Buzzkill: the GTX 480

BitTech.net has reviewed Nvidia's GeForce GTX 480, and it looks pretty disappointing.  Their conclusion:

Having waited over six months for Nvidia to deliver a DirectX 11 graphics card we can’t help but feel shocked by the GeForce GTX 480. While offering performance superior to the HD 5870 in some situations, most notably Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Dirt 2, the GTX 480 is unable to conclusively claim the title as fastest single GPU graphics card, with Crysis a dead heat and the Radeon HD 5870 cards offering much better performance in STALKER.

Even when ahead, at the high resolutions and demanding settings this kind of top-of-the-range card should target, the GTX 480's performance advantage is rarely more than ten percent. Considering the six month wait since the release of the HD 5870 this is deeply disappointing, and we certainly hoped and expected more.

It’s hard to back the GTX 480 elsewhere though as it brings with it incredibly high power consumption, high running temperatures and a noisy stock cooling solution which really spoil the party.

The bad news continues. Nvidia has chosen to launch the GTX 480 quoting a price thirty per cent higher than that of its direct competitor. While you can find a HD 5870 1GB for around £310 in stock without too much effort, the GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB will hit e-tailers shelves on April 6th at an MSRP of £420 ($450). Even if you value the Nvidia exclusive features like PhysX, 3D Vision and CUDA support, such a high price will be tough to stomach.

Yes, the GTX 480 offers great performance in our test games, especially in Dirt 2 and Bad Company 2, but compared to the competition, it doesn't make a strong enough case for itself, especially when you consider that there are just so many caveats involved with buying this card. The higher price, the 100W of extra power consumption, scorchingly hot temperatures and a much noisier stock cooler are all extremely detrimental to its desirability. The HD 5870 remains a far better choice if you're a gamer; while we've yet to see how the GTX 480 performs with CUDA apps and Folding, at this stage Fermi looks like a flop.