Thread: Nvidia GTX 480/470 Video Card

Originally Posted by Mcstrange

Personally, dual video card setups are unnecessary. If you tell me your running a 30 inch monitor we can start to discuss possibly needing a SLI like setup, but otherwise it is a waste of money.

Your own screenshot showed a single 470 is able to push farcry at ultra with 4x AA at near 80 FPS which is WAY more than enough horsepower
Sure there are some real rough games out there, like metro2033 that put a hurt on a single card, but I believe that is a coding issue in metro and isnt entirely realistic. I guess if metro2033 is your one true love and are buying a card to play that specifically...

This is an important consideration.

Although I must say, I purchased two 8800 GTS cards a few years back, and ran them in SLI. I saw no benefit (and in some cases a negative impact) on performance at my resolution. However, here we area few years later, and now I am reaping the benefit of my high-end (at the time) cards running in SLI: I can run BC2 at "medium" with 4xAA at 1280x1024 and it is smooth as silk. Mury mentioned his nearly identical system with only one 8800 GTS can barely play the game.

If you run multiple GPU's at lower resolution you probably won't see as much benefit from high end cards than low end cards.

one big fat GPU is the way to go. The 900 bucks I paid back then for two cards did not help me much then and is not worth smooth framerates a few years later just when I am looking to upgrade. After running and building several SLI systems, I am probably just going to fork out cash for a single big fat GPU next time.

Well, if I dropped back down to 1280x1024 I would expect to climb above barely, at 1920x1200 its surely struggling.
BUT as soy gets at if he had squirreled away the 300-350 spent on one of the 8800gts he would have been able to play just fine and today could afford a 5850.

Unless your already buying at the very top of the video card food chain, and just one card wont be enough power, always go with a single more powerful option.

Originally Posted by Mcstrange

Personally, dual video card setups are unnecessary. If you tell me your running a 30 inch monitor we can start to discuss possibly needing a SLI like setup, but otherwise it is a waste of money.

Your own screenshot showed a single 470 is able to push farcry at ultra with 4x AA at near 80 FPS which is WAY more than enough horsepower
Sure there are some real rough games out there, like metro2033 that put a hurt on a single card, but I believe that is a coding issue in metro and isnt entirely realistic. I guess if metro2033 is your one true love and are buying a card to play that specifically...

And this is where I disagree.

Modern Warfare 2

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...review-11.html

3D Mark Vantage

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...-review-6.html

As you can see, two ATI 4850s blow away a single 4870. Two 4870s are ruling the roost.

There have been similar tests with two 5770s vs a single 5870 (I think Jinx even did one here). Here are some results:

http://www.overclock.net/ati/644665-...enchmarks.html

Basically, systems are surely seeing the benefits of SLI and Crossfire. If you can't spend the cash on a $300-400 card now, go with the mid range cards and upgrade to SLI or Crossfire in the near future.

Personally, I am running dual 4850s that I paid $120 each for. If you know what you are doing, you can unlock them by flashing a custom BIOS and overclock the hell out of them to the point where they are running as fast as two 4870s. I am sure you can do the same with two 5770s...

I totally agree with you Heavy on this and will add that I think in the past being the 8800gt series there was not that much of an improvement on having a second card. I think with the cards that are coming out now what was once a 50% or 60% boost is now up around 80% to 90% improvement. So I would reccommend a second card as well.

Heavy your own charts prove my point:

At the highest resolution a SINGLE 280 provides plenty enough frames to for smooth gameplay, hell even the old 8800gts pushes an average framerate that works...

So... Last year instead of buying 2 280s when ONE provides plenty, you could this year spend that money you saved by being smart on a brand spanking new 480!

Ill concede that with the 5770s the price / performance ratio does make it attractive, but I personally would still just go with a single 5850

I came across this read today about the GTX 480, the 5870 and the 5970. The article was called clash of the titans which kind of got my intrest it is a complete test of the three big dogs in the Video card market. A complete test of all three cards and a chart to show how the scaling from 1 card to 3 would work. Here is the link I think it is a dutch site that is translated to english.
http://translate.googleusercontent.c...AQo4jeU5HhdSJw

Here are some images I took of a few areas:

By saszeus at 2010-04-20

By saszeus at 2010-04-20

By saszeus at 2010-04-20

By saszeus at 2010-04-20
Look at the total watts for all three 480 cards 937W. Freaking Crazy.

I would not expect either of these cards to be 300 dollars any time soon. more than likely you will get a 460 that comes in around 300, and seeing as the 5850 is already 300 and is on par with and in many cases better than the 470, I would just buy that.

I did read that they are working on a 460 and a couple other low price cards over the next 2 months. I would expect the 460 to be 300 bucks with performance around the 5830