MSI’s GeForce N470GTX & GTX 470 SLI
by Ryan Smith on July 30, 2010 1:28 PM ESTFinal Thoughts
When the GeForce GTX 470 first launched we recognized that NVIDIA did an appropriate job on pricing it purely on a performance basis. Based on performance alone it was priced correctly versus AMD’s cards, so that it performed in-line with the price. With its much greater power consumption (and the consequences of that) this didn’t make it a must-have card, but it did at least keep the GTX 470 on the table as a practical card to buy.
Today we’re seeing the devolution of a structured pricing strategy in to an all-out war, and MSI is leading the way. Coupled with NVIDIA’s recent driver improvements, GTX 470 cards like the N470GTX are now very close to being performance competitive with AMD’s top-end Radeon 5870 while costing significantly less. As far as reference-derived cards go, the N470GTX brings to the table all the things we like and dislike about the GTX 470, along with a fantastic set of overclocking tools and a free game for a price that’s competitive with the slower Radeon HD 5850.
Ultimately this makes for a very straightforward verdict on MSI’s N470GTX: at $300 (or $280 after a MIR) it’s a heck of a deal, and like the rest of the GTX 470 family at that price it has no peers when it comes to performance. However the caveat about power and heat still remains – it’s a very fast card for the price, but it’s also significantly hotter and louder than the Radeon HD 5850 it’s priced against. When performance is the only concern the choice is clear, but if you need to worry about power and noise then you need to decide whether you value performance or power more.
Meanwhile the GTX 470 SLI situation takes everything we’ve said about performance and power and amplifies it. When it comes to the GTX 470, NVIDIA clearly has a multi-GPU scaling advantage over AMD’s Radeon 5800 series. Two GTX 470s can beat a 5870CF setup the bulk of the time, but the noise is immense and the power difference is no less.
Wrapping things up, we will have more about SLI and Crossfire scaling next month when we take a comprehensive look at SLI/CF scaling. The GTX 400 series in 2-way SLI is only half the story – there’s still the matter of 3-way SLI and Crossfire to look at, so stay tuned.
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tech6 - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
Is it just me getting old or have desktop PC become somewhat boring? There seems to be a lot more sizzle and innovation in mobile, server and even home theater tech.lunarx3dfx - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
I have to agree, I really miss the days of Overclocking with dip switches and jumpers, and when a 100 MHz OC actually meant performance you could feel and see. It's not as much fun as it used to be. The mobile market, smartphones especially, has gotten very interesting in recent years especially if you have gotten into homebrew and seeing what these devices are really capable of.araczynski - Saturday, July 31, 2010 - link
i wouldn't say boring, just that each new iteration of cards is becoming less and less important.game developers aren't pushing hardware as hard as fast as the manufacturers would want them to.
i've had my 4850's in CF since they came out, and i'm still playing everything at 1080p to this day, granted, i don't use AA, but i never have, so don't care.
dragon age, mass effect 2, star craft 2 all smooth as butter, why am i going to waste time/money with a new video solution?
this is still on my E8600(?) 3.16Ghz C2D. (win7).
people are buying too much into the marketing, so cudos to their marketing departments, or which anandtech is one i suppose.
7Enigma - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
Hmm...have you checked to see if you are CPU limited in games? I have the same CPU and would guess that at 1080p resolution you could very well be CPU limited at stock E8600 speeds. I have the same proc and it is easy as pie to OC to close to 4GHz. I currently run at 3.65GHz at stock voltage and game at 3.85GHz (again stock voltage) with little more tweaking than upping the frequency (9.5X multi, 385MHz bus). And that's just with an OC'd 4870, dual 5850's surely could use the extra cpu power at such a (relatively) low resolution.HTH
quibbs - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
In my humble opinion, games drove the PC market into mainstream. It spurred the development of most of the major components. This includes graphics cards. Especially graphic cards. But it seems that game development for the PC, while still major, isn't what it once was. This has to slow down the video card market as the games for PC are less numerous.Perhaps a major breakthrough in gaming (3d, holograms,etc) will continue the card wars, but I think it will eventually head in a different direction. A reversal if you will, energy efficient cards in smaller form factor that are very potent at pushing graphics. Think about it, the cards are getting bigger and more power hungry as they grow in capabilities. At some point this will be unsustainable (in many ways).
Some company will realize that less is more and will produce such a product (when technology permits), and will kick off the new wars.
Just a thought....
piroroadkill - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
We're getting more and more powerful hardware, but most games are being developed with consoles in mind, so the benefit of having a vastly more powerful machine is very small.I don't feel like I need to upgrade my 4890 and C2D @ 3.4 for gaming, at all. To be honest, my 2900XT didn't really need upgrading, but it ran really hot and started to balls up
softdrinkviking - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
i don't know what a 2900xt is, but i upgraded from a radeon 3870 because i couldn't play butcher bay or a couple of other titles at my screens native 1920x1200. that was without AA or MSAA or any kind of ambient occlusion or anything, it just couldn't hold the framerates at all.so i got a 5850, and it's been great for everything under the sun. sometimes i can even max out the AA and stuff and the games play fine. (not in crysis)
anyway, the current gen of consoles games can usually take advantage of a regular LCDTV's 1080p, so if i can't play a game at that resolution without any extra visual enhancements selected, that sounds like there is room for improvement.
As for the future of gaming, i personally believe that computers will supplant consoles eventually.
maybe as soon as 15 years?
it's just a guess, i can't back it up, but i personally can't see how sony will be able to afford losing so much money on a new generation console.
if the current generation lasts long enough for sony to take advantage of the, only recently profitable, PS3, then home PCs will have a chance to get much faster and cheaper before a PS4 has time to come to fruition.
it just seems like the consoles will eventually become financially untennable.
damn, my dog just died, gotta go.
afkrotch - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
All depends on hardware and games. I have to turn down my game settings on Metro 2033. I use a C2D @ 3.3 ghz and a GTS 250. I get way too much framerate drops at 1920x1200 no AA/AF.Granted, I can still play any game out there, so long as I'm willing to lower the quality/resolutions.
arnavvdesai - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
I just wanted to ask if the author or the staff on AT feel that desktop graphics card are a shrinking market? Is the continued investment by ATi and Nvidia into the development of newer cards seem justified? I own a 5870 and barring a technical fault I dont plan to upgrade for another 3 years as I dont see myself upgrading my monitors.Is the market slowly but surely reducing or am I just wrong in assuming that? If yes, then where should these companies research into?
nafhan - Friday, July 30, 2010 - link
Well, the tech that goes into making a high end card eventually makes it into mobile, low end, integrated, cell phone, and console parts through a combination of cutting down the high end and successive silicon process improvements. So, ATI and Nvidia don't expect to make all their R&D money back from the initial run of high end GPU's. High end GPU's are basically proof of concepts for new technology. They'd certainly like to sell a bunch of them, but mostly they want to make sure the technology works.