overall not impressed going from gtx260 to gtx470

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May 13, 2009
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Sooo... He's not happy with the performance jump from a GTX260 to a GTX470 but he will be satisfied going to a (slower) HD5850?
Well according to who you ask I guess? The OP and another member in this thread have already commented on the 470 not living up to the reviews and one member saying it was equal to or slower than his gtx 285. A 5850 would beat a gtx 285 and run lots cooler and more efficiently. He could get a 5850 toxic for that price. Maybe I'm a little biased since I own a 5850 and love it. I truly believe if he bought the 5850 he would of not started a thread like this. He's obviously not happy with it and power and heat issues are a concern as well.
 

solofly

Banned
May 25, 2003
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That's what you get for listening to happy medium...lol (enjoy the heat, noise and increase on your power bill)
:)
 
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happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
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It's obvious you have a cpu bottleneck or some other problem going on.
A stock gtx470 is at least 30% faster then a gtx 260 192 sp.
With a overclocked gtx 470 you are close to 5870 performance.

No need to buy a slower 5850/5870 if your not satified with a overclocked gtx 470.

Get back to us when you have a quad core.
 
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hans030390

Diamond Member
Feb 3, 2005
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It's obvious you have a cpu bottleneck or some other problem going on.
A gtx470 is at least 30% faster then a gtx 260 192 sp.

Get back to us when you have a quad core.

BFG's benchmarks were done with just that. The 470 still shows disappointing results.
 

happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
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BFG's benchmarks were done with just that. The 470 still shows disappointing results.

Not knocking either one of these guys benchmarks, but unless every other site is wrong on the internet, there results are screwed up.

Bottom line, if a overclocked gtx 470 doesn't satisfy you, neither will a 5870.

Aim for a 5970.
 

jvroig

Platinum Member
Nov 4, 2009
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It's obvious you have a cpu bottleneck or some other problem going on.
With an E8500 @ 3.8GHz? I doubt it.

There is certainly a problem here, and while I am not sure what it is, I strongly doubt it is the CPU.

@Toyota:
Some obvious things, but for the sake of thoroughness:
1.) Did you just swap the card in and then updated to new drivers?
2.) Did you remove the old drivers first and run DriverSweeper, before using the latest driver on your new card?
3.) Or was this actually a complete reinstall of the OS (unnecessary for new video cards, but if you timed your purchase with a new OS install, it would nullify the suspicion on driver issues)?

I needed to ask only because I do not believe it mentioned in the thread yet, and on the off chance that it might actually be useful.

Whatever the case, if you do not end up returning the card and it makes it to your i5 quad, it would be very helpful to post results of those as well.

Thanks.
 

happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
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I went from a e8400 @ 3.6 to a q9550 @ 3.6 and with most of the games mentioned I got a nice boost.

Driver sweeper is a good idea.
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
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It's obvious you have a cpu bottleneck or some other problem going on.
A stock gtx470 is at least 30% faster then a gtx 260 192 sp.
With a overclocked gtx 470 you are close to 5870 performance.

No need to buy a slower 5850/5870 if your not satified with a overclocked gtx 470.

Get back to us when you have a quad core.
well I am getting over 30% more performance in most cases where my cpu isnt the limiation. Just Cause 2 went from 43-63fps so thats nearly 50% right there. Far Cry 2, Avatar, BC 2 and Red Faction are not moving much at all because they indeed are cpu limited with my dual core even at 3.8. Cryostasis is really the only major turd of the bunch yet it was sadly one of the games I wanted to significantly improve. also I was hoping to increase view distance in GTA 4 but unfortunately that setting impacts cpu performance too so I have to use the exact same settings as with the gtx260.

I guess for a whopping 329 bucks I was just hoping games would feel better and smoother. really all its done is allow non noticeable increase in average framerate for most games. in other words playability didnt really change much in nearly every case. sure I am able to crank settings a little more and basically have free 2x to 4x AA but is that worth $329. not to mention the 100 watt increase in power draw and extra noise when running those games now.

its almost as if the gtx260 is plenty for most games and the few games that its not great in will require something MUCH stronger than a gtx470 for best results anyway. that and a quad core in many cases of course.
 
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DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
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its almost as if the gtx260 is plenty for most games and the few games that its not great in will require something MUCH stronger than a gtx470 for best results anyway. that and a quad core in many cases of course.

There's something to that. I'm still finding that games run well on my E8400 at stock 3 GHz with a 4870-512. The man reason I'm tempted to upgrade to a 5850 or even crossgrade to a 5770 is to reduce the power use and fan noise, especially at idle.
 

faxon

Platinum Member
May 23, 2008
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wow, yea i had not seen BFG's articles before. has anyone done these same tests with a 58X0 card? im starting to feel even better than before about getting my 5870 at launch now lmao
 

bunnyfubbles

Lifer
Sep 3, 2001
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Not knocking either one of these guys benchmarks, but unless every other site is wrong on the internet, there results are screwed up.

Bottom line, if a overclocked gtx 470 doesn't satisfy you, neither will a 5870.

Aim for a 5970.

Or you could get your head out of nVidia's ass and see that a lot of people don't play the same games or use the same settings that most commercial test sites use. BFG10K knows what he's doing, and he's certainly not "out to get nVidia"

Happy Medium is expressing an opinion on the subject matter. As are others.
What is it that you're doing? You don't HAVE to like his opinions, but you also don't have to be
rude about it. 1st and last warning for any and all in this thread or any other video thread.
This garbage ends today.
Anandtech Moderator - Keysplayr
 
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Patrick Wolf

Platinum Member
Jan 5, 2005
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As BFG concluded in his article; his results were due to drivers. It's a new architecture which probably requires new optimizations. Whether or not nvidia will make those optimizations for older games remains to be seen.
 

WelshBloke

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
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Not knocking either one of these guys benchmarks, but unless every other site is wrong on the internet, there results are screwed up.

Bottom line, if a overclocked gtx 470 doesn't satisfy you, neither will a 5870.

Aim for a 5970.


Did you read BFG's review? He reviews a lot of games and settings that main stream reviewers don't.

I'd not read them myself but he really is rather good and seems to know his shit.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
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http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gigabyte-gf-gtx400_17.html#sect0

GTX470 is on average about 30% faster than GTX285 with a very fast quad core processor at 1920x1080. Therefore, it's unlikely that there would be major performance improvement by going to a GTX470 from GTX260 (other than "free" AA). I think a combination of unoptimized drivers, C2D vs. Core i5/7 and lack of performance from GTX470 are the reasons. With videocard upgrades, I find going for cards that deliver at least 100% performance increase is satisfactory (i.e., Radeon 8500 -> 6600 256 mb --> 8800GTS 320 --> 4890). Just my 2 cents. I would probably return the card and wait for Crysis 2, Medal of Honor and some other intensive games before upgrading from a GTX260/275/280/4890.
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
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well the card has a "VGA Standard Return Policy" and looking at the details of that it doesnt mention a restocking fee of any sort. some of the other cards on newegg say "VGA Replacement Only Return Policy" which looks like I would be stuck with the card if that was the case. anyway I will likely just return the card and go ahead and invest in an i5 quad/mobo/ram and then pick up another card later.
 

Grooveriding

Diamond Member
Dec 25, 2008
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Return it and get a 5850 or a 5870.

ATI is better than nvidia. Nvidia releases overpriced crap and takes six months longer to get out products that perform the same as ones ATI released six months ago.

Don't buy nvidia, buy ati. Nvidia is crap, ati is amazing.

Expressing my opinion.

And I'm here to see that nobody give you crap for it either. But don't think I didn't notice the snub.
Anandtech Moderator - Keysplayr
 
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SHAQ

Senior member
Aug 5, 2002
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I thought the OP was the king of spotting bottlenecks yet he thought a 470 would increase performance on a dual core CPU? All of those games you listed support quads except Crysis and Clear Sky. I don't know about Avatar. If you give up 50% performance from a slower CPU there goes your possible gains from upgrading to a 470.
 
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happy medium

Lifer
Jun 8, 2003
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well the card has a "VGA Standard Return Policy" and looking at the details of that it doesnt mention a restocking fee of any sort. some of the other cards on newegg say "VGA Replacement Only Return Policy" which looks like I would be stuck with the card if that was the case. anyway I will likely just return the card and go ahead and invest in an i5 quad/mobo/ram and then pick up another card later.

I think thats a smart idea. You might be quite surprized how your system performs with a quad core under the hood. :)
 

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
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well now the card is not even ramping up to full 3d clocks. usually the only time that happens is when there has been driver related crash. this time though all I did was fire up Cryostasis and change some in game settings restarted the game and now the gpu only ramps up to 405mhz no matter what. I am sure a reboot will fix that but must be something wonky with Cryostasis that screwed up the clocks.
 

blanketyblank

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
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Since you are setting 2 x AA maybe it's the super sampling bug that's holding you back. I remember seeing something abot the new cards actually doing super sampling instead of what they are supposed to. Then again 5-8 fps doesn't seem right since going from a 192 sp 260 to a 470 should be like me getting a 5850 or a second 5770 for crossfire.
What resolution are you playing at?
 

zerocool84

Lifer
Nov 11, 2004
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I'm going to agree with many other people in here and say it's a lack of quad bottleneck. I saw very noticeable gains just from going from a E6300 @ 2.8 to a Q9550 @ 3.4
 

ZimZum

Golden Member
Aug 2, 2001
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well the card has a "VGA Standard Return Policy" and looking at the details of that it doesnt mention a restocking fee of any sort. some of the other cards on newegg say "VGA Replacement Only Return Policy" which looks like I would be stuck with the card if that was the case.

Pretty sure they will let you swap it for a different card even with the VGA policy.
 
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