AT fermi review is up!

[Skurge]

You did answer my question though. Loud when? When your playing a game right? Will you hear it? I won't. It cant be that loud.

95c was already said fairly normal for a high end card when doing that furmark test. It's in the 80's while playing games and thats nothing new for highend cards. That was already said in another thread.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2061282

Its 95c when playing crysis and you are going to hear 65db coming from your case.
Its hotter during crysis than furmark

 

[alyarb]

(A) Complete bullshit
(b) If you can't turn up your audio because of thin walls I guess you don't have sex much with the wife? J/K

You are reaching, stop bullshitting man there is NO way to hear your fans while gaming,unless you play with relatively no volume.
I have 7 case fans spinning at medium right now and can hear my TV just fine over the fans, in my living room

the funny part is that you can run your Q9550 at that speed silently if you'd be willing to give up 5 degrees at load. some people just love noise and have extraordinary tolerance for it. i guess it makes you think your machine is fast? 7 fans; makes me laugh. people vary widely in their opinion on this so cut the guy a break. fermi is damn audible and the hundred extra watts makes it hard to sell to the energy/noise conscious. i guess i'm waiting for 28.

 

[thilanliyan]

Imagine walking on that tesellated walkway? Too rough and cobbled for me. I'd prefer the smooth flat walkway that my DX10 4870 produces.

 

[toyota]

also happy medium, not every game is explosions and gunfire the whole time. heck even plenty of Crysis or Metro 2033 is sneaking around and having a loud ass fan is annoying as hell during quieter parts of a game.

 

[cbn]

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/7

Happy medium, listen to the 480 GTX video. The noise really starts increasing @ 1:21 into the video.

 

[thilanliyan]

You are reaching, stop bullshitting man there is NO way to hear your fans while gaming,unless you play with relatively no volume.
I have 7 case fans spinning at medium right now and can hear my TV just fine over the fans, in my living room

Not everyone needs the volume at full blast to enjoy music/sound properly...my ears are still pretty good. I use headphones and I could hear my 4870 fan if it went above 55-60%. That is part of the reason I have mine watercooled with low speed fans now.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/7
Happy medium, listen to the 480 GTX video. The noise really starts increasing @ 1:21 into the video.

Lol I'm so glad I'm watercooling...all those cards really do sound like jets at takeoff and that's in an open air test bench which is usually cooler than in a case. Whichever card I get next I will definitely be watercooling.

 

[Skurge]

(A) Complete bullshit
(b) If you can't turn up your audio because of thin walls I guess you don't have sex much with the wife? J/K

You are reaching, stop bullshitting man there is NO way to hear your fans while gaming,unless you play with relatively no volume.
I have 7 case fans spinning at medium right now and can hear my TV just fine over the fans, in my living room

Whats wrong with you?
Not everyone has the same setup as you, not everyone likes their volume cranked up. So stop being so thick.

Iv got a pair of enclosed headphones and I can just barely hear my dark knight at load with the fan at 100%, and that cards about 38db at 100%

I can also hear my old Pentuim 4 and I'm sure a 480 is louder.

 

[Apocalypse23]

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_480_fermi_arrives,8.html

Similar to HardOCP.. 480 is only ~10-15% faster than 5870 in Metro.

What happens when the 480 is OC by 10% and the 5870 is OC by 25%?

More interestingly, what happens when the 470 is OC by 10% and the 5850 is OC by 30%?

I didnt expect fermi could even OC much, so 10% is pretty good!!

"The power consumption figures of the GeForce GTX 480 are truly terrifying, particularly for a single GPU graphics card. With a total system consumption of 506 watts with the GeForce GTX 480, the Radeon HD 5870 is the next most power hungry single GPU graphics card, which consumed 22% less or 110 watts less. The GeForce GTX 480 uses slightly more power than the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 at both idle and load, while it is comparable to a pair of Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire graphics cards.

All that power makes for one seriously hot graphics card. Do not be fooled by the 97 degree load temperature. While this is the maximum temperature that we recorded, the fan was spinning so fast things started sliding across my desk towards the test system. The GeForce GTX 480 was truly deafening when running our full load test.

Letting the card sit at the Windows 7 desktop for 20 minutes after stress testing saw the temperature only drop to 65 degrees. When it came time to remove the GeForce GTX 480 from our test system I had to wear a pair of gloves to avoid any possible burns or dropping the extremely hot graphics card. The PCI Express power cables were amazingly soft from all the heat that had been thrown at them.

In short the GeForce GTX 480 is around 11% hotter than the Radeon HD 5870 under load and a whopping 71% or 21 degrees hotter at idle." --Legion Hardware Fermi review

LOL!

 

[happy medium]

1. First point, the 480 is 10-15% faster in Metro. What are you trying to claim here? It's not a huge margin at all. I've seen plenty of reviews with BC2 and the numbers go up and down with wins for 5870 and for 480. The point is they are extremely close. Similar for Dirt2 and other titles, its only winning by the smallest of margins.

2. Unigine, we have known for months that fermi handles tessellation better. Its not news, its a synthetic benchmark, what good will it do for ppl who buy graphic cards to game? It is the future you say? Sure, in a few years. Again, by then will it even matter? NO. The next big thing will be out in 2011 from ATI. No dx11 title this year will have anywhere near the difference you see in unigine.

3. I am not a fanboy. I have bought NV products before and will do so again whenever they can make a good price/performance card. Fermi as it is, is crap for using more power than a 5970 yet only producing tiny leads over a 5870 and overpriced. Defend that if you can.

A synthetic benchmark that uses the same features as future hardware pounding games is important to me. Where do you get in a few years from? They use IT NOW. How do you know how much tessalation games will use in the next 6 months? The one thing Nvidia does is work well with game develpers,and you can be sure they will use every advantage they have.
Remember Crysis 3 is due out this year,so don't say NO title with use these features.

I'm no fanboy either, I like price perfromance just like the next guy,but really the 5870 is going for 420$ the gtx 480 is $500 with a 15% performance increase. Thats 60$ more performance, and more with a new driver or 2. Thats only 20$ more per performance.
Ati just released it's killer 10.3 drivers and shot it's load already.

 

[SHAQ]

I'm still buying 2 470's. It looks like Oc'ing them will be close to a stock 480. Just about everyone on the sites I've been reading are going ATI this round, mostly because of power and heat. Someone needs to buy Nvidia so I guess I will. lol I had a 295 and it ran at 100% during gaming, but I have a 250 watt 5.1 system. No worries.

 

[ElFenix]

i'm giving this part a solid 'meh'

 

[Silverforce11]

Its loud, like hairdryer loud. If that doesn't bother you, fine. But it bothers most people. If i was given a 480 for free, i wouldn't use it for the loud and high power use alone. I'd ebay it so fanboys or "deaf" people can buy it.

 

[toyota]

I'm still buying 2 470's. It looks like Oc'ing them will be close to a stock 480. Just about everyone on the sites I've been reading are going ATI this round, mostly because of power and heat. Someone needs to buy Nvidia so I guess I will. lol I had a 295 and it ran at 100% during gaming, but I have a 250 watt 5.1 system. No worries.

when and if the price drops significantly I would probably get a 470 with a custom board/cooler from MSI or whoever has a good solution. with the reference cooler its a no sale especially at a whopping 350 bucks.

 

[Silverforce11]

A synthetic benchmark that uses the same features as future hardware pounding games is important to me. Where do you get in a few years from? They use IT NOW. How do you know how much tessalation games will use in the next 6 months? The one thing Nvidia does is work well with game develpers,and you can be sure they will use every advantage they have.
Remember Crysis 3 is due out this year,so don't say NO title with use these features.

I'm no fanboy either, I like price perfromance just like the next guy,but really the 5870 is going for 420$ the gtx 480 is $500 with a 15% performance increase. Thats 60$ more performance, and more with a new driver or 2. Thats only 20$ more per performance.
Ati just released it's killer 10.3 drivers and shot it's load already.

Im playing games that use tessellation right now. Dirt 2, AvP. Soon to play Metro. Games will use it, but not heavily as in unigine which is excessive and purely built as a synthetic benchmark. It's a dx11 feature, not an NV exclusive feature like physx. If game developers use it, it will be for all dx11 cards. The chance of a developer exclusively putting in extreme tessellation in their games just so Fermi can run it and Radeons can't.. is nonexistant outside of benchmarks.

Thus, the tessellation levels won't be approaching unigine for years in games.

I bought my 5850s for $260. I could have bought a 5870 for $400. But its not good value. Both of these cards run fine with 25-30% OC. They still run quiet and cool at OC speeds. So why pay $500 for a 480 when its 10-15% quicker and drains so much more power, making your case hotter and extremely loud? You say you aren't a fanboy.. but i can't see logical reasoning why you would consider a 480 as better value.

 

[happy medium]

Whats wrong with you?
Not everyone has the same setup as you, not everyone likes their volume cranked up. So stop being so thick.

Iv got a pair of enclosed headphones and I can just barely hear my dark knight at load with the fan at 100%, and that cards about 38db at 100%

I can also hear my old Pentuim 4 and I'm sure a 480 is louder.

Enclosed headphones? You can hear 38db? AMAZING!
SO a gtx 480 is 2x as loud as a 4870 at 100%

Mabe I'm just getting old or deaf?
But really I can't hear my fans. *shrugs*

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

(A) Complete bullshit
(b) If you can't turn up your audio because of thin walls I guess you don't have sex much with the wife? J/K

You are reaching, stop bullshitting man there is NO way to hear your fans while gaming,unless you play with relatively no volume.
I have 7 case fans spinning at medium right now and can hear my TV just fine over the fans, in my living room

Good for you. No one is forcing their opinions on you. Stop being so obtuse.

 

[pmv]

In short the GeForce GTX 480 is around 11% hotter than the Radeon HD 5870 under load and a whopping 71% or 21 degrees hotter at idle."[/b] --Legion Hardware Fermi review

LOL!

Expressing a temperature as a % is just silly. You'll get a different % depending on what temperature scale you use (C, K or F?)

But this card really does sound like a monster, and not in a good way. What those poor engineers must have been going through, trying to make this thing useable. But I still think nvidia will do much better with the next one.

 

[alyarb]

well, you basically need to use kelvin. but yeah temp scales suck.

 

[happy medium]

Im playing games that use tessellation right now. Dirt 2, AvP. Soon to play Metro. Games will use it, but not heavily as in unigine which is excessive and purely built as a synthetic benchmark. It's a dx11 feature, not an NV exclusive feature like physx. If game developers use it, it will be for all dx11 cards. The chance of a developer exclusively putting in extreme tessellation in their games just so Fermi can run it and Radeons can't.. is nonexistant outside of benchmarks.

Thus, the tessellation levels won't be approaching unigine for years in games.

I bought my 5850s for $260. I could have bought a 5870 for $400. But its not good value. Both of these cards run fine with 25-30% OC. They still run quiet and cool at OC speeds. So why pay $500 for a 480 when its 10-15% quicker and drains so much more power, making your case hotter and extremely loud? You say you aren't a fanboy.. but i can't see logical reasoning why you would consider a 480 as better value.

Yes I agree,but they will use a tessaltion settings just like in the benchmark,just like direct x 9,10,11.
You pick the detail level,just like Metro 2033.
I seen a water/mountain demo (somewhere) with tessalation and it was real nice. Sure would like my 4/500$ card to do that,and sure would be pissed if it couldn't

 

[cbn]

Deleted.

 

[Skurge]

Yes you can't hear YOUR fans. . . so stop saying everyone else wont hear a gtx480.
I just watched the video and its just ridiculous, sounds like my sisters blow dryer and that I can hear clearly.

 

[WelshBloke]

i'm giving this part a solid 'meh'

I'm gonna go with that, its not crap but it certainly doesn't make me want to whip out my credit card.

 

[Zebo]

After reading multiple reviews, I don't think the gtx 480 is a terrible buy in terms of price / performance (power/heat aside)... it's 15% faster @19x12 for about 20% more money. But that heat and power and the corresponding fannage to cool it OMG!!!

I long ago, GF4 days, went water cooling on video cards due to noise video cards make but this is a whole new level and would make me turn fans up on rads to untenable levels. No thanks. I don't know how you guys will be able stand it on air.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Power is indeed a problem, but I dont see why everyone is so up tight about noise and heat. Concluding the card is loud from some video is just pure nonsense. They are normally for hearing their tonal characteristics (whether or not they are high pitched/smooth etc).

But for actual noise measurement they arent a good indicator. Especially in an open test bed since most people have cases which further reduce noise. ATs reading make the noise to be around a GTX275/285/HD4890. I know people who own these cards and never have complained about noise. I guess some did for the HD4890 since it had more of a whiney tone to its noise but that didnt stop people from buying this card.

People are complaining that the cards are reaching ~90C but this isnt something new. Ive had my HD4850 reach those temps til I changed its cooler. The initial GTX280/260s were hot. 8800GTXs were hot that people started strapping 120mm fans on the stock heatsink. HD4870s were hot and had VRMs reach up to over 100C during furmark.

I think most people are over reacting because of the disappointment which is quite normal but wait 2~3 weeks when all the smoke/dust has settled. Kind of like the initial impact of the HD5850. By then, I think the GTX470 will look better than what most people make it out to be atm. As for the GTX480, well I just cant think of many viable reasons to even consider this card.

 

[Acanthus]

Enclosed headphones? You can hear 38db? AMAZING!
SO a gtx 480 is 2x as loud as a 4870 at 100%

Mabe I'm just getting old or deaf?
But really I can't hear my fans. *shrugs*

Decibels are a logarithmic scale.

It is a lot more than 2x as loud.