GTX 480 or 5870?

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dirkpitt45

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Originally I was planning on buying a 5870 and going with eyefinity, but after some measuring, my desk isn't big enough for another 2 monitors to fit comfortably :(. So money isn't really an issue now, and on top of that there's a SPARKLE 480 for $463 CAD, only $60 more than the 5870. I've been seeing that an overclocked 5870 (which I'll be doing fo sho :p) can match a stock 480, but I'm not sure how well a 480 would do overclocked without a new heatsink since it already gets ridiculously hot.

Any opinions/experiences?
 
welll i say get the 5870, and if money is no option go big or go home, get the 5970.


but the real answer for 5870 vs. 480, the 480 will win.
 
Well, the 5870 is less expensive, it takes fewer watts to use, and doesn't get as hot. However, it performs slightly worse than the GTX 480. If expense, wattage, and heat is of no concern to you, and those are your only two options for some reason, get the GTX 480. However, if those are major concerns to you, get the 5870. But, if you are not restricted to those, get the ATi Radeon HD 5970, it is basically the equivalent of two ATi Radeon HD 5870s put together, and still consumes less power than the GTX 480 from what I've seen. (Barely though)
 
the 5970 isnt 2 5870s... its better than 2 5850's but not as good as 2 5870's, so in betten crossifre 5850 and crossfire 5870.
 
the 5970 isnt 2 5870s... its better than 2 5850's but not as good as 2 5870's, so in betten crossifre 5850 and crossfire 5870.
Sean.w, the HD5970 is actually 2 underclocked 5870's. the Core's them selves are 5870's but as you said, it dellivers performance inbetween crossfire 5850's and crossfire 5870's
 
The 5970 is two Cypress GPU's (the same GPU on the 5870 with all 1600 shader processors) but clocked lower than the 5870 to reduce heat output and power consumption (as it's a single card with two chips to cool). You can overclock it by hand to match 5870 speeds and then it is essentially a 5870x2, the performance is the same as two HD5870's in CrossFire.

I am very happy with my 5870. It's fast, powerful, cool looking, supports 3 monitors, fairly quiet, and doesn't produce much heat compared to a GTX480. I was going to go with a GTX470 when I bought mine but decided on the 5870 for the same price. Both cards are solid options, but overall I'd say go ATi this time. If you need CUDA/PhysX/3D Vision get the GTX480. ATi's exclusive feature is Eyefinity, a multi-monitor setup for super-widescreen gaming using 3 (or more) monitors. The standard 5870 (not the Eyefinity 6 Edition) can run 3 monitors (2x DVI/HDMI/VGA, 1x DisplayPort or DisplayPort active adapter) and can render games across the combined resolution of all 3 monitors together for a panoramic widescreen gaming experience.
 
Hey guys. Don't know if you've decided on a card yet but here is a video. YouTube - ‪GTX 480 Vs HD 5870 EXTREME Tessellation Showdown‬‎
It shows that the 480 can handle and is made for tessellation more than the 5870. I own the 5870 and it (most of the time) is beautiful and runs great. But... randomly (even in single player games) the game will become extremely laggy... And its not the cpu or anything else as i was monitoring it all. Anyway I don't know every in and out but if i had seen this video before i made my system i would have gone for the 480. You want a game to run smooth even if achieves less FPS than other cards (5870 in most games for instance).
 
The GTX480 is significantly better at tesselation than ATi's cards and nVidia is using that to exaggerate the numbers. Any tesselation benchmark will be strongly sided to nVidia. However that is barely a good reflection of real-world gameplay as DX11 and tesselation are not very common yet. For almost all real games the difference is much less as nVidia uses their tesselation advantage to inflate their numbers by running very tesselation heavy benchmarks. If you are planning on playing games that utilize a lot of tesselation then get the GTX480 but otherwise the 5870 is a great choice. I also do not have lagging or stalling issues with mine, sounds like it could be a driver or system issue (some other process going off and bottlenecking the system occasionally). Also try VSync as it helps smooth out the card's rendering pace. Make sure you're running the latest drivers (or if you are, try reverting to 10.5 or 10.6 to eliminate the possibility of new driver bugs).
 
Yea cheers calcprogrammer. You're right about the tessellation benchmarks favoring the 480. And I think I've sorted out my unusual lag.
Cheers
 
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