GTX 480 & 470 Released today

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Hey guys.. anybody planning on getting NVidia's next generation video cards, GTX 480 or 470? I for one am.. (I can't afford the expensive workstation cards). We should be hearing more about benchmarks later on tonight.

[CJI]

I was going to be getting a new system soon. Was going to opt for the Radeon HD5970 as its a beast of a card that is still considerably cheaper than pro cards. Be good to see the benchmarks so i will know if my money is going the wrong way. Could end up sticking with NVidia after all.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

I was thinking the same thing Curtis, but availability of 5970 is not good right now so retailers jacked up the prices. There are mixed reviews out there for the gtx 480... seems from all the prelim stuff that the 480 will be slightly faster than ati 5870.. but also more expensive. I am soo amazed by the 5970 but am so afraid of the ATI drivers.. especially since it's a dual gpu card. Wonder if anybody in this forum is using the 5970 and could testify on it's performance and whether it has any driver issues with 3ds or photoshop.

[CJI]

Well i've never gone ATI before i was always an Nvidia fan, but the performance of the 5970 also blew me away. I never considered the drivers, in fact i really don't know much about ATI other than its the only real competitor in the Video card market and that they produce fairly good cards. I have never road tested one before. Nvidias drivers have always been solid so far with me. Are ATI drivers a little flaky?

 

It was previously going to be the GTX 295 but the 5970 30% avg performance increase is very difficult to overlook.

[DanGrover]

I think history be damned, this stuff changes every generation. It's like Intel vs AMD (Though admittedly Intel has been pounding AMD ever since c2d really). NVidia won with the Ti's, lost with the 5x00 FX series, then their 6x00-9x00 interchanged a lot with ATI, and now it seems ATi is winning again. I'd honestly go for whatever's got the best performance, as the drivers change quite often anyway.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Hey.. Dan, I kinda agree with you, but man it sucks when you are playing a game and right in the middle of action "boom", game crashes lol, or working on max and you get the famous "send error report" ect. ect. I do agree though that ATI is definitely improving ALOT from it's early days especially with drivers. Anyways, I"m undecide wether to go for 480 or 5870, i guess it depends on benchies tonight.

[AJLynn]

I don't think the drivers are as big a difference as everybody makes them out to be. Both companies have driver bugs. But since ATi has the reputation for buggy drivers and nVidia doesn't, whenever anybody hits a bug with an ATi card and writes about it on a web site, everybody jumps all over themselves to write about how awful ATi drivers are, and whenever somebody writes about an nVidia bug it's always "Oh, that's a minor bug, don't worry, it'll be fixed in the next version, nVidia is great about this stuff, at least it's not ATi."

 

Meanwhile, how long has the bug with nVidia and OpenGL in Revit festered? Five years? Longer? It never did get fixed, but Autodesk switched Revit to Direct3D in the latest version so it will get ignored from now on.

[ihabkal]

another reason to get a direct3d card and save a grand

[AJLynn]

nVidia timed this launch to coincide with the first day of Pax East in Boston. I was there (CGArchitect: we hang out with gamer nerds so you don't have to!) and got video clips. The presentation was really for gamers but I'll have something on the web soon.

[AJLynn]

Here's the video:

 

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=62BF0B63F03A794F

 

Still uploading/processing and I don't know why but a couple of the clips show as longer than they really are but I don't feel like figuring it out right now.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Man thanks posting Andrew.. I followed along the conference with their live blog.. for some reason they didnt have a live video stream on it. You know... disregarding Nvidia's marketing hype.. the card is fast, but it is HOT and Loud, and a power hogger. Tell you the truth I no longer know wether I want it or not. It's performance is good.. 15 to 20 percent faster than 5870, but it's not efficent at all.

[Hazdaz]

The reviews I have seen so far for these 2 cards have not exactly been super glowing.

 

Most of them say that it's barely faster than ATi's top cards, yet costs more and/or eats tons of juice.

BUT... most of those reviews have focused on gaming benchmarks (which I don't really care about). I'm still looking to see what this card can do with 3D apps like MAX. I am especially interested because historically Nvidia has had much better drivers for 3D modeling programs.

 

Anyone seen any reviews on these cards in something other than games?

[Slinger]

After reading alot of reviews, I will be waiting till rev 2 hits.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

After reading alot of reviews, I will be waiting till rev 2 hits.

 

I think I'm on the same boat.. I think the card, although not as fast as it should have been.. is considerably faster than the ati versions. What's holding me back is the heat and power and energy.. man, my a/c is gonna have to work double time to cool down my office lol

 

Anybody here running an ati 5970 and can testify as to it's performamce with 3ds?

[CJI]

Ok the card is impressive for a single card, but running at 100 degrees most of the time and using so much power is just too much i think. Im seriously questioning the lifespan of this card with the heat that it produces. At the moment the HD5970 has my money but it would be good to hear anyones experiences with it.

 

I think its clear the Fermi card has some legs in it, and i think could be a good platform to spring from, they need to sort out these problems though.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

You said it Uddie, this card is very inefficient. I'm looking around to find the best price for the 5970, but man they are not available anywhere, and the few shops that have them are asking like 800 for them.

[CJI]

There is always the option of two HD5870s in SLI but i don't know if Max and photoshop even support SLI/Crossfire?

[AJLynn]

People have been able to get some benefit in Max, but SLI/Crossfire is really for games, it's not as efficient in apps. As for Photoshop, you don't get a benefit... maybe CS5 has some GPU features that use it? I haven't seen enough technical details to speculate on that.

[CJI]

I just did some reading about that and max/photoshop/after effects etc don't support dual graphics cards, that goes for one card or crossfire/SLI. So even though the HD5970 is great card (essentially two HD5870 GPUs on the one card), these applications will only likely use one of of the GPUs on board.

 

If your only likely to use it for proffesional use then the 5970 is just not necessary, so go for the 5870 instead or some other single GPU alternative. if you can handle the power and heat issues the Nvida GTX 480 would be a good future proof purchase i guess. However if like me your Extracurricular activities include games (Im sorry, Its a compulsion!) then the 5970 is a good purchase as it has the power of a single 5870 for most apps and then a boost of an extra 5870 on top for games.

 

Yet again driver issues could be a problem. Is there nobody who uses or has seen someone using this card (5970).

 

Another question is does anybody use the Nvidia GTX 295. Its a Dual GPU single card, not as powerful as the ATI 5970, but it would be good to know how "our" apps run under a dual core card?

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Hey Curtis.. like you, I 2 am a PC Gamer.. love my crysis, battflefields and just cause 2 ;-) As for the GTX 295, my closes friends has been running one now for close to a year, and it runs very nicely, he's had no issues at all with it.. I personally see it running almost every day.. apps and games with no probs. Only thing stopping me from getting it is that I'm looking for dx11 support.

[AJLynn]

Well, for you gamers, I tried the 3-screen, 3D glasses demo of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 at Pax and it does blow the mind. Apparently they've got some active 3D glasses technology that makes the glasses flicker... I didn't really understand what the guy was saying (which usually just means the guy I was talking to didn't really understand what he was saying) and it didn't make sense to me that the glasses were working even though they weren't plugged in, but the concept sounded good. Also, they say the 3D tech works with any D3D game.

 

Looks like the 480 is selling for $500, plus or minus, and whether it's worth that, I don't know. Maybe the 470 will turn out to be a good value card once the market levels a bit. It would depend on some things we don't know yet, like whether the new Quicksilver thing in Max is very useful and whether this card is particularly good at running it. If they were to get the 3D glasses tech working in Max and Revit I could see that being useful - it's a bit frustrating, seeing stuff like this and having ideas for using it in a professional setting, while everybody else only wants to talk about games. You'd think that with all these game developers there, they'd be ready to answer questions like about using it with Max, putting other objects in the raytrace studio, etc.

[Fran]

...If they were to get the 3D glasses tech working in Max and Revit I could see that being useful - it's a bit frustrating, seeing stuff like this and having ideas for using it in a professional setting, while everybody else only wants to talk about games. You'd think that with all these game developers there, they'd be ready to answer questions like about using it with Max, putting other objects in the raytrace studio, etc.

 

It's our lot in life to ride the coat tails of the gaming and entertainment industries. They follow the money. It's a little symbiotic - except that we don't have to get our hands dirty.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

So true Frances..

Hey Andrew, so how has been your experience so far seeing the 480 running? Have you been able to hear the card too? One of my main issues is that if the card is loud, I'm sitting in my room all day crancking out 3ds models, I dont want to have to deal with the hissing of a loud video card.

[AJLynn]

I only saw it in action in that presentation and on the exhibition floor where it was too loud to hear fan noise. All I know is how pretty the output is.

[CJI]

Yeah Jonathon i understand where you're coming from, although PC gaming doesn't seem like the huge priority to developers that it once was. I loved playing crysis, the most beautiful gaming experience there is. I managed to run it on high graphics settings with godrays and all on my lowly XPS M1530 Laptop without overclocking by using the game console to turn the effects on without the performance hit of the shaders. I was quite proud of myself, but it was running at an ugly 800 * 600 or something haha. Can't wait to go through it again and experience it properly with the new machine and card. It will put PC gaming back on the menu for me as the laptop fails miserably to be honest!

 

I don't doubt that the 480 is an astonishing card especially considering its a single GPU but its the heat it generates that is my main issue. Considering some sources that it idles around the 80 - 90 degrees mark, what happens when you push it on a hot day? Will we have to resort to liquid cooling as standard because of this new tech? I for one am not prepared for that kind of jump, my computer is expensive enough as it is? Plus im always concerned that stuff would leak in the middle of a deadline haha.

 

"sorry i can't deliver your marketing images on time, my computer peed itself"

 

Theres an article in the new issue of 3D world that guides you through creating stereoscopic content, although without the screen and glasses i don't know how you would go about previewing it, let alone how to do proper post work on it?