Which brand for GTX 470

[UzairH]

Hi all.

Here in Denmark I have a few choices in GTX 470s. The Gainward is available now, while the MSI and Asus parts will be available in 3 days. Is it true that the MSI and Asus 470s have better components/cooling performance than the vanilla cards such as the Gainward? Which company's card would you guys recommend?

Also, I have another option to buying a good card at the moment (it has to be an NVidia card because I am a CS student aiming to learn CUDA, otherwise the HD 5850 would be a no brainer) to upgrade from my ancient 1950 XT. From what I've read the Gigabyte GTX 260 Super OC performs in between the GTX 275 and GTX 285. I can get this card for 56% of the cost of the 470 (but I will prolly have to get a new PSU, so the cost ratio is then 65%). It seems that the 470 is on average 25% faster than the GTX 275. The only reason I see for paying more money and putting up with a hot card is that the 470 has DX11 and tessellation. Do you think its worth getting the 470 rather than a 1.5 year old design?

Thanks for your answers!

 

[happy medium]

Is the Gainward card the one with the dual fan?
If so get that one.
Forget the gtx 260 thats old tech.

 

[UzairH]

Nopes, its a normal fan, not the one called "GOOD".

 

[v8envy]

Learning CUDA or demanding the best possible CUDA performance?

Like you I'm dabbling a bit with GPU compute programming. Both CUDA and OpenCL. But do you really need the performance of at least a 470, but not a workstation card or 480?

If like me you're just experimenting you could still get a 5850 -- and a cheap, used 8 series card to play around with CUDA (and to get PhysX). Granted, the 8 series card won't have support C++ in the latest CUDA SDK (neither will any of the G200s), but many of the main concepts will remain the same.

That way you'll even be able to compare OpenCL differences across the two architectures. Personally I expect CUDA to die off and OpenCL and DirectCompute to be the leading GPU compute standards.

Also, once the low end Fermi cards are released you could simply replace the 8 series and catch up on the latest features.

That's likely my solution. Hoping to pull the trigger on a 5850 once the 460 is released and maybe a bit of price competition takes place, keeping my 8800GT for Linux and all things nvidia.

 

[UzairH]

Just learning. Performance-wise its games I care about.

I did think about going the route of getting a 5850 for gaming and a GT 220 for CUDA, but the total cost of these is the same as 470, so I'd rather avoid the hassle of switching cards all the time.

 

[Voo]

If like me you're just experimenting you could still get a 5850 -- and a cheap, used 8 series card to play around with CUDA (and to get PhysX). Granted, the 8 series card won't have support C++ in the latest CUDA SDK (neither will any of the G200s), but many of the main concepts will remain the same.

Iirc the 8series is CUDA 1.0 so you don't get atomic functions, the C++ support, recurrences, etc. so depending on what he's trying to do there are some limitations, but other than that you're right.. it's still a SIMD architecture with all the drawbacks and advantages, so for the start there really shouldn't be any problems with the card.

You really don't need a fast card to find out to efficiently program a GPU, though it's a completely different experience and there are a lot of horrible, horrible things that need to be carved out (thinking about bank conflicts? no problem, but having to unroll loops, even with templates and other stuff.. that's a big step back), though still interesting

PS: With win7 you can use different drivers at once so there's no problem with a Ati and a Nvidia card at the same time. No idea about the different linux flavors though.

 

[v8envy]

Linux as the kernel doesn't mandate driver conflicts. It's up to you to tell the various userland programs which card you want feeding pixels to the main display and which will be doing the GPU heavy lifting. In fact, with Gallium3D one of the goals is transparent network cloud rendering -- think of it as SLI at a cluster level. Might be fun once we get 10 gigabit networks.

NV's binary blob does a good job of finding hardware to talk to so everything works well if you set your path variables to NV's shared libraries ahead of the system and ATI ones before firing up your app.

As a proof of concept I was able to use onboard X200 ATI chip + open source drivers for sending output to my monitor while a 7600GT did all the 3d rendering for the desktop effects and Eve Online. I couldn't quite get the onboard chip doing the desktop compositing and the 7600GT doing only Eve. Anyway, didn't seem perceptably worse than having the 7600GT working alone.

Here in the states I can find a 5850 under $300 -- last week there was an OEM model for under $250 after bing cashback. At the same time there are quite a few $15 deals on the likes of 9400GTs (same card as a 210, much like a 240 is just a shrunk 9600GT). Less than $265 compares very favorably to $350, IMO.

 

[UzairH]

Actually its not CUDA per se that I am interested in, but an easy entry into GPGPU programming. My impression is that Nvidia's toolset is much richer and easier to use than AMD's. Is that true? Which company's platform is more suitable for a newbie to get started with GPGPU programming?

 

[nenforcer]

I can't tell you anything about the Gainward but the MSI and ASUS 470/480 both appear to be reference cards with custom stickers being the only difference.

In fact I thought the initial batch of 4X0 GPU's were all reference cards.

 

[udib]

"ATI Stream vs. NVIDIA CUDA - GPGPU computing battle royale" - a great article about the subject including benchmarks and full compression.

 

[damocles666]

what do u think about PNY?

 

[ebolamonkey3]

I would wait for the Asus card if I were in your shoes. They are more reputable, at least in the States, and offer 3 year warranty. I think PNY also has 3 year but it's not as reliable as Asus in my experience and the other manufacturers only offer 2 year or less warranty.

 

[OCGuy]

Evga.

PNY is now offering a "lifetime", however. That is what my 480 is.

 

[ebolamonkey3]

He's in Denmark, no EVGA apparently.

 

[Qbah]

He's in Denmark, no EVGA apparently.

Huh? Plenty of eVGA cards here in Denmark.

As for the OP, just get a GTX470 and don't bother with HD5850 + a low nV one. You will get a bit more oomph in games and it will cost the same (no, we do not have $15 deals for cards here). I r ead the stock one on a GTX470 is not so loud. At least not as loud as a GTX480. So I would say you're fine with anything you go. If you can find one with a custom cooler, just google for a review

 

[Jaydip]

Wait and buy the Asus one.I have the GTX470 from ASUS and it is a great card.Smart doctor is a pretty good software u get along with it.My ambient temp is around 32 degree c,and my card idle at around 48-50 degree c,the highest temp i monitored was around 67-68 degree c after around 4 hours of mass effect 2.I have enabled smart cooling on the Smart Doctor fan settings and it seems to be working fine.

 

[Face2Face]

XFX------ Awesome Warranty and great RMA Process!!!

EDIT:: MY bad I can't find one!!!

 

[taltamir]

XFX------ Awesome Warranty and great RMA Process!!!

EDIT:: MY bad I can't find one!!!

XFX has decided not to make fermi cards.
BFG simply closed its graphics department when fermi came out.

So neither is an option for a GTX470