Wrapping Things Up

Although we tested these high-end graphics cards with solitary septenar games we feel information technology was a solid and typical dress. A few hot games were included much as Subway 2033, Honorable Induce 2 and Field Bad Company 2, while some old yet still significant games for measuring graphics card performance were enclosed like Crysis Warhead and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Vociferation of Pripyat.

The GeForce GTX 480 vs. Radeon HD 5870 comparison certainly didn't spread out as we were expecting, especially given what we had already seen in our original comparison, where the GeForce GTX 480 was on average 16% faster. Now with newer drivers we were expecting this margin to open up a little, further favoring the Nvidia graphics card.

This was non to be as the margins appear to have been reduced instead. Of course, we make changed our examination methodological analysis for this article by using FRAPS to measure operation, while the centre was more on real-prison term gameplay rather of time demos. For the most part the GeForce GTX 480 and Radeon HD 5870 delivered similar results which again was a trifle surprising.

Games much as Battlefield Stale Company 2, Resident Evil 5 and Wolfenstein showed just about no difference in carrying into action between the two higher-end cards, generally affirmative the GeForce but by slim margins. Another stunning set of results were found when testing with Crysis Warhead. The GeForce GTX 480 was just ~3fps faster when measuring both the minimal and mediocre frame rates, which is considerably to a lesser degree what we observed ultimate clock using a meter demo. Later on we observed this ultra change came from the maxed-out 'Enthusiast' setting we in use for this article, compared to the 'Peaky' scene used previously. On the latter GeForce boards tend to perform better than the Radeon boards.

The biggest operation margins where playable execution was still obtained were seen when testing with S.T.A.L.Kinetic energyR.: Bid of Pripyat and Equitable Cause 2. The GeForce GTX 480 was on common 5fps quicker in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat with Tessellation enabled, while on Just Cause 2 we saw a similar trend taking the tip aside a comfortable leeway in both average and minimum fps*.

Finally, the GeForce GTX 480 henpecked Metro 2033 by a 7fps margin with Tessellation enabled, though with an average of 28fps and a minimum of conscionable 21fps this was a hollow victory. At 1920x1200 we feel Tessellation is better off disabled in order to achieve smooth gameplay and doing so still leaves the GeForce GTX 480 on top for this gimpy.

The GeForce GTX 470 vs. Radeon HD 5850 comparison can be summed up much more easily. The Radeon HD 5850 was without a doubt the superior performing artist in our examination, washing aside the GeForce GTX 470 in all but two games. Even when the GeForce GTX 470 hit the lead when playing Metro 2033 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat it was by a pocket-size 1-2 fps margin on average.

Take into account that the GeForce GTX 470 sells for ~$50 more ($350) and the choice becomes quite obvious. In fact, value is the real showstopper for Nvidia's current contemporaries GPUs in our opinion. Although the GeForce GTX 480 is unquestionably a beast, at $500 it is an expensive unmatchable that sells for a $70-$100 premium over the Radeon HD 5870.

So two months later, some AMD and Nvidia have delivered new drivers for their current generation GPUs and very little has changed. The GeForce GTX 480 is still very fast, on the expensive side, and really power hungry. The Radeon HD 5870 on the other hand is almost as fast, it's a better value per dollar, and much more fuel efficient. For those reasons alone the Radeon HD 5870 still gets our seal of approval.

Update: If you wish to get a line operating temperatures and power expenditure figures, you can buoy touch plunk for to our previous refresh.

Update 2*: Mea culpa. When we published this performance review earlier this week, we unintentionally overlooked two Nvidia-specific settings that are free in Just Get 2 (Bokeh Filters and GPU Water Simulation). These CUDA features are enabled away default when selecting the 'High' preset and thus negatively impacted performance fashioning for an unfair comparison against the ATI Radeon boards. The updated graphs reflect an accurate criterion of apples vs. apples performance.

Update 3: Since publishing this article we deliver received numerous feedback, but we are glad to report the only dazzling issue was with the Just Drive 2 numbers (see the above tone). We recently also tested with one extra mettlesome, Aliens vs. Predator, here are the graphs if you want to check those out.