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NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 480 and GTX
470: 6 Months Late, Was It Worth the Wait?

by Ryan Smith on 3/26/2010 7:00:00
PM
Posted in GPUs

Buy the XFX HD-587X-ZNFC Radeon 5870 1GB Video

$399.99
$389.99
$394.99

Temperature, Power, & Noise: Hot and Loud, but Not in
the Good Way

For all of the gaming and compute performance data we have seen so far, we’ve
only seen half of the story. With a 500mm2+ die and a TDP over 200W, there’s a
second story to be told about the power, temperature, and noise characteristics
of the GTX 400 series.

Starting with idle temperatures, we can quickly see some distinct events
among our cards. The top of the chart is occupied solely by AMD’s Radeon 5000
series, whose small die and low idle power usage let these cards idle at very
cool temperatures. It’s not until half-way down the chart that we find our first
GTX 400 card, with the 470 at 46C. Truth be told we were expecting something a
bit better out of it given that its 33W idle is only a few watts over the 5870
and has a fairly large cooler to work with. Farther down the chart is the GTX
480, which is in the over-50 club at 51C idle. This is where NVIDIA has to pay
the piper on their die size – even the amazingly low idle clockspeed of
50MHz/core 101MHz/shader 67.5Mhz/RAM isn't enough to drop it any further.

For our load temperatures, we have gone ahead and added Crysis to our
temperature testing so that we can see both the worst-case temperatures of
FurMark and a more normal gameplay temperature.

At this point the GTX 400 series is in a pretty exclusive club of hot cards –
under Crysis the only other single-GPU card above 90C is the 3870, and the GTX
480 SLI is the hottest of any configuration we have tested. Even the dual-GPU
cards don’t get quite this hot. In fact it’s quite interesting that unlike
FurMark there’s quite a larger spread among card temperatures here, which only
makes the GTX 400 series stand out more.

While we’re on the subject of temperatures, we should note that NVIDIA has
changed the fan ramp-up behavior from the GTX 200 series. Rather than reacting
immediately, the GTX 400 series fans have a ramp-up delay of a few seconds when
responding to high temperatures, meaning you’ll actually see those cards get
hotter than our sustained temperatures. This won’t have any significant impact
on the card, but if you’re like us your eyes will pop out of your head at least
once when you see a GTX 480 hitting 98C on FurMark.

Up next is power consumption. As we’ve already discussed, the GTX 480 and GTX
470 have an idle power consumption of 47W and 33W respectively, putting them out
of the running for the least power hungry of the high-end cards. Furthermore the
1200W PSU we switched to for this review has driven up our idle power load a
bit, which serves to suppress some of the differences in idle power draw between
cards.

With that said the GTX 200 series either does decently or poorly, depending
on your point of view. The GTX 480 is below our poorly-idling Radeon 4000 series
cards, but well above the 5000 series. Meanwhile the GTX 470 is in the middle of
the pack, sharing space with most of the GTX 200 series. The lone outlier here
is the GTX 480 SLI. AMD’s power saving mode for Crossfire cards means that the
GTX 480 SLI is all alone at a total power draw of 260W when idle.

For load power we have Crysis and FurMark, the results of which are quite
interesting. Under Crysis not only is the GTX 480 SLI the most demanding card
setup as we would expect, but the GTX 480 itself isn’t too far behind. As a
single-GPU card it pulls in more power than either the GTX 295 or the Radeon
5970, both of which are dual-GPU cards. Farther up the chart is the GTX 470,
which is the 2nd most power draining of our single-GPU cards.

Under FurMark our results change ever so slightly. The GTX 480 manages to get
under the GTX 295, while the GTX 470 falls in the middle of the GTX 200 series
pack. A special mention goes out to the GTX 480 SLI here, which at 851W under
load is the greatest power draw we have ever seen for a pair of GPUs.

Idle noise doesn’t contain any particular surprises since virtually every
card can reduce its fan speed to near-silent levels and still stay cool enough.
The GTX 400 series is within a few dB of our noise floor here.

Hot, power hungry things are often loud things, and there are no
disappointments here. At 70dB the GTX 480 SLI is the loudest card configuration
we have ever tested, while at 64.1dB the GTX 480 is the loudest single-GPU card,
beating out even our unreasonably loud 4890. Meanwhile the GTX 470 is in the
middle of the pack at 61.5dB, coming in amidst some of our louder single-GPU
cards and our dual-GPU cards.

Finally, with this data in hand we went to NVIDIA to ask about the longevity
of their cards at these temperatures, as seeing the GTX 480 hitting 94C
sustained in a game left us worried. In response NVIDIA told us that they have
done significant testing of the cards at high temperatures to validate their
longevity, and their models predict a lifetime of years even at temperatures
approaching 105C (the throttle point for GF100). Furthermore as they note they
have shipped other cards that run roughly this hot such as the GTX 295, and
those cards have held up just fine.

At this point we don’t have any reason to doubt NVIDIA’s word on this matter,
but with that said this wouldn’t discourage us from taking the appropriate
precautions. Heat does impact longevity to some degree – we would strongly
consider getting a lifetime warranty for the GTX 480 to hedge our bets.

Wolfenstein
Final
Words

Index
Meet
the GTX 480 and GTX 470, Cont The
GF100 Recap Odds
& Ends: ECC & NVIDIA Surround Missing Tessellation
& PhysX Compute
Image
Quality & AA The
Test Crysis:
Warhead BattleForge:
DX10 BattleForge:
DX11 HAWX
Left
4 Dead Battlefield:
Bad Company 2 STALKER:
Call of Pripyat DIRT
2 Mass
Effect 2 Wolfenstein
Temperature, Power, & Noise: Hot and Loud, but Not in the Good
Way Final
Words

Print This
Article

193 Comments

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Great Review by Headfoot on Monday,
March 29, 2010

Great review, great depth but not too long. Concise but still
enough information.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR INCLUDING MINIMUM FRAME
RATES!!! IMO they contribute the most to a game feeling "smooth"

Headfoot

Reply

RE: Great Review by niceboy60 on
Friday, August 20, 2010

This review is not accurate , Badaboom GTX 400 series cards ,
are not compatible with GTX 400 series yet .However they already post the test
resaults
I have a GTX 480 and does not work with badaboom , Badaboom official
site confirms that

niceboy60

Reply

Lack of games tested by slickr on
Sunday, March 28, 2010

I thought that after the line-up of games thread, you would
really start testing games from all genres, so we can actually see how each
graphic cards performs in different scenarios.

Now you have 80% first
person shooters, 10% racing/Action-adventure and 10%RPG and RTS.
Where are
the RTS games, isometric RPG's, simulation games, etc?

I would really
like Battleforge thrown out and replaced by Starcraft 2, DOW 2: Chaos Rising,
Napoleon Total War. All these RTS games play differently and will give different
results, and thus better knowledge of how graphic cards perform.
How about
also testing The Sims 3, NFS:Shift, Dragon Age Origins.

slickr

Reply

RE: Lack of games tested by Ryan Smith on
Monday, March 29, 2010

Actually DAO was in the original test suite I wanted to use. At
the high end it's not GPU limited, not in the slightest. Just about everything
was getting over 100fps, at which point it isn't telling us anything useful.

The Sims 3 and Starcraft are much the same way.

Ryan Smith

Reply

CF/SLI scaling by Hsuku on Sunday,
March 28, 2010

On Page 9 of Crysis, your final sentence indicates that SLI
scales better than CF at lower resolutions, which is incorrect from your own
graphs. CF clearly scales better at lower resolutions when video RAM is not
filled:

@ 1680x1050
480 SLI -- 60.2:40.7 --> 1.48
5870 CF --
53.8:30.5 --> 1.76 (higher is better)

@ 1920x1200
480 SLI --
54.5:33.4 --> 1.63
5870 CF -- 46.8:25.0 --> 1.87 (higher is better)

This indicates the CF technology scales better than SLI, even if the
brute performance of the nVidia solution comes out on top. This opposes
diametrically your conclusion to page 9 ("Even at lower resolutions SLI seems to
be scaling better than CF").

(Scaling ability is a comparison of ratios,
not a comparison of FPS)

Hsuku

Reply

RE: CF/SLI scaling by Ryan Smith on
Monday, March 29, 2010

You're looking at the minimums, not the averages.

Ryan Smith

Reply

RE: RE: CF/SLI scaling by Hsuku on
Tuesday, March 30, 2010

My apologies, I was looking at the wrong graphs.

However,
even so, your assertion is still incorrect: at at the lowest listed resolution,
CF and SLI scaling are tied.

Hsuku

Reply

RE: RE: RE: CF/SLI scaling by Ryan Smith
on Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Correct. The only thing I really have to say about that is that
while we include 1680 for reference's sake, for any review of a high-end video
card I'm looking nearly exclusively at 1920 and 2560.

Ryan Smith

Reply

nVIDIA bought out anantech? by Vinas on
Sunday, March 28, 2010

It's pretty obvious that anantech was spanked by nVIDIA the last
time they did a review. No mention of 5970 being superior to the 480 is a little
disturbing. I guess the days of "trusting anandtech" are over. Come on guys, not
even a mention of how easily the 5870 overclocks? The choice is still clear,
dual 5870's with full cover blocks FTW!

Vinas

Reply

RE: nVIDIA bought out anantech? by ol1bit
on Thursday, April 01, 2010

I thought it was a fare review. They talked about the heat
issues, etc.

You can't compare a 2 GPU card to a single GPU card. If they
ever make a 2 core GF100, I'm sure Anandtech will do a review.

ol1bit

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