To discuss something does not mean that you're upset or something, relax, what are the forums worth for if we don't speculate a little? Although I understand your point and will stop here, the points are obvious, we will do the wait game.
6 months and we get 5% improvement in games with the way it's meant to be played support by nvidia to developers to optimize the games for them? :wanker:
And on the third day after GF100's release God said "let there be patience, for thy divine drivers are yet to come"
Alex Vojacek and GC_PaNzerFIN: If I understood you two correctly this issue with the higher idle clocks exist for both Nvidia and ATI and both when running dual monitors and a single 120Hz monitor. Is this correct?
Hilbert, can we expect SLI reviews in the next weeks? Let's say that 2x 470 down the road is damn tempting.
Totally correct sir !! The only problem is that for me, 5870 can coupe with the increase in clocks but the GTX480 requires too much power in idle when 2 monitors are set, probably raising potential problems on the long run.
The interesting thing with this is that it somehow seems to have to do with bandwidth. For a 120Hz setup you still only use one dual link dvi connector so it can't be an issue with using multiple display connectors on the same card. However, if this is true we should also see the same happening when running a 2560*1600 display as that also requires more bandwidth. Can someone confirm if this is correct or not?
yeah im concerned about the Power Supply that will run the GTX 480, there will be a lot of stress on it, and chances that it fails are high
I was really looking forward to moving back to Nvidia. If these cards were released six months earlier i would of done it. Trying to hold out buying ATI 5xxxx and waiting for the much talked about Femi that will destroy the red team was an ANTI climax.
Is there any chance the idle temps/fanspeeds with dual/120Hz monitors can be tweaked to come down with drivers or is this something we'll have to live with? Also, how do dual-gpu cards like the 5970 react to this? In a standards CF/SLI setup one card clocks up and the other stays powered down, right?
I'm disappointed with all the new cards in general. There's no way the prices justify the tiny performance increase. Hopefully the revised ATI or Nvidia cards will provide enough performance over my current HD4870x2 that I'll see them as a possible upgrade. Right now the only thing I'd consider is a HD5970 and that's ver'xpensive (700 USD). The reviews I've seen are all so different it's strange. Bad Company 2 Guru3D & Hexus: GTX480 is only slightly faster than an HD5870 Anandtech: GTX480 slower than both HD5850 and HD5870 Legion Hardware: Everything is slower than the HD4870x2 except HD5970 and crossfire HD5870 - GTX295 is about equal. I'm REALLY hoping the prices drop on something good before September.
Let's clear this up. There is NOTHING we can do (or they can do) about it, multi-monitors and high refresh rate will lead to increased GPU clocks as GC_PaNzerFIN has reported and a FULL LOCK on 3D clocks for the memory. There is nothing that can be done about it. Also, be clear on this, the only device that suffers from this clock increase is the primary one, connected to the monitors, there is simply NO NEED to increase the clocks of secundary or terciary devices because they will not output anything in standard 2D windows desktop, so, this problem affects the first GPU connected to the monitor. I suppose (and this is theory, someone confirm it) that if you put 2 5970 the only GPU that will clock up is the GPU0 from the first 5970, the rest should be stay on very low 2d clock.
Just so you know how ridiculus these increases are and how AMD turned the tables with this new Catalyst 10.3a preview for our 4870x2 (I have one too) This card was almost "finished" with previous catalyst releases against 5870, but, the tiny detail in the new Catalyst turned the tables too much.. "HUGE Crossfire Improvements" that affected 4800 series too. Now, our 4870X2 is almost as good as a GTX295 and man, I CAN EVEN TELL YOU how much my tri-fire with a 4870 had increased. Previous to 10.3a my 4870x2 was about 5 to 9 fps behind a GTX295, now they both scores the SAME. with a third gpu (connecting a 4870 1gb) I could almost (almost) get equal FPS in Crysis than my GTX295, now, with 10.3a preview, my tri-fire is scoring SAME 5970 numbers, that means, more than 13 fps MORE than a GTX295, the numbers are crazy. I went ahead and configure my machine almost exactly as the one in other reviews of GTX480 to compare things and my tri-fire is scoring the same or higher numbers than a single 5970 (not 5870 crossfire) but close enough, so... it is almost tempting to go ahead and get a cheap 4870 and increase your scores exponentialy. The old myth of tri-fire does not bring improvements are proven totally wrong from the 10.3a on. Just go ahead and try it. More reason to stay with a 4870x2 if DX11 is not so much of your interest. For me is a no-brainier, in my country nobody wants the 4870x2 I don't know why, and the re-sell price is so low that I will have to pay twice the price to buy a single 5870 and had an inferior performance.
I'm not that sure... I've got 260 SLI setup here with 2 monitors and one of the cards doesn't clock down at all. It's been a known issue for a long time and they haven't done anything. I don't expect any miracles related to power management. Still, to be fair, I'd rather talk about performance and noise around 2-3 months after release. Drivers should be a little more mature.
That's because I made it very clear, I was wrong when I said this was a BUG it is not, after doing research, this is the way 2 monitors works. I am almost sure that the one card that will not clock down is the first one, the one connected to both your monitors, I already explained this, there WILL NOT BE any driver "fixes" since this is a normal behavior, if you underclock you will loose sync with one of your monitors so, this is by design. The problem with this is that Fermi is very VERY power-hungry and this could be a problem for this GPU.
Well, this effectively kills the Fermi for me. Now the question is whether to go CF 5850 or a 5970. Temperatures and noise seems to favor the 5850s while the 5970 is more future proof in the sense that it's easier to upgrade it further to even better performance. The questions is whether there will be any point doing this by the time CF5850s will be too slow since there's bound to be much better single GPU solutions out by then.
I can confirm it is a "feature". It would be allright if this feature worked all the time, but AMD also said its a feature that HD 5870 drops to the too low idle clocks when I overclock. Of course that is loads of bollocks, effectively making overclocking impossible without BIOS mod that would void the warranty for good.
So guys any answers to that? Are there even any GTX 470 SLI reviews somewhere? I wanna see how it performs next to 5850CF & 5970 (And please cut off all the heat/power comsuption crap you can bring)