NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470: 6 Months Late, Was It Worth the Wait?
by Ryan Smith on March 26, 2010 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Left 4 Dead
Introduced in 2004, Valve’s Source engine continues to live on in new Valve games. At this point even newer Source games like Left 4 Dead are rarely GPU limited to a significant degree, but we keep it on here due to the fact that we’re expecting at least one more Source game this year in Portal 2.
Breaking from tradition a bit, for L4D we’ve gone ahead and cranked up the AA to 8x. The quality difference is tiny at best, but it was necessary to try to keep the GTX 480 and 5870 from getting more than 100fps at 2560 (and it still wasn’t enough for the 5870). With that said we see a dramatic reversal from HAWX – the GTX 400 series loses its first game. The GTX 480 falls behind by 6-9% while the GTX 470 falls behind by anywhere between 1 and 15%. Interestingly on the GTX 470 in particular, the gap grows with resolution; perhaps we’re seeing the ROP loss come to haunt us?
In any case, if you’re going to lose a game, L4D is not a bad game to lose at. Even the GTX 275 gets over 60fps at 2560, so while it’s a loss on paper there’s little practical difference..
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Headfoot - Monday, March 29, 2010 - link
Great review, great depth but not too long. Concise but still enough information.THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR INCLUDING MINIMUM FRAME RATES!!! IMO they contribute the most to a game feeling "smooth"
niceboy60 - Friday, August 20, 2010 - link
This review is not accurate , Badaboom GTX 400 series cards , are not compatible with GTX 400 series yet .However they already post the test resaultsI have a GTX 480 and does not work with badaboom , Badaboom official site confirms that
slickr - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
I thought that after the line-up of games thread, you would really start testing games from all genres, so we can actually see how each graphic cards performs in different scenarios.Now you have 80% first person shooters, 10% racing/Action-adventure and 10%RPG and RTS.
Where are the RTS games, isometric RPG's, simulation games, etc?
I would really like Battleforge thrown out and replaced by Starcraft 2, DOW 2: Chaos Rising, Napoleon Total War. All these RTS games play differently and will give different results, and thus better knowledge of how graphic cards perform.
How about also testing The Sims 3, NFS:Shift, Dragon Age Origins.
Ryan Smith - Monday, March 29, 2010 - link
Actually DAO was in the original test suite I wanted to use. At the high end it's not GPU limited, not in the slightest. Just about everything was getting over 100fps, at which point it isn't telling us anything useful.The Sims 3 and Starcraft are much the same way.
Hsuku - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
On Page 9 of Crysis, your final sentence indicates that SLI scales better than CF at lower resolutions, which is incorrect from your own graphs. CF clearly scales better at lower resolutions when video RAM is not filled:@ 1680x1050
480 SLI -- 60.2:40.7 --> 1.48
5870 CF -- 53.8:30.5 --> 1.76 (higher is better)
@ 1920x1200
480 SLI -- 54.5:33.4 --> 1.63
5870 CF -- 46.8:25.0 --> 1.87 (higher is better)
This indicates the CF technology scales better than SLI, even if the brute performance of the nVidia solution comes out on top. This opposes diametrically your conclusion to page 9 ("Even at lower resolutions SLI seems to be scaling better than CF").
(Scaling ability is a comparison of ratios, not a comparison of FPS)
Ryan Smith - Monday, March 29, 2010 - link
You're looking at the minimums, not the averages.Hsuku - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
My apologies, I was looking at the wrong graphs.However, even so, your assertion is still incorrect: at at the lowest listed resolution, CF and SLI scaling are tied.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
Correct. The only thing I really have to say about that is that while we include 1680 for reference's sake, for any review of a high-end video card I'm looking nearly exclusively at 1920 and 2560.Hrel - Thursday, September 2, 2010 - link
I get that, to test the card. But if you don't have a monitor that goes that high, it really doesn't matter. I'd really like to see 1080p thrown in there. 1920x1080; as that's the only resolution that matters to me and most everyone else in the US.Vinas - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
It's pretty obvious that anantech was spanked by nVIDIA the last time they did a review. No mention of 5970 being superior to the 480 is a little disturbing. I guess the days of "trusting anandtech" are over. Come on guys, not even a mention of how easily the 5870 overclocks? The choice is still clear, dual 5870's with full cover blocks FTW!