GeForce GTX 480 And 470: From Fermi And GF100 To Actual Cards!

Benchmark Results: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (DirectX 9)

We’ve long considered Call of Duty to be a processor-bound title, since its graphics aren’t terribly demanding (similar to Left 4 Dead in that way). However, with a Core i7-980X under the hood, there’s ample room for these cards to breathe a bit.

Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 480 takes an early lead, but drops a position with each successive resolution increase, eventually landing in third place at 2560x1600 behind ATI’s Radeon HD 5970 and its own GeForce GTX 295. Still, that’s an impressive showing in light of the previous metric that might have suggested otherwise. Right out of the gate, GTX 480 looks like more of a contender for AMD's Radeon HD 5970 than the single-GPU 5870.

Perhaps the most compelling performer is the GeForce GTX 470, though, which goes heads-up against the Radeon HD 5870, losing out only at 2560x1600 with and without anti-aliasing turned on.

And while you can’t buy them anymore, it’s interesting to note that anyone running a Radeon HD 4870 X2 is still in very solid shape; the card holds up incredibly well in Call of Duty, right up to 2560x1600.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • restatement3dofted
    I have been waiting for this review since freaking January. Tom's Hardware, I love you.

    With official reviews available, the GTX 480 certainly doesn't seem like the rampaging ATI-killer they boasted it would be, especially six months after ATI started rolling out 5xxx cards. Now I suppose I'll just cross my fingers that this causes prices for the 5xxx cards to shift a bit (a guy can dream, can't he?), and wait to see what ATI rolls out next. Unless something drastic happens, I don't see myself choosing a GF100 card over an ATI alternative, at least not for this generation of GPUs.
    Reply
  • tipoo
    Completely unimpressed. 6 months late. Too expensive. Power hog. Performance not particularly impressive. The Radeon 5k series has been delivering a near identical experience for 6 months now, at a lower price.
    Reply
  • tpi2007
    hmmm.. so this is a paper launch... six months after and they do a paper launch on a friday evening, after the stock exchange has closed.. smart move by Nvidia, that way people will cool off during the weekend, but I think their stocks won't perform that brilliantly on monday...
    Reply
  • not at all impressed
    Reply
  • Godhatesusall
    high power consumption, high prices along with a (small, all things considered) performance edge over ATI is all there is. Are 100$ more for a gtx 480 really worth 5-10% increase in performance?

    Though the big downside of fermi are temps. 97 is a very large(and totally unacceptable) temperature level. IMO fermi cards will start dying from thermal death some months from now.

    I just wanted competition,so that prices would be lower and we(the consumers) could get more bang for our buck. Surely fermi doesnt help alot in that direction(a modest 30$ cut for 5870 and 5850 from ATI and fermi wont stand a chance). It seems AMD/ATI clearly won this round
    Reply
  • Pei-chen
    Wow, it seems Nvidia actually went ahead and designed a DX11 card and found out how difficult it is to design. ATI/AMD just slapped a DX11 sticker on their DX10 card and sells it as DX11. In half a year HD 5000 will be so outdated that all it can play is DX10 games.
    Reply
  • outlw6669
    Kinda impressed :/

    The minimum frame rates are quite nice at least...
    Lets talk again when a version with the full 512 SP is released.
    Reply
  • djtronika
    yawn
    Reply
  • The way we're meant to be dismayed, gg infirmi
    Reply
  • randomizer
    I'll keep my GTX275.
    Reply