ZOTAC GTX480 Review
Vantage, Dirt 2 and Shift
Published: 15th April 2010 | Source: Zotac | Price: £441.76 |
Moving on to our normal suite of benchmarks we're introducing the HD5970 into the mix. Although this is a dual-GPU card it actually is closer to the GTX480 in price terms than the 5870. This helps us cover the "money to burn" side of performance as well as the "best single GPU".
3D Mark Vantage
First up, 3D Mark Vantage and we'll run in Performance. The first thing to notice is that none of these cards are what could at all be described as slow. However there is one clear winner. If you can cope with the noise, or wait until Water-Cooling arrives, the GTX480 when overclocked breaks past 24000 points.
The performance test is fine for numbers, but the High test in Vantage is much more realistic when it comes to the performance we might expect to see in gaming.
As we introduce anti-aliasing (2x for High tests) and some resolution the differences between the cards shrink to almost nothing. The 5970 takes the lead by virtue of it's dual-GPU grunt, but the out-the-box 5870 and ZOTAC are neck and neck.
Dirt 2
Dirt 2 was one of (the?) first DirectX 11 games on the market and comes with water and cloth a-plenty. If anything should take advantage of the extra grunt the ZOTAC GTX480 can provide this should be it. And sure enough it absolutely does with even the stock GTX480 strolling past the 5970. Impressive stuff indeed.
Need For Speed Shift
Thanks to its console heritage Need for Speed Shift should be much more linear as it isn't so dependant on the fancy tricks PC hardware can do.
If ever a graph demonstrated that, it's this one. Fancy driver things and hardware tricks are meaningless as the 5870 and even overclocked GTX480 are left choking on the exhaust of the 5970s pure grunt.
Thats the wheels done, time to get the guns out.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by name='clone38'
Aye its a bit of a let down by NV this time as i was really looking forward to the new cards.
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I hope the next generation brings something better to the show, because these are too hot for what they give, and when a 5970 is only £50 more, they represent very poor value.Quote
My 280ocx is dammed loud on air but having heard these I couldn't put up with the noise.Quote
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