PAX: What Gamers Think of Nvidia's GTX 480

I'm using a 4870X2 at the moment though am considering moving to a pair of single-GPU cards, not being able to turn off one of the 4870X2's GPUs is quite a pain with older games that really dislike crossfire/sli.

GTX480 looks very promising though drivers need to get better to push the performance to where the tech sheets for Fermi says it should be.

I think that a GTX490 with a fully-enabled Fermi, or a beefed up 5890 would be my card of choice for the 2-card setup, to be honest. 5870 is nice, but not enough of a bump from the 4870X2 to justify a purchase, and I'm staying away from 2-in-1 solutions in future.

Doesn't just disabling crossfire through the catalyst control center work for you?

I'm so undecided as to what to do, I want to upgrade from ATI 3870X2 to a DX11 card. I dont want to get ATi's 5000 series as I want a more compute orientated architecture with MIMD as this is the way of the future. Fermi's architecture is the way to go but their thermals on this generation are too high.
So I guess I'm just going to wait it out till the end of the year and ATi's 6000 series or Fermi2.
Another big decider for me will be how much (if at all) ATi's newley announced game developer support takes off. While I agree that open solutions are the best way to go I'm just sick of announcement's and nothing more.
If it can't be seen that these open standards for physics etc are being actively taken up by developers then I will jump ship to Nvidia...proprietary stuff is better than nothing at all.

Well as far as im concerned its good to see Nvidia back in the race..

All though im not a fanboi in any sense I was waiting to see what nvidia's next gen was going to bring

I think I'll stick with my 4890, and see who has the bigger stick in a couple of months or so.

I am an nvidia fanboy. nvidia seems to keep up with the moore's law transistor count wise but not performance wise. Six months AFTER amd's release and such a small performance difference ? If this product was released when amd's 5xxx series was released it would be a good progress, but now no it just isn't. Ok there may be some reasons behind this delay, like TSMC's low yields, or the time it takes to iron out the bugs of a wholy new architecture, but the end customer doesn't really care about technicalities. I'm still going to buy an nvidia card though when i upgrade my PC.

I think the real interesting part of the whole fermi puzzle will be what they can offer at a Price/perf and of course power point in the mainstream section.
What they need is a card that costs what a 5770 does but performs more like a 5830. Hopefully some driver improvements will help and by the time the mainstream cards are released we can get some decent competition going.
Mactronix

that brandon guy sounds like a right arse munch in that article, its bad enought having one current generation fermi core on a card atm from what has been shown of its thermal characteristics but i think 2 would be chernobyl all over again.

as much as early addoption makes sense for some things but with fermi being on par near enought with the 5870 for the heat it generates i would go with the ATI card anyday, I dont think fermi will shine untill its on its B steppings and they have perfected the manufacturing process to where a full fermi core is possible with better thermal characteristics, hot cards seriously arent good for performance due to increased transistor leakage

As it stands, i'd still rather go for a 5970. I don't claim allegiance to any side, just the one with the bigger stick, and at the moment thats AMD.

Still nice to see nVidia finally bringing out a new card though.

It's good that Nvidia is back to the race.
this competition profits us

Looking at it all from a neutral opinion (I only ever consider two things: price and performance), it just seems as though Nvidia have their pricing wrong.
Okay, it's taken them six months to produce cards of similar performance to AMD's flagship cards, but does that really matter? If they were at similar prices then there would be little room for domination. Considering that between the cards, performance is very similar on the whole, both companies' products would be well considered.
The competition is also definitely a good thing, no matter how you look at it, regardless of whether you're a fanboy or not. What matters is that between Nvidia and AMD, the companies keep on pushing.
Don't get me wrong, my 9600GT does a good job for me, but if I had the money to upgrade, AMD's offerings are just cheaper, whilst Nvidia's seem to carry premiums. Premiums which aren't justified and are causing them to lose out.

I guess NVidia thinks the 3D capabilities are worth quite a bit of a premium, because they are charging a fair bit more for their cards.

2x 480's is faster than 2x 5870 by quite a margin due to the better scaling so for super high end systems they might even start to make sense, but that's a lot of change to be dropping on graphics cards.

Shame really, I was hoping to get in on the NVision 3D capabilities and three monitor gaming, but with a paper launch and drivers that don't show off these capabilities yet its all a bit mute.

@Rab1d-BDGR

"Thermi?" I lol'd at that one... :-)

So for my new PC, i can (a) get a NV water boiler, or (b) keep buying 5870's until AMD admin and fix the lines problem. Bloody AMD/NV are pissing me off
http://forums.amd.com/game/message [...] TMP=Linear

Brandon, a passer-by at the Alienware booth emphatically stated "I am a total COCK!"