guess like last round it will be what game are you having trouble playing sort of choice.

 

[Makenshi]

A question I have is why no OC'd 5870 vs OC'd 480 comparisons.

Probably because no one in their right mind would overclock a card that's running over 90C with the fan under full load. CAN you overclock a 480?

I also find the value proposition among various reviews to be very puzzling. Everyone is comparing the Fermi pricing against ATI's current pricing. Doesn't it make more sense to compare it to ATI's original MSRP? They CAN and HAVE been sold for lower prices. The only reason it's as expensive as it is now is because it's had no competition thus far. Hopefully Fermi will encourage AMD to bump its prices back down, though the results don't look good so far....

 

[Lonyo]

depends on what game and review you look at. at pcgh the gtx470 and 480 beat the 5870 and 5850 pretty bad in Metro2033 and GTA 4. no amount of overclocking is going to catch up those 2 games. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...Fermi-performance-benchmarks/Reviews/?page=13 http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...Fermi-performance-benchmarks/Reviews/?page=11

Metro 2033 has a bigger issue than relative performance between the cards. Absolute performance.
Yes, the GTX480 and GTX470 destroy AMD at 1680x1050 with max details and DX11. But they are still only getting 20 and 26fps.
Now OK, 26fps might be playable. I think that's probably what I got in Crysis on low details with my 7800GT, but 20fps is really pushing it.
When you get to settings where the game runs nicely (e.g. >30fps), you are looking at no DX11, and the HD5870 performs on par with the GTX470, and the GTX480 destroys them both, but really if you want to play the game nicely you are going to have to turn down the settings on any card. 2560x1600 and DX11 is an utter pipe dream, and 1920x1200 is only really playable with DX10 mode on any card with those detail settings.

GTA4 manages a real difference, where the HD58xx are just about playable, but the GTX4xx look like they would probably give a much nicer experience.

 

[MrK6]

Metro 2033 has a bigger issue than relative performance between the cards. Absolute performance.
Yes, the GTX480 and GTX470 destroy AMD at 1680x1050 with max details and DX11. But they are still only getting 20 and 26fps.
Now OK, 26fps might be playable. I think that's probably what I got in Crysis on low details with my 7800GT, but 20fps is really pushing it.
When you get to settings where the game runs nicely (e.g. >30fps), you are looking at no DX11, and the HD5870 performs on par with the GTX470, and the GTX480 destroys them both, but really if you want to play the game nicely you are going to have to turn down the settings on any card. 2560x1600 and DX11 is an utter pipe dream, and 1920x1200 is only really playable with DX10 mode on any card with those detail settings.

GTA4 manages a real difference, where the HD58xx are just about playable, but the GTX4xx look like they would probably give a much nicer experience.

I'm just going to come out and say PC Games Hardware has no clue what they're doing. I played through GTA4 awhile ago on a single 5870 @ 2560x1600 with everything maxed except view distance at 30 and got almost 60FPS constant. I just played through Metro 2033 on my current rig @ 2560x1600 with everything cranked in DX11 except Advanced DoF and 4x MSAA and probably scored 50FPS constant, averaging 35-80FPS. 4xMSAA makes the game look like crap (blurs textures) and Advanced DoF is a completely broken feature on all hardware, and they'd know that if they played the game for more than two seconds.

Back to AT's article, it does seem to be the most "positive" in terms of performance, I wonder what's different? Even then, still shows there's nothing to be impressed with. I came to this conclusion over two weeks ago and bought dual 5850's that completely blow away a single GTX480 for the same $500. I'm happy to say I made the right decision, now I'm going to gloat .

 

[ChippyUK]

I kinda feel sorry for Nvidia. They must of known this would be a let down a long time ago and they've obviously tried their best to cover the holes.

Power draw is a lesser issue for me but I'm not going near these cards for the noise at load more than anything else.

Oh well, at least it's out (general feeling I think). Nvidia will be licking their wounds and come back with a stormer of a card to follow it up.... I'm looking forward to future battles.

Anyone going to (pre)order one btw??

p.s. In AT's review sounds like someone got their fingers burnt on the heatpipe... Ouch!

 

[rahvin]

Very fair review as always. It's about what I expected, a smidge faster than ATI's current product with 3 times the power consumption. If ATI was willing to go to that level of power consumption I'm sure they could have upped the voltages, the memory, the memory clock and easily beat Fermi.

In fact I would expect the 5970 and a new card, probably a 5895 or something that has 2GB of memory and boosted clocks all around. Now that nVidia has shown their hand and how little room they have to adjust clock speeds ATI can release the secret product that smokes the 480 with a single GPU and still consumes 1/2 the power. Not only that but once nVidia gets better manufacturing and can release the 512SP card ATI now has a basis to estimate the additional impact of that (just take the performance difference between 470 and 480 and add it to the 480) and release a product now that will beat it.

I like nVidia, I've got a 260 in my computer but the fact is Fermi's a bloated pig. I can't believe anyone would buy a single card that consumed more power at idle than ATI's top card does at load. My final concern would be given the paper launch if nVidia hand picked and over-clocked review cards which the retail cards won't be able to match. It's always a touch scary with a paper launch because nVidia is pulling products before the OEM's box them meaning they could be cherry picking. It's always better when the cards launch the same day as the reviews because they have less opportunity to cherry pick what with the real reviews coming so quickly after the bogus ones. With 3-4 weeks before products hit the damage of cherry picking would be greatly reduced because they can press spin that the clocks weren't final or that it's the OEM's fault for under-clocking to reduce power.

I'm not buying one, that's for sure.

 

[StinkyPinky]

The GTX 470 sucks ass. I made the right choice it seems.

I was hoping the 470 would be quite a bit faster so AMD would drop prices on the 5850 (for CF). Not to be in the near future it seems. Oh well.

 

[Rebel44]

I see nvidia let wreckage off the leash again.

Why isnt he already permabanned?