My Geforce GTX 480 is beginning to show its age

lol

 

@WhiteLightning; the max for texture and blur is High.

 

Its not that my GTX 480 is to slow for my current needs and i love the card to bits as I have owned it for ever since it was released. Its just on cusp of where its starting to take a beating in newer games, just thought since i decided to miss the 500 series now might be a wise time to upgrade maybe.

 

my mates running Skyrim/everything else on a 5 year old quad with a GTX570 & 4gigs of RAM and everything is still better than my system can pull off!

 

Sorry but your views on playability are cometelu different then mine. I cant play any game unless i have 60fps minimum, be it crysis, metro 2033, bf3, skyrim etc. Halo was not capped at 25fps when i played thats for sure.

And the difference is substantial between 3.4 and 4.8ghz. A specific drawrven ruins spot i dip to low 30s, at 4.8 i never go below 60fps. Skyrim is unplayable without 60fps for me. A millisecond dip into low fps is VERY noticeable, why are you making stuff up?? :3eyes:

 

My mistake re Halo, not 25 FPS but 30 FPS cap which is an in-game option. And an option I chose and found worked well with me.

So you were playing Crysis at 60 fps minimum when it was first released? At what, 1024x768, lol? Even the toughest cards at the time when maxed (not even maxed) couldnt avoid frequent dips of 25 fps and less. Even if you meant you just started playing crysis with your 580s and get 60 minimum I'm sure it wouldnt be maxed out. Anyway, just about everyone here played the game within the first year of its release (2007) and many, many people commended its smoothness even at 25-30 fps. I KNOW because I've been here in this forum when Crysis arrived and seen the general opinions of those playing it at these relatively low fps. And which matched my own experiences. Same with metro. Sure their were grumbles by some who tried to max everything out but that was expected.

The difference between 3.4 and 4.8ghz certainly is substantial..... at 1280x1024. At 1920x1200, it is NOT substantial in most games. If you can link to an example or benched game, lets see it.

Also keep in mind (unless your relatively new to gaming and high end hardware) that most people struggled with demanding games back in the day, and 30 fps back then was not as bad as its made out to be today. But if that really is your experience that "any game" is unplayable at less than 60, then I'm just glad I and many others dont share it.

 

Btw, Diablo 2 was capped at 25 fps. Mixed up with Halo which had 30 as an option.

 

Uhm when i played Crysis wars, no i had a custom cfg to allow me to play with 60fps. like im gonna play a very competitive game with 30fps uke2:. doing SP is fine with 40+fps just for graphics but again, i played that the day it came out and had crappy vista.
and yes, right now at 1080P with 16XAA All Enthusiast/Very high i do get way more than 60fps.. the game is easy now to max out. Keep in mind my 580s at my current clocks are as fast as 2 680s

Now did i say 3.4 vs 4.8 is substantial for all games? no, but for me it is. 3.4 bottlenecks my 580s by a good bit. like 64player bf3, my gpus have low usage at 3.4 but at 4.8 99%~ usage all the time. And skyrim is a 100% cpu limited game, i have like 20% usage of my gpus in that game.

and again, im not most people, so stop trying to use a general term for me.

 

480 is still a good card,oc your cpu as much as you can and try that,you could also oc you card which may give you an extra 10fps,you should be able to play most games with settings on max and a small amount of AA on most games with decent frame rates between 40 and 60fps.

Failing that get another 480 and sli them sell it and buy something better.

 

Can i has cookie? Because I'm a boaster for still using Vista proudly :bigsmile:

Vista SP2 is Windows 7. they came out around the same time and i have used both (still use both. my desktop has Vista x64, my laptop has Win 7 x64). I get little to no hardware conflicts or BSoD's unless i get curious and screw around with my memory (lol, seriously. Getting 4 ghz+ on a 790i is not easy).

Your partly correct on how it most certainly affects your framerate at lower resolutions, but at higher resolutions, the CPU's job is to MAINTAIN a high minimum FPS.
If at high resolutions, overclocking your CPU didn't matter, then hell yeah i would leave my CPU at stock speed. But that's why we all go gungho with our processors any ways.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ON TOPIC, people who have poor framerates in games and have a cpu that is clocked at under 3 ghz is not cutting it (OPeeleft. Intel is basically implying you all nowadays, overclock and that's why Nehalem and Sandy bridge were given Turbo Boost.

We are all bound by CPU's and our displays these day's. CPU is too slow for our graphics card and the displays (for the average gamer (1050-1080p) are limiting our Graphics cards.

 

I run skyrim on max settings with 4xAA on my GTX 480 perfectly fine :\....what drivers are you using....or perhaps your being held back because your cpu is not overclocked....skyrim is a very cpu heavy game. I run skyrim with vsync and maintain a stable 60fps while running around outdoors and get about 80 percent gpu usage on average. Obviously if I turned off vsync I would have more like 75-85 fps.

 

yeah stock cpu= lower fps on cpu heavy games.

 

Just to show you why you think your 480 sucks I ran some test for you. Here is a GTX 480 with my cpu clocked at your cpus speed of 2.8 ghz.....and then the second screen shot is in the EXACT same spot all I did was alt tab and overclock my cpu to 4.5ghz. Also keeping in mind that I have a sandybridge CPU so my cpus per core performance is also higher then yours. You seriously need to overclock your cpu and then you will see your GTX 480 is capeable of a lot more then you give it credit for. In the second set of screen shots when I was in rorikstead I was still cpu bottlenecked and only getting 75 percent gpu usage at 4.5ghz! Even if you bought a GTX 680 you wouldn't even see an increase in FPS until you clear up the bottlneck you already have that is holding your 480 back let alone a 680. You get a 50 percent increase in FPS going from 2.8ghz to 4.5....thats like buying a brand new graphics card...hell in some cases better then going from one generation to the next.

2.8 ghz





4.5ghz




2.8ghz





4.5ghz

 

Yeah, OC the damn thing. There's plenty of headroom left on 470/480 cards, but the CPU needs to supply them with enough juice.

EDIT: Hah, nvm, pretty much everyone confirmed it already

 

you seem to care to pass comment.People like you ruin this once great forum.

 

there's no Ultra for Radial and Texture mr. Whitey

 

The 480 doesn't really show it's age at all. From a pure numbers perspective, the 580 barely offers any real improvements unless you don't overclock, and the 680, well even then it's not really worth it. 20% on average over an overclocked 480. Whooo. Given the state of games there's literally no reason to go with a 680 unless you're still on a 200 series or older, or a mid tier card or something.

Basically, if you really want more performance, overclock that CPU and if that's not enough, get a second 480 for cheap.

 

High to ultra in nearly everygame i've ever played is hardly worth bothering with imo.

There'll be like an effect, you can hardly ever see, take 10-15fps away,lol.

Anway, nothing wrong with your card. 480 is sweet card.

I have an ati 6870

i5 2500k

8gb ram.

Skyrim is 60fps soild.

1920x1080 x4aa.


Noticed you overclock, why not just keep at 4.5ghz.

 

True.I'm going to change my platform with a new cpu(an IB i7 3770k) and i'm sure that my old GTX will cope very well with every game i throw at it(at max settings) for at least one year from now.