overall not impressed going from gtx260 to gtx470

[toyota]

I see people complaining about poor performance all the time. 9 times out of 10 though it is because they have a severe weak link in their setup. Your case is no different. I would have expected for someone with as many posts as you and who has been a member here as long as you have would have known this. This is what confuses me the most.

Sera sera... What will be will be..


EDIT: Let me guess; you probably used the drivers that came with the card too huh? Noobss...

you keep making ignorant assumptions dont you? you obviously dont hang around here enough to know anything about the members. if you did you would know that I am well aware of cpu limitations. for the record I was using the 257.15 drivers so why dont you just give up on trying to find a way to insult me?

 

[luv2increase]

yes I am sure the same performance results would have occurred with a 5850. surely you didnt think I started this thread to bash Nvidia? if anything I really gave the card a chance because I prefer to use Nvidia. the card is going back because of the noise,heat and power consumption. yes I knew ahead of time that it could be an issue and I could accept the extra power. its the noise and heat that did it for me. I do not enjoy having to crank the case fans up just to help tame a video card when I play a game.

when I do upgrade my cpu later I will see whats available at that time.

The 470 isn't too bad if it is given a case in which it can breathe. Here we go again with another noob mistake. You are on fire tonight


Your impression of the 470 = Bad
Your system specs to successfully run a 470 = Inadequate

Buy a bigger case, upgrade your CPU and Motherboard and give her another go.

 

[toyota]

The 470 isn't too bad if it is given a case in which it can breathe. Here we go again with another noob mistake. You are on fire tonight


Your impression of the 470 = Bad
Your system specs to successfully run a 470 = Inadequate

Buy a bigger case, upgrade your CPU and Motherboard and give her another go.

so now its my case? the 300 has pretty damn good airflow and you should know that since you are not a noob. really you clearly have some type of personalty disorder so I will not be replying to your trollish nonsense anymore.

 

[jvroig]

EDIT: Let me guess; you probably used the drivers that came with the card too huh? Noobss...

You should have ended the post as you did and didn't bother to add this in. Making a valid point and receiving a response is one thing, but being hostile, defamatory and/or condescending, and seemingly on purpose, is a whole different thing. It makes people skip over your posts, without regard to the content.

surely you didnt think I started this thread to bash Nvidia?

I pretty much wouldn't expect it to be such, but in all honesty, a few parts of your OP can (and were, as evidenced by some who took it as a cue to recommend ATI, or say you should have not listened to happy medium) be misconstrued as such. It happens, especially in non-face-to-face communication. As the thread went on, though, I eventually got the message the way you intended it to come across.

its the noise and heat that did it for me.

I have a CM 690, more or less at par with your Antec 300 for most purposes. I believe I would have come to the same conclusion as you.

when I do upgrade my cpu later I will see whats available at that time.

Results would certainly be interesting, thank you in advance if you could create a post that summarizes your experience and notes the FPS difference wherever applicable. I know some of the games noted are quite possibly limited by even a fast dual core, but some should be fine with your highly OCed Core2Duo, let's see how much a new quad will do for those.

 

[happy medium]

so now its my case? the 300 has pretty damn good airflow and you should know that since you are not a noob. really you clearly have some type of personalty disorder so I will not be replying to your trollish nonsense anymore.

Out of curiosity I may buy a gtx 4xx series and test it in my Antec 1200 with a overclocked quad core and compare it against my EVGA gtx 260 (216) data. I also have e8400 @ 3.6 vs q9550 @ 3.6 results.

I know I got a slight boost in some games with my 5750 going from a e8400 to a q9550.

 

[luv2increase]

Out of curiosity I may buy a gtx 4xx series and test it in my Antec 1200 with a overclocked quad core and compare it against my EVGA gtx 260 (216) data. I also have e8400 @ 3.6 vs q9550 @ 3.6 results.

I know I got a slight boost in some games with my 5750 going from a e8400 to a q9550.

That is a great case! Your results would be much better, especially is heavily CPU dependent titles.

Good luck!


@ toyota,

Why don't you edit your OP. If you did that, none of this nonsense would have commenced. It just really irks me when I see someone take away credit where credit is rightfully due.

 

[yh125d]

I see people complaining about poor performance all the time. 9 times out of 10 though it is because they have a severe weak link in their setup. Your case is no different. I would have expected for someone with as many posts as you and who has been a member here as long as you have would have known this. This is what confuses me the most.

Sera sera... What will be will be..


EDIT: Let me guess; you probably used the drivers that came with the card too huh? Noobss...

If you're going to spend your time here insulting members and calling people noobs, we'd just assume you lurk instead. Otherwise, keep it up. You'll find yourself banned soon enough. We prefer to have productive members here.

 

[Genx87]

There's nothing wrong with the results online, but you must remember that they generally stick to standard settings and commonly tested games. Almost every GF100 review had Far Cry 2, Call of Duty 6, Stalker CoP and a few synthetic tessellation benchmarks. Almost every reviewer sticks to 0xAA or 4xAA too. I used Far Cry 2 as well and I saw a large performance gain, just like mainstream reviewers.

Obviously nVidia’s drivers are currently optimized for such predictable situations, so the cards paint a very good picture with mainstream reviews.

But I tested 36 different games of varying ages using varying AA and TrAA levels, and that’s when the performance issues started appearing. The GTX285 has gold standard drivers, plain and simple. On that card 197.13 still generated a performance gain of about 5% across the board for me, which is simply amazing considering how long the GT200 chip has been around.

And that’s why the GTX470 currently cannot compete with a GTX285. In cherry-picked scenarios it’s faster, but if you widen the net it’s the same speed or slower than a GTX285 overall.


Furthermore:

• Used an i5 750 CPU.
• I tested both Windows XP and Windows 7, and in most cases saw similar results.
• My GPU clocks were working properly.
• It was not a super-sampling issue. I know exactly how SSAA works, and that’s why I know it wasn’t a factor. It can’t be a factor for Toyota either since the 256 drivers require super-sampling to be explicitly set.

To put it bluntly, Toyota’s results don’t surprise me at all, and I’d say his CPU has little to nothing to do with it. These are driver issues, plain and simple. I’m tempted to pick up a GTX480 to demonstrate a performance gain over the GTX470.

As for the 25%-30% comment, that’s a noticeable performance gain when it’s actually in effect. I saw that kind of performance gain when going from a GTX260+ to a GTX285 and it definitely impacts actual gameplay.

I am curious if the ATI side has a similar issue. Are these cards so driver dependent we wont see increases generation to generation without driver support?

 

[taltamir]

That is a great case! Your results would be much better, especially is heavily CPU dependent titles.

Good luck!


@ toyota,

Why don't you edit your OP. If you did that, none of this nonsense would have commenced. It just really irks me when I see someone take away credit where credit is rightfully due.

why would he edit the OP? that is nothing wrong or misleading about the op...
how about you stop trolling instead of saying "if you edit the OP I will stop trolling"?

 

[evolucion8]

I wonder if the GTX 4x0 architecture relies heavily in driver optimizations to maximize their execution usage? Considering that GTX 4x0 architecture is scalar. I know that ATi does but is quite surprising that they depend much less in CPU speeds cosindering that ATi's architecture relies heavily in compiler tricks which is supposed to use CPU cycles. Perhaps it uses the Command Queue Processor for executing the optimizations.

 

[v8envy]

Why don't you edit your OP. If you did that, none of this nonsense would have commenced. It just really irks me when I see someone take away credit where credit is rightfully due.

No credit due here. The 470 is not that giant of a leap performance over his card. This may have more to do with perceived rather than absolute performance -- when we fork over $350 for a next generation high end upgrade we expect to double performance, not get a bonus 20-30%. Sure, the 470 is faster. But it's not a "wow" factor faster.

To put it another way, he'd have to be on a 8800GT to double his performance. I'm sure that would have been impressive. But coming from the higher end of a previous generation the upgrade isn't all that. Combine that with even the 8800GT generally being "fast enough" for modern games and you have all the ingredients for a buyer's remorse fail cake.

Like I keep saying, bring on Fermi II!

 

[luv2increase]

Unfortunately, I think the comparison of average FPS for one card VS average FPS of another card is a big fail here.

The other things which are missing from the OP's comparison are:

1. The minimum FPS
2. Differences with heavy AA/AF use and their respective impact on performance
3. Too small of a sample of games.
4. CPU limited performance
5. Too small a sample of various resolution testing

Any person would come to the conclusion that the validity of this comparison is gravely low or practically non-existent.

I suggest anyone wanting to gauge the true performance of the 470 to look at "professional" reviews rather than making an "uninformed" decision from an erroneous comparison which the OP has portrayed here.


We must not forget the advantages of picture quality the 470 has over the 260 nor the VRAM advantage it has from "some" of the 260 variants.

We also must not forget that the 470 is a massive OC, and you can obtain virtually the identical performance of a vanilla 480 @ only a 200mhz OC on the core.

We also must not forget the superb scaling which is exhibited from the 4xx generation of GPUs over its 2xx counterparts. That said, the gap in performance difference really widens when going from (260 v 470) to (2 x 260 v 2 x 470).

 

[toyota]

Unfortunately, I think the comparison of average FPS for one card VS average FPS of another card is a big fail here.

The other things which are missing from the OP's comparison are:

1. The minimum FPS
2. Differences with heavy AA/AF use and their respective impact on performance
3. Too small of a sample of games.
4. CPU limited performance
5. Too small a sample of various resolution testing

Any person would come to the conclusion that the validity of this comparison is gravely low or practically non-existent.

I suggest anyone wanting to gauge the true performance of the 470 to look at "professional" reviews rather than making an "uninformed" decision from an erroneous comparison which the OP has portrayed here.


We must not forget the advantages of picture quality the 470 has over the 260 nor the VRAM advantage it has from "some" of the 260 variants.

We also must not forget that the 470 is a massive OC, and you can obtain virtually the identical performance of a vanilla 480 @ only a 200mhz OC on the core.

We also must not forget the superb scaling which is exhibited from the 4xx generation of GPUs over its 2xx counterparts. That said, the gap in performance difference really widens when going from (260 v 470) to (2 x 260 v 2 x 470).

you have to be kidding? of course the best way to evaluate the card is by looking at professional reviews. and this wasnt just about framerates. again for like the 10th time this is nothing more than MY experience with the card and evaluating the difference going from the gtx260 to a gtx470 in MY pc. please use some common sense and open mind when reading a thread. you clearly are nothing more than an ignorant troll.

 

[bunit]

^ANGRY NVIDIA MAN?

Honestly I think it has a lot to do with the perceived performance thing. Right now is just not a great time to buy video cards - they're bloated in price, and the performance leaps while good have been nothing amazing over the last generation. If you have a decent last generation card - just wait until Southern Islands (for hopefully some price stabilization) or Northern Islands (28nm) + Fermi II (should be helluva lot better 2nd go round right?)

 

[toyota]

^ANGRY NVIDIA MAN?

Honestly I think it has a lot to do with the perceived performance thing. Right now is just not a great time to buy video cards - they're bloated in price, and the performance leaps while good have been nothing amazing over the last generation. If you have a decent last generation card - just wait until Southern Islands (for hopefully some price stabilization) or Northern Islands (28nm) + Fermi II (should be helluva lot better 2nd go round right?)

he clearly has some issues that I suppose only hours of couch time could fix.

 

[RussianSensation]

I suggest anyone wanting to gauge the true performance of the 470 to look at "professional" reviews rather than making an "uninformed" decision from an erroneous comparison which the OP has portrayed here.

:hmm: That's the whole point being illustrated here. OP does not run a 3.3-3.9ghz Core i7/i5 processor, which professional reviews use. By explaining to us what his actual performance increase was using a common system with a C2D processor, we can start to see if any CPU bottlenecks exist (which are pointed out by professional reviews as well).

I agree with some of the statements you made about checking minimum framerates and higher levels of AA. Having said that, the way in which you communicated your opinion was disrespectful to the OP and the board in general. We could easily make fun of you for buying $1000 GTX480s to play on a 1080P screen...but what is that going to accomplish? I have on many occasions expressed my view that upgrading from a GTX260/275/280/285/4890 to a 5850/470 simply does not provide enough of a performance increase for $300-$350 at =<1920x1080. I have also linked professional reviews which show cpu limitations in certain games at 1920x1080 4AA/16AF even between Core i5/7 processors: http://www.xbitlabs.com/misc/picture/?src=/images/cpu/cpus-and-games-2010/perf_table.png&1=1

Bottom line is, time and time again, a lot of people on this forum advocate upgrading to the best graphics card you can afford to improve gaming performance and continue to insist that dual cores, or even lower clocked quad cores are sufficient to drive the latest cards in todays games. This is often misleading for resolutions =<1920x1080 with =<4AA (OP's situation), where CPU speed is still important. If anything, this thread has been very helpful since it helps us understand what parts to recommend from each other's experiences.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Bottom line is, time and time again, a lot of people on this forum advocate upgrading to the best graphics card you can afford to improve gaming performance and continue to insist that dual cores, or even lower clocked quad cores are sufficient to drive the latest cards in todays games. This is often misleading for resolutions =<1920x1080 with =<4AA (OP's situation). If anything, this thread has been very helpful since it helps us understand what parts to recommend from each other's experiences.

The problem is things will never be as simple as that,until the large majority of games use more than 2 cores. It is similar to when games started to use 2 cores instead of 1 and buried the question if it was better to have a slower dual or a faster single.

Lets look at the OP situation - in some cases the performance increase was good, in others not really.

Sure a i5 750+ GTX 470 will be faster than a E8x00+GTX 260, but is a i5 750+GTX 260 faster than a E8x00+GTX 470? And what kind of performance increase will an i5 750+GTX260 give over a E8x00+GTX260?

Sincerely we rarely get real answers like that from professional reviewers. The few ones we get always seem to miss something, be it older CPUs, older GPU, AA, etc. Which is understandable - reviews like that would take weeks to be ready.

Probably for the OP in his case, and considering that at this time GPUs are expensive, a i5 750 might be a better overall upgrade than a GTX 470 and will give him a better platform for future GPUs. But he wont probably see an increase in performance if he pairs a GTX 260 with a i5 750 except in some titles that don't really take advantage of faster GPUs when a certain GPU power threshold is achieved or games like Dragon Age, where you see improvements by either increasing CPU power and GPU power or both.

It would be interesting if toyota got an i5 750 keeping his GTX 470 and then benched all the 4 possible setups (loads of hours of work there) in a variety of games.

EDIT: For example this interesting review http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-ii-x3-440-gaming-performance,2619.html .

Sure the i7 is better no doubts and clearly the X3 limits the CF 5870.

But what if instead of 5870 CF setup they had tested a 5850 CF setup. The extra you pay on the i7 920 + motherboard would be quite close to a 2nd 5850 (and if this was like last gen it would be for sure).

And where is the AA and AF that would tax even more the GPU? 5850 without AA and AF? 5870 CF without without AA and AF?

It is always the same - interesting reviews but always something missing that always leave doubts in.

 

[RussianSensation]

GaiaHunter, no doubt the GTX470 is going to provide a larger "overall" performance improvement than a Core i5 750. The point I was trying to make is that when we see GTX470 vs. GTX260 in reviews, that's the BEST case scenario because they are using the fastest CPUs you can get your hands on. So if the performance difference is 50&#37; on a 3.7ghz Core i7 between the 2 videocards, then a C2D user should expect about 30% and keep that in mind when upgrading.

 

[GaiaHunter]

GaiaHunter, no doubt the GTX470 is going to provide a larger "overall" performance improvement than a Core i5 750. The point I was trying to make is that when we see GTX470 vs. GTX260 in reviews, that's the BEST case scenario because they are using the fastest CPUs you can get your hands on. So if the performance difference is 50% on a 3.7ghz Core i7 between the 2 videocards, then a C2D user should expect about 30% and keep that in mind when upgrading.

Guess I didn't read it like that, my bad.

I agree with what you saying though - there is a point where a CPU upgrade will be more beneficial, especially because we can take advantage of CPUs for other stuff.

Many times I read stuff like "I went from a dual core so and so with a 8800GT to a quad core so and so with a GTX 285 and my experience improved a lot. Quad cores>>>dual!" and I'm like wtf?! Of course a faster CPU with a faster GPU is better. The problem is when we can only upgrade either one or the other.

 

[luv2increase]

:hmm: That's the whole point being illustrated here. OP does not run a 3.3-3.9ghz Core i7/i5 processor, which professional reviews use. By explaining to us what his actual performance increase was using a common system with a C2D processor, we can start to see if any CPU bottlenecks exist (which are pointed out by professional reviews as well).

I agree with some of the statements you made about checking minimum framerates and higher levels of AA. Having said that, the way in which you communicated your opinion was disrespectful to the OP and the board in general. We could easily make fun of you for buying $1000 GTX480s to play on a 1080P screen...but what is that going to accomplish? I have on many occasions expressed my view that upgrading from a GTX260/275/280/285/4890 to a 5850/470 simply does not provide enough of a performance increase for $300-$350 at =<1920x1080. I have also linked professional reviews which show cpu limitations in certain games at 1920x1080 4AA/16AF even between Core i5/7 processors: http://www.xbitlabs.com/misc/picture/?src=/images/cpu/cpus-and-gamies-2010/perf_table.png&1=1

Bottom line is, time and time again, a lot of people on this forum advocate upgrading to the best graphics card you can afford to improve gaming performance and continue to insist that dual cores, or even lower clocked quad cores are sufficient to drive the latest cards in todays games. This is often misleading for resolutions =<1920x1080 with =<4AA (OP's situation), where CPU speed is still important. If anything, this thread has been very helpful since it helps us understand what parts to recommend from each other's experiences.

You must not be very intelligent when it comes to this stuff. When using high amounts of AA/AF along with using supersampling @ 1920X1080, one needs as much GPU power as one can possibly get. There is nothing wrong whatever with 2 x 480s with my setup.

Taking that into consideration along with obtaining a 55" 3D HDTV which will cut the framerate theoretically in half, even 2 x 480s wont be enough. Due to the fact that you think 2 x 480s is too much for 1080P and 1920x1200, I would say you need to be on the information receiving end instead of the giving end. Do some more reading. If you need any help with anything, jist shoot me a PM.

You just learned something today. Dont mention it. Take Care

Awesome. Simply astounding. Do us all a favor and back off a bit on the personal insults.
Read the sticky at the top of this forum before posting any further.
Best Regards,
Anandtech Moderator - Keysplayr


Thanks! I just read the sticky. Sorry about losing my cool.
[/B]

Much obliged. Thank you.

 

[ArchAngel777]

You must not be very intelligent when it comes to this stuff. When using high amounts of AA/AF along with using supersampling @ 1920X1080, one needs as much GPU power as one can possibly get. There is nothing wrong whatever with 2 x 480s with my setup.

Taking that into consideration along with obtaining a 55" 3D HDTV which will cut the framerate theoretically in half, even 2 x 480s wont be enough. Due to the fact that you think 2 x 480s is too much for 1080P and 1920x1200, I would say you need to be on the information receiving end instead of the giving end. Do some more reading. If you need any help with anything, jist shoot me a PM.

You just learned something today. Dont mention it. Take Care

Awesome. Simply astounding. Do us all a favor and back off a bit on the personal insults.
Read the sticky at the top of this forum before posting any further.
Best Regards,
Anandtech Moderator - Keysplayr


Thanks! I just read the sticky. Sorry about losing my cool.
[/B]

Much obliged. Thank you.

Not a fan of this guys tone and comments, but he is right. You can even bring two 480 GTX to its knees at 1920x1080. Just turn on 8XAA, 16XAF, TSSAA, Sterioscopic 3D + Moderm Game (Crysis, Cryostatis, LOTRO, etc...) and it will struggle during some parts.

However, the CPU is still important, just nowhere near what the GPU is.

 

[taltamir]

Not a fan of this guys tone and comments, but he is right. You can even bring two 480 GTX to its knees at 1920x1080. Just turn on 8XAA, 16XAF, TSSAA, Sterioscopic 3D + Moderm Game (Crysis, Cryostatis, LOTRO, etc...) and it will struggle during some parts.

However, the CPU is still important, just nowhere near what the GPU is.

Unless you are trying to play a game rather then "bring your GPU to its knees"...
Trying to play means looking for a setting at which the game produces a playable FPS... you would find that if your GPU is too slow what do you do? you lower the resolution, the AA quality, lower the shader a bit... the game looks nearly as good...
what if your CPU is too slow? well, you buy a new CPU or don't play the game (OC can help here), thats the only thing you can do.

This is why it is so important that you have a fast CPU, because you can freely tweak the GPU requirement by doing the above...

just the other day I was playing just cause 2.. I have a C2Q 9400 and a GTX260... my GTX260 was not fast enough on the "optimal settings", so a tweaked it a bit, I then settled on using nearly max settings minus a few things (SSAO off, object quality low, shadow quality medium) and reduced the resolution from 1920x1200 to 1280x800... (I could benchmark 60fps at much higher quality settings, but the game will get extremely laggy at some points... there are some things that come on in the game which just ruin your FPS and are NOT encountered during the benchmarks)

Also... even on such intensive 3d stuff you need a monster CPU pushing those GPUs or they will NOT be any faster then a lower end GPU.
16x AF is a MUST and I will never EVER play a game with it again... I force it in the driver if I need to...
AA and shadows I can do without... I don't mind completely disabling shadows and AA if I have to (its not very realistic but the game still looks good; and my wallet thanks me for not having bought the super expensive rig needed for those).

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Quads are nice... if it's at least an i5 750. The reason I never upgraded to a Core 2 Quad is because a C2D was plenty fast and benchmarks consistently showed that many games actually performed worse on those quads; considerably worse in some instances. And when they performed better it was marginal. People kept saying "just get a quad; it's future-proof", yet here we are and many games are still not optimized for multiple cores.

Even today, at worst, the difference between a fast C2D and 750 is negligible. And it's not just cores apparently, as every review shows an i5/i7 quad matching or stomping the C2Q's.

 

[taltamir]

I found that many of the games that matter do excellent on quads...
the unreal engine, the most commonly used and best engine I know of (forget about crytek) has awesome quad core scaling. other intensive engines also utilize quads (example, crytek).

Sure there are games that aren't optimized for quad cores... those games are typically ones where you are monitor limited (60 frames per second is all most monitors can do) and it doesn't matter if a dual core gets 150 frames per second vs 120 on a quad.

And the nehalem architecture is a very powerful one, it indeed stomps all over similar mhz c2q... so what?

My future proofing plan is to take money and put it in the bank... then I can buy something better in the future...
I got a C2Q not because of any future proof nonsense, but because I was actually using it. And I upgrade often. I upgraded from a Athlon64 X2 to an E8400, then I upgraded from the E8400 to a Q6600 nearly a year later. (when enough things I did worked better on the Q6600), then I upgraded to a Q9400 (5$ difference between buying the Q9400 and selling my Q6600 on ebay... IIRC the E8400 to Q6600 was 30 or 40$, not quite sure anymore)

I was right there with people saying how there is little reason to get a quad over a dual core in the begining... that is because in the begining there was little reason to get a quad over a dual core...
thing is, I recognized when things changed, when quad became the more sensible choice... many are still living in the past... like those who claim CRTs are the best, windows XP the best ever (bah, that bloated POS? you know how long I stayed with 2K before switching to XP? now I run win7 64bit btw )
anyways, the world marches on, what made no sense yesterday makes sense today, because the world has changed.

 

[Gikaseixas]

luv2increase is being rude to Toyota and others. Didnt't you learn manners?? I don not like the tone and i think it took way too long for a Mod to calm him down but nevertheless well done Keys.

Toyota thanks for sharing your experience with us, it is something we rarely see professional reviews cover and it was trully good to know how a (high performance) new gen card performed with a dual but you should keep that GTX470. You would see it's true colours if you upgraded to a Quad as more and more games are being optimized for multiple threads.