Official "I just got a Geforce GTX 5xx thread"

[Slytat]

Originally Posted by rap1d^

From the Nvidia Forums the shadow flicker in GTA4 is a driver issue which is being worked on.

It's been an issue for a LONG time for both camps where more than 1 GPU is involved.

[Xion X2]

Originally Posted by mailman2

yea vsync is a non issue to me with a single card. That was another reason I swore off multi GPU forever, why pay all that money to lock @ 60fps.

Because often single GPUs will drop below 60fps. With multi-GPU, it happens less frequently.

[mailman2]

Originally Posted by Xion X2

Because often single GPUs will drop below 60fps. With multi-GPU, it happens less frequently.

input lag too.

[brunner]

Got a 480 coming in today and another one tomorrow. Only dilemma is whether I should sandwich my 9800 GT between them for Physx. Based on my research, the Physx card will still bring at least a 15% boost in minimum framerate for a physx title like Batman. Will the 480s be harder to overclock though if I don't put two slots between them?

[Euphobia]

Hi everyone.

Got my ASUS GTX470 yesterday.

My first impressions are, I am impressed with it.

I monitored temps slightly last night. My idle temps were around 58-60C when I've left my comp on for around 4-5 hours or so. Load temps were around 75C, with Crysis in the 80s.

Today, I put some MX-3 compound on it. This lowered my idle temps to 52C, my load temps were 68-70C, with Crysis getting the load temps to around 76-78C, so it lowered temps a lot.

I've not recorded any benchmarks, but I love the performance on it. Was running Crysis Warhead at 1080 res, Enthusiast settings for everything, and it played fine with no slowdown at all.

Was definitley a great purchase

[brunner]

So I decided to go ahead with installing my 1st 480 GTX. I was kinda surprised by how light it felt. I expected it to be a monster with its rep as a power drawing machine. In preparation for the 480 SLI setup, I also upgraded a couple of the case fans with better quality Scythe ones. With auto-fan, the 480 is impressively quiet but the heat is insanely higher than my 5870s. Even with crossfire on, the 5870 was only 40C at idle after several hours of use. Upon bootup, the 480 is already at 60C with 40% fan. My 5870 also used around 40% fan at idle. The 480 fan is a bit quieter though. Its 80% is about 70% for the 5870.

I've also put the 9800 GT right under the 480 for some testing with Physx and also see how hot the 480 will get with one card right next to it.

[Blacklash]

Ran STALKER CoP maxed with 4x MSAA and the highest quality transparency AA @ 1920x, then disabled transparency AA and ran it again.

[brunner]

Kinda not that impressed with just 1 480 right now. The main thing is the temp. It gets hotter in the single-card configuration than my two 5870s. I have a little bit more appreciation for the 5870s right now. For $300, two 5870s seem like a better deal.

I will probably feel differently though once I start playing stuff like GTA4 and Metro when my 2nd card arrives tomorrow. For some reason, I always expect a bit more from my new videocards than they can deliver.

[mailman2]

Originally Posted by brunner

Kinda not that impressed with just 1 480 right now. The main thing is the temp. It gets hotter in the single-card configuration than my two 5870s. I have a little bit more appreciation for the 5870s right now. For $300, two 5870s seem like a better deal.

I will probably feel differently though once I start playing stuff like GTA4 and Metro when my 2nd card arrives tomorrow. For some reason, I always expect a bit more from my new videocards than they can deliver.

Im not at all interested in SLI. Play GTA and Metro with the single 480 and report back, I'm interested in more HD5870 vs GTX 480 thoughts from a regular user than from a reviewer. On the fence about moving to a GTX 480 from OC'd HD5870.

[Blacklash]

Definitely replace your thermal paste. Both my cards looked like someone used half a tube on each. Waaaay too much.

[agentkay]

I've got my Gainward GTX 480 and I'm very impressed so far. The upgrade from the 8800GTX is huge, massive performance gains in everything but that doesn't have to be explained.

Heat is not at an issue for me at all, the card idles between 45-47C (with a 120mm fan pointed at the heatpipes/grill) and the cards fan apparently is at 44% (GPUz) and it is very quiet, just as quiet as my 8800GTX that had an aftermarket heatsink (HR03+) and it idled at 47-48C with a 120mm fan (1200rpm)! The highest load temperature I have seen so far is 85C (60% fanspeed) and the card cooled down back to its idle temps in well under 5 minutes, and overall it has been more quiet than I actually expected it to be (under load and during cooldown). I almost wish it would kick up the fanspeed a little sooner and faster but I guess that has to be expected for the default autofan mode. Room temp are 22C.

So far I didn't try that many games yet, BC2 with 32AA and HBAO is so much more smoother than on the 8800GTX (no AA and HBAO), its crazy. I also tried out the Rocketsled and Raytracing demos, very cool stuff and definitely a little bit more demanding than BC2 but temp difference were only 4C (85C vs. 81C after playing BC2 for 25 minutes).

I'll report more later on, too tired to write/test more but I'm very happy with my purchase so far, impressive performance at a much lower price than I originally bought my 8800GTX for and there is no doubt what kind of a winner that little card was.

[brunner]

Originally Posted by mailman2

Im not at all interested in SLI. Play GTA and Metro with the single 480 and report back, I'm interested in more HD5870 vs GTX 480 thoughts from a regular user than from a reviewer. On the fence about moving to a GTX 480 from OC'd HD5870.

Firstly, I think an OC'd 5870 is hardly different from a regular 5870. You might as well drop it back to stock to keep the fan noise down. I've OCed mine 5870s to 970/1300 and results were almost exactly the same as 850/1200.

Whether the 480 will be worth the upgrade depends on how you game. The 480 really shows its power when you up the image quality. For example, RE5 was almost 60fps constantly with 8XAA + TR supersampling on two 5870s. 1 480 GTX almost matches that performance when the IQ is that high. However, if you're just using regular 4XAA with adaptive multisampling or no transparency AA @ 1920x1200, then the difference is really hard to spot in game.

In terms of Metro, the 480 probably offers a better experience than a single 5870. At 1920x1200, AAA, DX11 max, Tessellation on, DOF off, the 480 has just a slightly lower minimum framerate than the 2 5870s. The average is quite a bit less though. So overall, I'd say that the above setting is still a little too high for a single 480.

For GTA4, the 480 wins simply because I can push all the sliders to the right. On the 5870, I have to bump the shadows down a notch from the max if I'm using Max textures. View distance also has to drop to 80%. However, framerate is basically the same for both cards at 1920x1200. Although the settings on the 480 supposedly use about 200 MB of ram more, the difference is really negligible in game. It does feel a little smoother though on the 480.

Originally Posted by Blacklash

Definitely replace your thermal paste. Both my cards looked like someone used half a tube on each. Waaaay too much.

I don't want to hassle with TIM replacement but maybe I have no choice. @75% fan, it's up to 100c after less than 10 mins in Metro.