The PC Report provides a nice range of performance comparisons between the two cards, with the 480 holding a slight edge in terms of raw FPS. But the story ends this way:
The ATI Radeon HD 5870, while not the faster of the two cards, is more worthy of your cash. Despite it being the lower performer, it still performs fantastically in most games – especially at higher resolutions. It also has a lower power consumption by a mile, it is a cooler card to run and is quieter (with the stock cooler). ATI’s Eyefinty technology is also a great selling point and not needing two graphics cards like Nvidia Vision Surround is certainly a bonus.
I will note though that the GTX 480 will probably end up performing slightly better after drivers are fully optimized for games; the HD 5870 has already had time for drivers to optimize the card. However no drivers will fix that crazy power consumption.
Some of you may not agree of course, but I would say that ATI certainly won the DirectX 11 graphics card race with a truly outstanding card in more ways that just performance.
I couldn't agree more with the review. The 480 is a bit faster, but comes at a higher price, and it has a higher power consumption.
ReplyDeleteNVidia, well it's just too little too late.