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First Geforce GTX 480 Review



 
 
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  #11  
Old April 1st 10, 12:17 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia
Peter Dassow
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Posts: 14
Default First Geforce GTX 480 Review

Benjamin Gawert wrote:
So just buy 3 and an ATI card. What's the problem ? If your decision is
for ATI, fine. I will go with nVidia for another reason: Because I made
negative expirience with so many Catalyst driver versions I can't count.


I have several PCs here, some with ATI cards and some with Nvidia cards,
and the Catalyst drivers are generally not more troublesome than their
Nvidia pedants. I don't know with what card and what drivers you had
problems with but it is very likely that the real problem was within
something else in your hard- or software. Yes, ATI had some really awful
drivers for their Rage series of cards, but that was over a decade ago.
The unified drivers for Radeons are really good, and if that wouldn't be
the case then for sure every review of ATI gfx cards would mention how
great this card is but unless the drivers get better the card is
useless. This isn't the case. Go figure.


"Hallo" Benjamin,

yes, I would agree with you that also some nVdidia driver versions
failed. But... my last expirience was related with an ATI 5770 and
really annoying incompatibilities with Star Wars Battlefront II (high
CPU load, but just with the ATI card), many crashs in games like WoW,
Aion and even in very old games like Age of Mythology. I was also very
disappointed about the (missing) speed of the card, compared to my old
9800GT AMP from Zotac (this 5770 Vapor-X was so expensive - more than
160 Euros - but wasn't more than 10-20% faster than my 9800GT in many
games (I do not use high resolution nor DX11, 1440x900 with two monitors
are my equipment and DX9 is my used graphics standard).
So in the past, I had no real complaints about nVidia.

High power consumption sucks, so nVdidia has to improve it. But if
tesselation is intensively used (read more about the DX11 benchmark
Unigine Heaven), GTX480 can be even faster than a 5970 ...

Regards
Peter
  #12  
Old April 5th 10, 09:42 AM posted to alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia
Benjamin Gawert
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Posts: 1,020
Default First Geforce GTX 480 Review

Am 01.04.2010 12:17, * Peter Dassow:

yes, I would agree with you that also some nVdidia driver versions
failed. But... my last expirience was related with an ATI 5770 and
really annoying incompatibilities with Star Wars Battlefront II (high
CPU load, but just with the ATI card), many crashs in games like WoW,
Aion and even in very old games like Age of Mythology. I was also very
disappointed about the (missing) speed of the card, compared to my old
9800GT AMP from Zotac


I can tell you that the Radeon 5770 is perfectly compatible with the
games you listed. To me this sounds very clearly that there was
something else wrong with either the gfx card or your system. Often
enough the reason for such problems is simply that the old drivers
haven't been removed completely before the new card and new drivers were
installed.

Generally, no matter what gfx card you buy, you can expect that all of
them work fine with games and other applications. If it doesn't then
this is usually is no sign of incompatibility (even when it looks like
the easiest explanation), it simply is a bright sign telling you that
there is something wrong in your system.

Issues aside, going from a Geforce 9800GT to a Radeon 5770 is hardly
worthwile because the performance difference between them is quite small.

High power consumption sucks, so nVdidia has to improve it. But if
tesselation is intensively used (read more about the DX11 benchmark
Unigine Heaven), GTX480 can be even faster than a 5970 ...


You probably overestimate the value of tesselation (a feature that all
ATI GPUs support for 9 years now). If all you do is to run the Heaven
2.0 benchmark all day then maybe a GTX 480 is the best choice (but the
other issues like power, heat, noise and price are still there!).
However, for real-world gaming tesselation is new, and considering that
most games today are cross platform games for PCs and consoles (and more
often also without the PC!) this means that tesselation will only see a
mild use for the near future. And once it becomes a widely supported and
heavily used feature any (at that time current) 100EUR card will easily
outperform the GTX 480 with less noise and much lower power consumption.
As AMD is coming up with a new line of cards in fall (which very likely
will by then again outperform Nvidia's latest) it is also very likely
that the GTX 470/480 will see a very short market life.

I'm sure Nvidia will get their act together and come up with something
better, but at the moment buying a GTX 480 would be just silly.

Ben
  #13  
Old April 6th 10, 12:02 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia
Peter Dassow
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 14
Default First Geforce GTX 480 Review

Benjamin Gawert wrote:

yes, I would agree with you that also some nVdidia driver versions
failed. But... my last expirience was related with an ATI 5770 and
really annoying incompatibilities with Star Wars Battlefront II (high
CPU load, but just with the ATI card), many crashs in games like WoW,
Aion and even in very old games like Age of Mythology. I was also very
disappointed about the (missing) speed of the card, compared to my old
9800GT AMP from Zotac


I can tell you that the Radeon 5770 is perfectly compatible with the
games you listed. To me this sounds very clearly that there was
something else wrong with either the gfx card or your system. Often
enough the reason for such problems is simply that the old drivers
haven't been removed completely before the new card and new drivers were
installed.

Generally, no matter what gfx card you buy, you can expect that all of
them work fine with games and other applications. If it doesn't then
this is usually is no sign of incompatibility (even when it looks like
the easiest explanation), it simply is a bright sign telling you that
there is something wrong in your system.


That's what I call in german "frommer Wunsch" (can't translate it
directly, "wishful thinking" may be).
Compatibility with games is always depending from the maturity of a
driver. In that case, may be it was related with the first AT catalyst
driver which supports the HD5770 also.
But, *I* tested it more than twice, I had *no* problems before using the
HD5770, and afterwards, I had no problems too with the above mentioned
games. So it *must* be related with the driver version I used, and at
this time, there was no other version which supports the HD5770 (it was
one version before 10.0 I remember).
Usually I am always trying to get rid of the drivers of the "old" card
before swapping to the new video card. So I used uninstall AND a
specific nVidia driver cleaning tool. That's all you can do (or do you
always reinstalling Windows just for swapping a video card ? Ridiculous...).
It seems you're a convinced ATI fan, so I should try to talk about it
further.

Regards
Peter
  #14  
Old April 6th 10, 05:22 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia
Benjamin Gawert
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,020
Default First Geforce GTX 480 Review

Am 06.04.2010 12:02, * Peter Dassow:

Generally, no matter what gfx card you buy, you can expect that all
of them work fine with games and other applications. If it doesn't
then this is usually is no sign of incompatibility (even when it
looks like the easiest explanation), it simply is a bright sign
telling you that there is something wrong in your system.


That's what I call in german "frommer Wunsch" (can't translate it
directly, "wishful thinking" may be).


No, it's not a "frommer Wunsch" (for which "wishful thinking" would
indeed be the proper translation), it's simply a fact. You can be sure
that AMD wouldn't sell a single card if the compatibility with games
would be lacking, and it for sure would have been mentioned in any
review out there. This isn't the case, so either AMD is silently and
successfully bribing or threatening everyone to shut up, or the Radeon
cards work perfectly fine with the games out there. Out of own
experience I'd say the latter, unless you want to imply that all
magazines like the German c't Magazin (which like other magazines or
websites never mentioned any game compatibility issues with any ATI card
of the last decade or so) have been silenced by AMD.

Compatibility with games is always depending from the maturity of a
driver.


Not really, this comes down to driver quality and even more to how much
game developers deviate from common standardized APIs. In fact, driver
updates often fix problems that are actually in the games and only show
up in certain circumstances.

Driver maturity comes into play when new hardware has to be supported,
especially when the new card uses a completely new and different
architecture to the other supported cards. The result is usually a less
than optimal performance, however stability problems are very rare.
Therefore it is recommend to wait for at least a single subsequent
driver revision being available before buying a new gfx card,
irrespective of the brand.

In that case, may be it was related with the first AT catalyst driver
which supports the HD5770 also. But, *I* tested it more than twice, I
had *no* problems before using the HD5770, and afterwards, I had no
problems too with the above mentioned games. So it *must* be related
with the driver version I used,


Your logic is overly simplistic and narrow-minded, because you obviously
just didn't change the driver but also a piece of hardware (gfx card).
This alone changes a ****load of parameters which even when not seen by
you are still present (and those parameters aside, it could as well have
been a simple defective card which just would have needed replacement).
And not every problem has to be noticable by the user, for example some
memory problems might go unnoticed for years unless something in the
configuration changes.

and at this time, there was no other version which supports the
HD5770 (it was one version before 10.0 I remember).


So in short all you tried was a *single* driver release which as you say
was the first version actually supporting the at that time new Radeon
5700 series cards. This very much contradicts your former statement ("I
will go with nVidia for another reason: Because I made negative
expirience with so many Catalyst driver versions I can't count.") which
following your own other statements seems to be a blatant lie.

Usually I am always trying to get rid of the drivers of the "old"
card before swapping to the new video card. So I used uninstall AND a
specific nVidia driver cleaning tool. That's all you can do (or do
you always reinstalling Windows just for swapping a video card ?
Ridiculous...).


No, you don't need to re-install Windows for swapping a gfx card. But
you should be sure to really remove old drivers completely, otherwise
issues can arise (even when going from ATI to Nvidia). Also, software
that likes to interfere with the removal process (like virus scanners or
the widespread pseudo-security suites) should be deactivated beforehand,
or the removal may end up being not as complete as one might think.

It seems you're a convinced ATI fan, so I should try to talk about it
further.


No, I'm not. In fact, the majority of my computers run Nvidia cards.
However, having developed quite a bit of hardware and software myself
and due to my experience with a noticable amount of systems I know of
the issues of both camps, and therefore I probably have a less
simplistic way than "ATI is just crap", and I don't have to define
myself over the brand name on the gfx card.

But then, *someone* has to buy the overpriced GTX480 cards ;-)

Ben

  #15  
Old April 6th 10, 05:26 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia
Benjamin Gawert
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,020
Default First Geforce GTX 480 Review

Am 29.03.2010 00:59, * Steve:

Aww, throw the fanboi some crumbs. Pickings for Nvidia are mighty slim
since the ATI 5000 series came out.


Indeed, Nvidia probably shouldn't have killed the GTX 200 series so quickly.

Ben
  #16  
Old April 10th 10, 01:32 PM
mivpl mivpl is offline
Junior Member
 
First recorded activity by HardwareBanter: Jun 2009
Posts: 9
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Benjamin Gawert View Post
Am 28.03.2010 21:16, * Peter Dassow:

So just buy 3 and an ATI card. What's the problem ? If your decision is
for ATI, fine. I will go with nVidia for another reason: Because I made
negative expirience with so many Catalyst driver versions I can't count.


I have several PCs here, some with ATI cards and some with Nvidia cards,
and the Catalyst drivers, and the Catalyst drivers are generally not
more troublesome than their Nvidia pedants. I don't know with what card
and what drivers you had problems with but it is very likely that the
real problem was within something else in your hard- or software. Yes,
ATI had some really awful drivers for their Rage series of cards, but
that was over a decade ago. The unified drivers for Radeons are really
good, and if that wouldn't be the case then for sure every review of ATI
gfx cards would mention how great this card is but unless the drivers
get better the card is useless. This isn't the case. Go figure.

BTW: my latest negative experience with Nvidia drivers wasn't too long
ago when they messed up with the 196.75. So no, even in Nvidia land not
everything is nice and perfect.

Ben
Shame the GTX 470/480 cannot drive 3 monitors with a single card, like the
5850/5870 can.
 




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