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View Full Version : Nvidia 4xx vs. Ati 58xx\59xx


Dragonstorm
03-27-2010, 07:03 PM
I was really looking forward to the release of the new 400 series Nvidia cards (You can preorder now, out in the next week or so), but after seeing the reviews and specs I'm pretty put off to be honest.

They're massively overpriced, too hot (90C rumoured idle!!), have massive power consumption and just don't offer that much of a performance boost, if any at all. Comparing the specs of the 470 (the card I was looking at) against the 5850 or 5870 is just embarrassing, especially when depending on the model you pick, there's almost a £100 price difference!

The 59xx series is intriguing and almost out too, and seems to best the 480 pretty easily from what I've read, (480 mostly beats but often only ties with the 5850 in benchmarks) and is only ~£50 more on average.

So from looking at the news I can find, it seems almost a no brainer to go with ATI for the first time in a long time, but does anyone else have a more informed opinion, am I overlooking anything massive here that justifies the Nvidia's hefty price tag?



As a side note, I do have an Nvidia 3d vision setup that I use now and then. Its only on my spare 22" 120hz monitor though, as I use a 26" normally, so I don't use it that often to be fair, but I would be dropping that switching over.

Ackercoke
03-27-2010, 08:47 PM
I have no opinion...it just seems odd that a nvidia card is bested by an ATI

Normally the specs list on an ATI card is double sometimes quadruple the specs of the best nvidia, like when the 8800 series was running 96 stream processors the ATI equiv was running 200 or so iirc and just woeful in performance...

ATI have always had more on board but a seeming lack of knowledge of how to use it.

Dragonstorm
03-28-2010, 07:40 AM
As a side note, I didn't know that when the 480 had been put in any tests where tessellation was used, it utterly destroyed the competition because it has dedicated tessellation cores, so that's cool I guess.

The "massive" power consumption is confusing me a little too, as it only requires 250W under maximum load, where the gtx 280 is already 235W and the gtx 260 (what i have now) is 185W. So even with my hdd's and quad core, an 800W is still fine to power the lot. Maybe I'm just not that familiar with PSUs though and 800W is massive, I dunno. I thought it was 1000W+ for the massive ones when using multiple cards etc.

Also the new about to be released 5970 that is better than the 480 is a dual card of two 5870's tied together, so I guess that means when Nvidia brings out their first dual card of this generation (490/495 or whatever it will be) it's going to clean up. Intiguing stuff...

Still though, that price tag! :o