Nvidia Benchmarks GTX 480 Against Radeon 5870

Nvidia's GF100/Fermi GPUs, the GTX 470 and GTX 480, will be officially launched later this month on March 26. Until then, we're being teased by unofficial board shots and unverified benchmarks.

Today, however, we bring to you something completely official: a benchmark demo straight from Nvidia that compares the upcoming GeForce GTX 480 and the ATI Radeon 5870.

While Nvidia doesn't put the two video cards up against our usual battery of tests, it does chart the two in an demo that leans on hardware tessellation. With tessellation demands piled on, the GeForce GTX 480 performs significantly better. Other times, however, it seems that the Radeon 5870's performance will be on par with Nvidia's upcoming high-end GPU.

Until developers take advantage of hardware accelerated tessellation however, the 5870 still gives a GTX 480 incredible competition for being over six months old.

See the video below for more.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • smithereen
    It won't stand a chance against the 5970 by the looks of it.
    Reply
  • postmortemfear
    glad i got my 2x 5770's fermi isnt looking to impressive so far
    Reply
  • cangelini
    Vendor-supplied benchmarks? Awesome!

    /sarcasm
    Reply
  • yannifb
    Considering the 5xxx refresh or 6xxx series that is coming out h2, this isn't to great for nvidia.
    Reply
  • sarsoft
    Wow ati holds its ground. I guess i wont be changing my 5970 any time soon.
    Reply
  • alvine
    yeah but nvidia 480 will cost you a kidney
    Reply
  • Honis
    cangeliniVendor-supplied benchmarks? Awesome!/sarcasmIt's nvidia, they've never lied or used smoke and mirrors before!

    /sarcasm

    Closed benchmark done by the competitor without showing the actual settings before running. Yep, totally reliable.

    erm now /sarcasm
    Reply
  • belardo
    Until its done by a 3rd party... who knows what the real performance is.

    Besides, the newer GF cards are more for computations than 3D gaming.
    Reply
  • Bluescreendeath
    Didn't this exact same article come out a week ago? O_o

    Reply
  • Nvidia > ATI.

    The end.
    Reply