Nvidia gtx400

[Erik005]

The card looks good.

 

I wish ATI would get a classy partner like PNY or EVGA.

 

If you get SLI you should consider watercooling.

[Fifoo]

[Off Topic]

 

Water-cooling is incredibly effective at lowering the temperatures of core system components. Such a cooling system could be a must-have in the (early) future... It's up-to-date for some high-end self-build rigs, especially when it comes on OC and/or SLI.

 

But water-cooling isn’t exactly like a walk in the park, and it demands some time and effort to design one that feet your PC system, the other challenge is to solve putting it together. But we are enthousiast people, don't we? :blink: :happy:

 

For some advice, be aware that removing the genuine cooling rad from a GFX card will cost you the end of the manufacturer's warranty.

 

 

[On Topic]

 

So, what's about the new Nvidia GTX 480... When I see my high-OC rig with no more than 13 air-cooling fans in my Antec Nine-Hundred case - all together counted, a water-cooling system could be the sine-qua-non solution for an upgrade without cooking my system internals. Lol!

 

Some benchmarks have showned that the Nvidia GTX 480 card will get hot, very hot with 85/95C in full charge and 50C in idle Temp use. Of course the specs have a threshold at 105C - Nvidia says 107C, ouch! :sick:

 

I'll don't mention here the question about using this card neither with a dual-monitor nor in 3D Surround Vision (three multi-monitoring gamming config - only two dual-link DVI connectors per card, you'll need mounting two GTX 480 cards in SLI mode) until Nvidia could solve these Temp issues with better drivers (Beta release), etc...

 

And for passionate overclockers, please be aware that something changed with GTX 480 cards. The Core and Shader frequency are tied together, both will follow automatically based on a predefined ratio and underclocking memory is no longer possible. :ermm:

 

Don't forget that these benchmarks are made in optimal conditions, and in real world usage (actually playing a game, real in game benchmarks) the Temp in a room could easily reach 25/30C in summertime, and even more - these Temp are frequent in my country (France), and I certainly wouldn't buy something that could be an "Only-Winter-Use-Device".

 

Each buyer should compare these results to determine the best choice for compatibility, efficiency, performance and cost. 95% of the test environments are perfect and not a real world scenario, never have been, never will be. So look at these results as the products optimal rating. It's not being unwised to say that we must be patient before buying something new, solutions are coming, it's just a question of time.

 

NVIDIA Solves Multi-Monitor Temp Issue on GeForce GTX 480 GPUs

 

 

Wait! Nvidia has the solution, wow! Nvidia joke - funny video :laugh:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdExkuvGySE&NR=1

 

 

Now let's talk about DX11 implementation. Nvidia is half a year late to the market as Ati did it since the HD-5800 and HD-5900 series. With the release of their new Catalyst 10.3 driver, the new driver brings significant performance boosts throughout the Radeon HD-5800 and 5900 series. And happily the same thing will happen for Nvidia with new drivers.

 

What's the difference between Ati and Nvidia. Ati is at her 6th level of generation in Tessellation, but Nvidia seems to be better for DX11 performance with the choice of putting a HW tesselator in each SM (shader cluster)... We have now two choices in distinct architectures between Ati and Nvidia, that's good for our 3D applications, for sure.

 

PhysX... and CUDA. On the compute side of things the GF100 should be impressive, these are nice feature to have. But for gaming experience we must wait 'til we could see something fully implemented, the market is at a larval state for the moment.

 

GeForce GTX 470 & 480 review a link to a complete review about the subject.

 

The author says in his conclusion that the Nvidia GTX 480 is probably the best single Gpu card in the world... :thumbsup:

 

 

Another alternative...

 

The choice of an XFX HD-5970 – until Nvidia gets back into the ring, this high-end dual-GPU monster is king of the hill. Of course, this beast has a price - and what a price, we are talking about 600/7OO$!

 

Here is the deal: 100/200$ more than a Nvidia GTX 480, and sometimes it's hard to find one on the market, but yes: it's a killer card. Why the choice about XFX brand ? Because their technical support is better and they give you a Lifetime Warranty on the card and not a 2 years limited.

 

See it just as an example here. When it comes to a PC build you should not only focus on a budget, but what your goal is with the build to ensure you get every inch of performance out of your hard earned money. Only two words: common sense! I would never spend money on something unless I know what I am spending it on.

 

 

Some usefull links.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/

http://www.maximumpc.com/

http://www.google.com/

http://www.tomshardware.com/us/

http://www.anandtech.com/

http://www.bit-tech.net/

http://www.frostytech.com/

http://www.hwbot.org/benchmarking.do

http://www.theraptorpit.com/forum/index.php

http://www.overclock.net/

http://www.overclockersclub.com/

http://www.overclockers.com/

http://www.madshrimps.be/

http://www.tigerdirect.com/

http://www.newegg.com/

http://www.pricewatch.com/

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php

http://www.frozencpu.com/

http://www.petrastechshop.com/

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/

 

Sources and credits: guru3d.com - maximumpc.com - legitreviews.com

 

 

Sorry for the long post and thanks for having read it 'til the end. :sweat:

 

- Fifoo.

[Thor.]

LOL another fanboy woot keep it up, not impressed, note my antec case gets plenty cool enough, even cold. Funny acts like air conditioning in the summer lol. It has a huge air intake in the top of the case witch does wonders for air flow.

 

Note my 2 9800gtx's idle around 35c

 

I thought about water cooling the cards, but after thinking about my last spillage incident i thought otherwise.

 

Note the one of the tubes split, but it was very small and pulled it out quick enough to not get anything wet.

[hoshi23]

Not impressed by this card nor am i impressed by the new cards from ATI. I dont know what poeple are looking at. The video on the other hand is funny tho. :biggrin:

[Thor.]

Not impressed by this card nor am i impressed by the new cards from ATI. I dont know what poeple are looking at. The video on the other hand is funny tho. :biggrin:

 

I kind of agree with you, both cards have their faults, ati with there crappy driver support and nvidia not releasing their dx 11 cards already :biggrin: Also i find they are on the tad big side to, i mean they are huge, thats the nvidia cards..

 

at least i have enough room for them.

[Retribution]

The crappy driver support argument is old.

[Dark0ne]

The crappy driver support argument is old.

 

In that atleast ATi's drivers don't burn out their cards? ;)

[Thor.]

LOl not you to Dark One, Duh i guess i cant win with a admin. I was only trying to point out the faults in both cards.

 

Not to familiar with ati. I only once had a ati card way back. It was ok but not the greatest thing on the planet.

 

Thats probably where i got the bad driver support theory from experience :confused: .

[Dark0ne]

ATi are generally slower to release drivers and nvidia have done well to monopolise a large number of new releases over recent years to better optimise their drivers in exchange for nice big cash payments. In fact the only big release of the past decade they didn't get their mits on was Half-Life 2 and all the Source engine based games. They clearly have money to burn. But this recent god awful driver release (I've yet to see an apology for it) along with the well known manufacturing default of the 8600M that broke a crap-ton of laptops has gone a long way to reducing my like for nvidia, which was pretty set in stone a few years back.

 

It's not about one company being better than the other, it's about the logical progression of two rival companies. One is normally on-top and one is normally chasing. Thankfully in the video card industry it changes every four or so years. ATi were top dog about 6 years ago with their Radeon 9800 Pro's sweeping aside the nvidia range, with faith in nvidia dented a lot by the release of their "MX" range that were a god awful marketing ploy. ATi then merged with AMD and AMD took a dive to intel, which brought down the quality of ATi products. nVidia gained stride, brought in the 6000 - 9000 ranges that were excellent, albeit each iteration got hotter and hotter and more power hungry. Now nvidia have had a spate of bad driver releases, some terrible manufacturing defects and have been slow to get in to the latest generation. ATi have picked up the pace and their 4000 - 5000 range have swept aside nVidia with extremely competetive pricing, great power consumption (the current flavour of the month) and the best power-to-dollar ratio of all the cards. And their cards and drivers have been steady and stable, which is becoming increasingly more important than unpredicatable but more capable.

 

As a consumer you've got to go with the flow and learn that sticking with one side isn't going to get you the best deal. My first card was a Voodoo 3, which I didn't care much for as the games in those days just weren't capable of testing the card much. I then got an nvidia 4200 Ti which was brilliant, jumped to ATi when the 9800 Radeon Pros came out as they were better than the nvidia equivalent (and the MX cards took the piss/nvidia didn't deserve my money with that stunt), bought another ATi card (an 1800 XT I think) before buying a 7900GTX and an 8800GTX and now I've jumped back to ATi after the 8600M fiasco destroyed my last laptop and have had a 4870 and a 5850. Consumer choice is great; don't get suckered in to become a fan boy of either of them.

[Thor.]

Well i guess it really depends on the cards themselves, you have to be carefull on the model and make. The 8600gts's where horrible cards, I grant you that.

 

Just be carefull and do some research before you go out and buy a vid card, even laptop's can be risky at times.

 

Me i had o problems with my choices of cards in the past.

 

History of my cards that i had.

 

3DFX Voodoo3 3000 (now ati)

Geforce 4 64mb ram

nvidia geforce 5800gt

nvidia 8800gts 320mb ram

recent 9800gtx's 1gbram

 

Note i had no problems with any of the cards. Its pure chance you had problems, that's all I'm trying to point out. Luck of the draw.

 

I do tech support for a living on the side, so i know a thing or to about witch to choose from. Just ati i haven't really played around with, just install them through my clients. Also they never came back and complained that the cards crapped out on them.

 

grammar check

Edited April 17, 2010 by Thor.