Where are the GTX 470/480's gone?

[tdale]

I cannot find any in stock anywhere, I am wondering if there is a new version coming?

[Nzeddy]

http://www.pconlineshop.co.nz/

Search gtx 470 and 480

[AndrewJamez]

Does anyone know the difference in performance between the 2? and what would be the minimum rated PSU for one of these. I have a coolermaster 550w with twin PCIExpress 6+2 pin connectors and it runs my GTX 260SP sweet as but a 470 is different kettle of fish I think.

[Nzeddy]

http://www.nvidia.com/content/HelpMeChoose....asp?lang=en-us

[pilot.masman]

yeah supply is dry at the moment think they are coming to the end of a batch or something, hopefully some new ones coming soon.

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afawcs0139234/CA...ci_express.html

i would recommend playtech over pconline for this, compare the prices and you'll see why...
(remembering that pconline doesnt include gst with their prices and shipping isnt free)

one example: the evga gtx 470 on both sites, $549.00 total cost to your door from playtech compared to pconline's $610.61 + shipping.

[IslandBoy77]

Or you could get more bang for you buck and more stable drivers and go ATI...

[pilot.masman]

QUOTE (IslandBoy77 @ Sep 20 2010, 09:59 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Or you could get more bang for you buck and more stable drivers and go ATI...

lol, but i wanna play soldier of fortune 2

never had a pcie ati card be able to play that on any of my machines.

its personal choice really. id rather pay extra just for the nvidia-ness

[NZ255]

Nvidia > ATI Esp. for FSX

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (NZ255 @ Sep 20 2010, 11:31 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nvidia > ATI Esp. for FSX

Ah no, that's not accurate. The ATI drivers are better (regularly so) than nVidia (and have been for over 18 months now), esp 64-bit, and one pays a reasonable amount more for nVidia to get the "ATI-beating" power. What I said was, ATI is more bang for buck, which is completely true. nVidia, as you must surely know, has been making noises for some time now about getting out of the gaming market and concentrating on embedded or professional (eg CAD) segments. Plus, building PCs for a living, I see that the nVidias just don't deliver the speed at the right price point, nor the stability, that ATI's do. I used to be an nVidia user for many years, but now wouldn't trade my ATIs for even a top-end nVidia: the drivers for nVidia are just too buggy and heavy, slowing a system needlessly.

Still, if one wants to spend more money and have slower overall system performance, that's one's own prerogative...

QUOTE (pilot.masman @ Sep 20 2010, 10:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

lol, but i wanna play soldier of fortune 2

never had a pcie ati card be able to play that on any of my machines.

its personal choice really. id rather pay extra just for the nvidia-ness

And having an ATI card prevents you from doing this how? Sure, if you want to pay the nVidia tax (incl buggy, slow drivers), be my guest!

[AndrewJamez]

I've been traditionaly an ATI fan, but scince I started a love affair with FSX, i have gone Nvidia. Now matter how powerfull a system, FSX still seems to have its quirks reguarding frame stuttering even when running high frame rates. The popular tweaks have helped to minimise this however it still bugs me some what. Is this an FSX issue like I think or do the ATI cards not have this problem? Would love hear from an ati user. I have just built an i7 870 system with GTX 260SP 4BG 1600mhz DDR3 ram. Maybe 8g of ram might help??

[Naki]

QUOTE (IslandBoy77 @ Sep 21 2010, 08:29 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And having an ATI card prevents you from doing this how?

...

QUOTE

never had a pcie ati card be able to play that on any of my machines.[/quote]

probably just drivers being too far ahead for that game but never had an issue with nvidia drivers.

i did however have a problem with my old laptop which had an nvidia 8600mgs in it, that kept cooking itself for breakfast but that was hardware.

Last edited by pilot.masman on Tue Sep 21, 2010 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (AndrewJamez @ Sep 21 2010, 11:06 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've been traditionaly an ATI fan, but scince I started a love affair with FSX, i have gone Nvidia. Now matter how powerfull a system, FSX still seems to have its quirks reguarding frame stuttering even when running high frame rates. The popular tweaks have helped to minimise this however it still bugs me some what. Is this an FSX issue like I think or do the ATI cards not have this problem? Would love hear from an ati user. I have just built an i7 870 system with GTX 260SP 4BG 1600mhz DDR3 ram. Maybe 8g of ram might help??

Some of the lower-end ATI cards - like any low-end card (that is, sub $200) - are going to have some possible issues with any frame-hungry program. I've got 8GB of RAM. I don't get stutters with my HD5770, but do get the "slideshow effect" when the scenery is too complex.

It was the relatively poor performance and bad drivers that pushed me over to ATI. Let's be clear, though - nVidia gear is still good stuff, drivers notwithstanding. I've been tempted a couple of times to go back, but - honestly - I really do think the ATIs are more "bang for buck" with better drivers. Were it not so, I'd swap back. We should all be "allowed" to use whatever the heck we like - ATI, nVidia, Windows, Mac, Intel, AMD etc. What gets my goat is when people (and I'm not pointing the finger here - I'm just thinking people in general) think that they're choice is the only choice, especially in the face of facts. In fact, it was the "facts" that swapped me off ATI. I understand that the new series of nVidias (like the 470's & 480's) are a definite step up from the previous series - but then I've seen all manner of gripes and counter-claims from various websites and users.

Over the many years of building and fixing systems, I've come to realise that while hardware has theoretical performance specs, it's how everything "comes together" that dictate a final outcome, not individual performance specs.

I'm hoping to be able to build a system for a client in the next month that looks like this:
AMD Quad 3.4GHz
8GB DDR3 1600MHz
HD5870 GDDR5 256-bit
600w Active PFC PSU
1TB 64Mb Cache WD HDD
64GB Kingston 200mb/sec read SSD
Win 7 64-bit
I'm very keen to see what sort of performance it gets, given that it will be using an AMD chipset / CPU / graphics (since AMD owns ATI now) combination, coupled with a fast SATA3 drive on a SATA3 mobo & an SSD. The purpose of the build is for FSX (which will live on the SSD).

[Naki]

Nvidia seems to be the card of choice right across the board (I take note of posters specs etc at Avsim, SOH etc) for FSX so it seems your choice of card flys in the face of this.

I have never had any problems with any of my Nvidia cards (I have had ATI cards as well) other than driver issues for those drivers in Beta which I have experimented with. If that happens I have just reverted back to my old stable driver. I am getting good peformance in FSX from my card (9800GT 1GB) in very complex scenery with reasonably graphic hungry aircraft with a proccesor isn't that isnt really the best (AMD 4400 dual core, 3 gb RAM).

[AndrewJamez]

I dunno, there are plenty of utube vids demoing high speced ATI cards with FSX that look to be doing the buisness. ATI used to have superior Anti Aliaising. How about now days? You have to crank it up on the nvidia drivers to get a good effect.

[Ian Warren]

I am a Nvidia and Intel driver simple have that little more cash , but i would listen to Peter AKA 'IslandBoy77' , after all , hes in the bizz .

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (Naki @ Sep 21 2010, 04:22 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nvidia seems to be the card of choice right across the board (I take note of posters specs etc at Avsim, SOH etc) for FSX so it seems your choice of card flys in the face of this.

Bear in mind 2 things - nVidia drivers ARE regularly flaky: I've seen this reported countless times over the last 12 months. And second, we are talking bang for buck, not head to head power. I'd rather spend $300 on a reasonable ATI card than $500 on a power-hungry nVidia that potentially has crappy drivers. Further, I game outside of FSX, and haven't found the nVidia cards in my price bracket to be anything to write home about. Also, I'd like to see the actual specs of those running the nVidia cards and how they are setup. They may have poor hardware / software config and therefore need extra horsepower from the nVidia to overcome this. And in your instance, we don't know how a similar ATI would perform, because you have an nVidia... And in the same way, I don't know how well an nVidia might or might not run because I have an ATI. The point I was originally trying to get across is that people often get into a rut about graphic cards and don't even think about thinking about going to "the other side". I say, one may not have to spend the big bucks on an nVidia - with the constant "risk" of bad drivers (going from the last almost 2 years of problems they've had) hanging there - when an ATI may well provide a very good experience for less dosh.

That's all. If you wanna stay with nVidia, more power to you! I'll stay with ATI, save some dosh, have confidence in the drivers, and be happy with good performance.

[NZ255]

Haha was just being one of those annoying Nvidia fanboy. I have a sub ATI card; a 4850 which I'm looking at replacing with a GTX460 1GB

It does the job for modern games surprisingly well but not so in FSX...I'm not expecting miracles, I know it's a cheaper card but with FSX no matter not setting I try in game and on the control panel I can't get good AA and AF

A lot of people reporting this with their ATI card's so hopefully a new Nvidia card will sort it out.

Water is another thing that my ATI card seems to be struggling with, anything above 2x water and frames take a nose drive. Yeah a higher end ATI card might fix this, but I think I'll just stick with Nvidia this time around.
But for sure, go with whatever you want...it's your choice in the end

Nick

[IslandBoy77]

Hey Nick - you're so right! We should all just do our research and then be happy with what we pick.

For any who may be interested, I've done a little fossicking about to look at specs (bearing in mind that this is on paper only) to see where things are at. The first thing I noticed is that none of the 5000 series ATI cards I looked at have 'Vertex Operations' listed in their capabilities, whereas all the new nVidia ones do. Being concerned about this, having not noticed it before, I decided to look up what that was all about. Unfortunately, I could find no definitive answer as to how important this is today - back in 2006 it seemed to be of no importance (due to games not using it), so possibly - probably - there is no 'bonus' for an nVidia card having this when used in FSX. Can anyone find a good, solid article that is recent and relevant to FSX that gives the final word on this?

Current rankings:
1 Radeon Ares HD5870X2 4GB
2 Radeon HD5970 4GB
3 Radeon HD5970 2GB
4 Geforce GTX 480 1536MB
5 Geforce GTX 295 1792MB
6 Radeon HD4870X2 2GB
7 Radeon HD5870 2GB
8 Radeon HD5870 1GB
9 Geforce GTX 470 1280MB
10 Radeon HD5850 1GB
11 Radeon HD4850X2 2GB
12 Geforce GTX 285 2GB
13 Geforce GTX 285 1GB
14 Geforce GTX 460 2GB
15 Geforce GTX 460 1GB
16 Geforce GTX 465 1GB
17 Radeon HD4850X2 1GB
18 Geforce GTX 460 768MB
19 Radeon HD5830 1GB
20 Geforce GTX 275 1792MB

So that's a dead heat of 10 a-piece in the top 20 for both players: there's no way to really compare who's giving best 'bang for buck' in the top end of the list, as the cards are so different from each other. E.g.
480 5970
Release Date: 2010-03-26 2009-11-18
Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x16 PCI-E 2.0 x16
Core Clock: 700 MHz 725 MHz
Memory Clock: 1848 MHz (3696 DDR) 2000 MHz (4000 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 177.408 GB/sec 256 GB/sec
Shader Operations: 336000 MOperations/sec 2320000 MOperations/sec
Pixel Fill Rate: 33600 MPixels/sec 46400 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 42000 MTexels/sec 116000 MTexels/sec

Interesting though that ATI's card is 4 month's older than the nVidia card but is still very powerful. But for an extra $400, one would expect it to be as well.

In terms of like for like, none of the cards that I could find were especially close in price. The exception there is the 5850 & 470 - close, but still with around $50 difference in favour of the 5850. So if we compare those 2 cards:
470 5850
Release Date: 2010-03-26 2009-09-23
Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x16 PCI-E 2.0 x16
Core Clock: 607 MHz 725 MHz
Memory Clock: 1674 MHz (3348 DDR) 2000 MHz (4000 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 133.92 GB/sec 128 GB/sec
Shader Operations: 271936 MOperations/sec 1044000 MOperations/sec
Pixel Fill Rate: 24280 MPixels/sec 23200 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 33992 MTexels/sec 52200 MTexels/sec

[Edit: I listed these comparisons in neat columns - and they show up as such when editing - but they don't show in full view. Can this be fixed?]

So the 5850 (a card 6 month's older) has faster clocks, 3 x the shader ops & almost twice the texture fill rate (and uses 25% less power - 185W vs 470's 210W), where the 470 has 4.5% more memory bandwidth & pixel fill rate. What appears to really tip things for the 470 is that it is 320-bit vs the 256-bit of the 5850. Still, I'd wager that the performance difference between the 2 would be neglible, and for $50 less in ATI's favour.

[tdale]

Still, if one wants to spend more money and have slower overall system performance, that's one's own prerogative...


IslandBoy, you are bad!! :-)

I agree that ATI are great, Ive always used Nvidia , issue free. I feel that ATI are defintely best bang for buck. Altho I had always read that ATI drivers are not great.

If I was a general gamer I'd go ATI, the biggest I could get. But FSX is Nvidia friendly, its to do with the shaders. Quote "they have completely different architectures, the ATI's have LOTS of tiny 'slow running' shader processors, the nVidias have fewer shader processors (a lot less) but they are TWICE as fast. unquote.

So while ATI is probably the better card oiverall, for FSX, Nvidia is the best option re weather, clouds, water, and anythig else shadery! And for FSX you need a single GPU card, the 470/480 are that and fast. Dual GPU lose the frane synchronisity between each GPU.

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (tdale @ Sep 21 2010, 08:04 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Still, if one wants to spend more money and have slower overall system performance, that's one's own prerogative...


IslandBoy, you are bad!! :-)

I agree that ATI are great, Ive always used Nvidia , issue free. I feel that ATI are defintely best bang for buck. Altho I had always read that ATI drivers are not great.

If I was a general gamer I'd go ATI, the biggest I could get. But FSX is Nvidia friendly, its to do with the shaders. Quote "they have completely different architectures, the ATI's have LOTS of tiny 'slow running' shader processors, the nVidias have fewer shader processors (a lot less) but they are TWICE as fast. unquote.

So while ATI is probably the better card oiverall, for FSX, Nvidia is the best option re weather, clouds, water, and anythig else shadery! And for FSX you need a single GPU card, the 470/480 are that and fast. Dual GPU lose the frane synchronisity between each GPU.

"Still, if one wants to spend more money and have slower overall system performance, that's one's own prerogative..."

"So while ATI is probably the better card oiverall, for FSX, Nvidia is the best option re weather, clouds, water, and anythig else shadery! And for FSX you need a single GPU card, the 470/480 are that and fast. Dual GPU lose the frane synchronisity between each GPU."
Fair enough. I'll certainly cop to the fact that very few of my system builds over the last 2 years are high-end (a few were, even a few for FSX). It's one of the banes of assembling - not having like for like ATI / nVidia cards to test against each other in EXACTLY the same system. I will say that I think RAM & Hard Drive actually give better "bang for buck" than a very expensive graphic card. When I upgraded my RAM from 4 to 8GB, I got a lift of some 5-10 frames - that's nothing to sneeze at!

One thing I was musing on thinking about all this - I wonder what impact the bigger drivers for nVidia have? The standard install file for the nVidia nForce is 210MB vs the ATI Catalyst @ 78MB. Can anyone post how much RAM the nVidia drivers actually take up on "idle" (that is, while just at desktop with nothing happening?). Catalyst seems to sit around 12-14MB at idle.