Legit Reviews

For months that we have heard the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 video card is a power hog and today we find out thanks to some cards being shown off at CeBIT. On the side of some retail boxed graphics cards it states that a minimum 600W or greater power supply (with a minimum +12V current of 42A) is needed for proper operation. How does that compare to other graphics cards? The ATI Radeon HD 5970 is a dual-GPU video card solution and requires a 650W power supply. The ATI Radeon HD 5870 would be the single-GPU card to compare a GeForce GTX 480 against and it has a suggest power supply of 500W. So, the GeForce GTX 480 needs a 100W larger power supply than the competitors high-end single-GPU solution.
picture source - HEXUS

ouch...I guess ill have to add another PSU or get a new one to run 3 of these

Yikes! My 500W power supply is looking very weak right now. I wonder if this card is going to be efficient with the power it is given.

hark wrote:Yikes! My 500W power supply is looking very weak right now. I wonder if this card is going to be efficient with the power it is given.

The PSU requirements are not out of line with modern high end cards. The GTX280 launched with a 550w/40a requirement.

As far as it's efficiency, it's over 2X faster than the GTX280 at GPGPU, upto 2.3 faster than GTX280 at 8X AA.

It's 80% faster than a GTX285 at Dark Void at 19X12 with AA on and medium physX. It's 65-70% faster than a GTX285 at FC2 with 4XAA at 19X12 or 25X16.

A 5870 is more power efficient, but my guess is most people buying GTX480s will already have a 600W psu or higher. Can't remember when I switched to 1000W PSUs, and I've been on 1200s for almost 3 yearss I believe.

Some people might consider the GTX480s for the additional things they offer like PhysX, CUDA, 3D Vision, 3D Surround, better multi GPU drivers, and better AA in UE3 apps.

Rollo wrote:

hark wrote:Yikes! My 500W power supply is looking very weak right now. I wonder if this card is going to be efficient with the power it is given.

The PSU requirements are not out of line with modern high end cards. The GTX280 launched with a 550w/40a requirement.

As far as it's efficiency, it's over 2X faster than the GTX280 at GPGPU, upto 2.3 faster than GTX280 at 8X AA.

It's 80% faster than a GTX285 at Dark Void at 19X12 with AA on and medium physX. It's 65-70% faster than a GTX285 at FC2 with 4XAA at 19X12 or 25X16.

A 5870 is more power efficient, but my guess is most people buying GTX480s will already have a 600W psu or higher. Can't remember when I switched to 1000W PSUs, and I've been on 1200s for almost 3 yearss I believe.

Some people might consider the GTX480s for the additional things they offer like PhysX, CUDA, 3D Vision, 3D Surround, better multi GPU drivers, and better AA in UE3 apps.

It would have been nice to for once see Nvidia doing something good on the power front. They seem to have lost their way since the GF6 days

As for the above performance numbers, they mean squat until an independent review is done.

kenc51 wrote: It would have been nice to for once see Nvidia doing something good on the power front. They seem to have lost their way since the GF6 days

As for the above performance numbers, they mean squat until an independent review is done.

Actually, wasn't it the case last gen that NVIDIA cards used less at idle and very little more at load?

In any case, power is largely irrelevant to me. Just doesn't cost enough to matter, and on the ecology side of things I'd use my son's Xbox 360 or PS3 for gaming if I wanted to go green. (or his DS or PSP to go greener yet)

Although I watched those benchmarks run at CES, I agree independent reviews are the way to go.

I know my power supply is inadequate for many high end cards, but 600W minimum just seems like a lot to me, especially when it's close to the amount of minimum power a dual card solution requires. Then again, the card may match dual cards in raw performance numbers. Either way, I do not typically go for high end cards so I will take a wait-and-see approach.

Rollo, Do you really feel the need to come on every single video card forum on the planet to promote Nvidias products? We get you get free stuff from them.. So be happy and go play on your computer.

Having 300 Watt power requirement is not "in line with modern high end cards". Maybe you meant "Nvidias high end cards". Because the 5870 uses 188 Watts , and the 5970 uses 300 Watts. The only difference is that the 5970 is a dual GPU chip, while the GF100 uses the same amount of power as a single chip. So as technology progresses we keep are to expect more and more power hungry chips? I thought improvements in technology were supposed to go the other way?

You cant talk about benchmarks until the card is out. So far the card has not been reviewed by independent websites like LR, anand, Hardocp and others. Only a fool would trust the PR of Nvidia OR Ati.

Yes some people may consider the GTX480 for its "features". But then again some may do the same for the Radeon series.

I am throughly dissapointed with the Nvidia's "Feature set", which comes at an incredible performance loss. Physx for a handful of titles, and you need a spare video card for it? 1 feature, needs another video card? And only in a few games? sounds amazing to me, but i think ill have to pass. 3D vision is a kick ass idea, but a 50% Fps drop (as was featured in one LR articles) is uh.... lol? So how are you supposed to play with 3 monitors , on a high resolution, with Physx and 3D and still expect playable FPS on the more demanding titles? Obviously you need SLI to do 3d Vision, but even with 2 cards... this is stupid.

Driver wise it simply depends on the individual experience. Some people complain about ATI drivers, others yell about Nvidia drivers. Whatever the card/driver experience you had, is what you will remember so that is subjective.

The good things about Nvidia's gpu is obviously Cuda and it will be a folding monster as it is a GPGPU chip. That is a great target market for Fermi... Give credit where credit is due.

ATI's Eyefinity is a good feature for gamers. Not a very high price to adopt this technology, and the performance hit is acceptable.

I was very enthusiastic about upcoming technologies from Nvidia and have been thoroughly disappointed. The salt on the wound for me is GPU rebranding to fool its own customers. My brother bought a PC recently and got a rebrand (9800 series). Boy was he surprised to learn that... You might expect that once you put your fingers in a fire and get burned, you are unlikely to do it again. I dont think he will be going with Nvidia for his purchase next time. Would You?

Its a shame too because up until this point, every single computer in my family (5), including the PS3 have Nvidia graphics. Im just happy i dont have to learn from my mistakes... But im starting to see a pattern of lies and deceptions by Nvidia as a company. Rebrands, Nvidia CEO showing fake fermi card, then Nvidia CEO promising fermi for holiday season (straight out lie btw, since he most definately knew it wouldnt ready that soon. 6 months later we still waiting), support for proprietary software... You get the idea.

My question is... What happened to Nvidia? What is there to root for now? My next card will be from ATI.

Cheers

Does Rollo really get free stuff from Nvidia? Anyway, the path for Fermi has been long and twisted, but we'll see at the end if it has been worth it. I am glad that both companies will have DirectX 11 cards by the end of it. I want more companies to take advantage of those awesome DirectX 11 features like Tessellation and any additional features for DirectX 11 cards in Direct Compute. As for the performance of the GTX 480, that's still a mystery. As DeusEx (awesome game, by the way ) has said, we need to see benchmarks from independent websites to get a clear picture on performance. I would love to check the performance first-hand if anyone from Nvidia would be willing to send over a card .

hark wrote:Does Rollo really get free stuff from Nvidia? Anyway, the path for Fermi has been long and twisted, but we'll see at the end if it has been worth it. I am glad that both companies will have DirectX 11 cards by the end of it. I want more companies to take advantage of those awesome DirectX 11 features like Tessellation and any additional features for DirectX 11 cards in Direct Compute. As for the performance of the GTX 480, that's still a mystery. As DeusEx (awesome game, by the way ) has said, we need to see benchmarks from independent websites to get a clear picture on performance. I would love to check the performance first-hand if anyone from Nvidia would be willing to send over a card .

Read Rollo's signature and then make your own conclusions. Benchmarks are eagerly awaited for this card, but the overall opinion on the net is pretty damp about it... Nothing but speculations so far though, so that may be worth even less than Rollo's post.

I hope LR gets to review it soon... Would like to see how it performs in games. I am more curious for this card than any other of previous generations, simply because they decided to play it a little risky this time around with the GPGPU focus of the chip.

So when is the review coming nate ? :p

Edit: Posted from the wrong account heh.

Ah, I did not notice Rollo's signature.
I am glad that Nvidia is focusing on the GPGPU features. Hopefully we will see new rendering techniques. John Carmack and a few others have mentioned sparse voxel octrees. While such datasets can be converted into polygon meshes, I would like to see other primitives being used. Then of course there is some buzz about raytracing. The upcoming years should be interesting for graphics technologies.

wow 600W... making me want to get the ati 5800 series now