GTX470SLI vs HD5870CF Power Consumption, Temps, + Heaven Bench


Test System & Setup

CPU: Intel Core i7 920 @4.2GHz (1.28v)
RAM: Corsair 3x2GB Dominator DDR3 1866MHz CAS 9 @1600MHz CAS 7 (1.64v)
Board: Asus P6T Deluxe v2
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200.12
PSU: BFG EX-1000W
Monitor: Dell WFP3007-HC 30” wide screen LCD
OS: Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1


Graphics Cards:

GTX 470 SLI

HD 5870 Crossfire


Drivers:

ATI 10.4 + Crossfire Profile (Apr 7)

NVIDIA 197.41


Games/Applications Used:

Crysis

Just Cause 2

Unigine Heaven Bench

Notes:

-Power consumption testing done was with the tower only.


GTX470 SLI:


Idle/Load Temps + Overclock Settings:

GTX470 Overclock settings:


Idle with OC:


Load with OC (Crysis Bench used to load GPU's):


Power Consumption:

System Idle GTX470 SLI:


System Max Load (JC2) GTX470 SLI Overclocked 750/1680/1500 987mV:


System Max Load Crysis GTX470 SLI Overclocked 750/1680/1500 987mV:


Heaven Unigine GTX470 SLI Stock GPU Clocks Max Load:
Just for refrence load temps with Unigine Heaven Bench with GPU Clocks at 750/1680/1500 was at 658 Watts! (Sorry no image I accidently deleted)


Unigine Heaven Bench (STOCK GTX470 SLI):



HD5870 Crossfire:


Idle/Load Temps + Overclock Settings:

HD5870 CF Overclock settings:


Idle with OC:


Load with OC (Crysis Bench used to load GPU's):


Power Consumption:

System Idle HD5870 CF:


System Max Load (JC2) HD5870 CF Overclocked 950/5000 1.225v:


System Max Load Crysis HD5870 CF Overclocked 950/5000:


Heaven Unigine HD5870 CF Stock GPU Clocks Max Load:


Unigine Heaven Bench (STOCK HD5870 CF):



Summary of results:



Performance level the GTX 470's in SLI continue to impress me especially since the drivers are very new, something tells me these beasts have a lot more to offer yet! I honestly think that the performance is much  better then people know or think, or even willing to admit. After doing a small comparison of my own I've experienced first hand on how they stack up against the competition.

Noise levels between the 5870's and the GTX 470's is somewhat comparable; GTX 470's <65% actually sounds tolerable (to me), anything over really is too loud for comfort. To keep the GTX 470's below 80c I needed about 75% or more fan speed.

With the fan on auto 20-21% the HD5870's idle temps are GPU1 37c and GPU2 34c was very cool, load temps where still pretty good considering the fans never went past 33 and 37% under load also with an over clock of 950/1250 and a slight bump in voltage never went over 84c GPU1 and 86c GPU2. The GTX 470's fan speed was @40% on auto they are still pretty quiet and happy with temps of 45c on GPU1 and 42c on GPU2 but load temp was a story of it's own 93c on GPU1 and 91c on GPU2 with an over clock of 750/840/1500 fans on auto ramped up pretty high to 65 and 72% and still could not decipitate heat fast enough.

Overall the 5870's are much cooler, and quieter on idle but on load although the fans never went past 33-37% when manually cranked they can get just as loud as the GTX 470's while keeping an ever so slight advantage.

With a minimum of 36w and a maximum of 96w less power consumption by ATi 5870's, and the fact that nVidia runs hotter than the competition and uses quite a bit more power under load, the performance is definitely there. We have to ask ourselves is the extra heat, noise and power consumption worth the performance you get? Consider the price of a pair of GTX 470's being cheaper of an average of $100-$140 vs HD5870's in CF.... You be the judge!

Please post your comments, thanks!

That's definitely one way to solve the issue but for some that is not an affordable option.

buddatech

That's definitely one way to solve the issue but for some that is not an affordable option.

True, but even if I had a 5870 I would water cool it.

When I read people's take on the fan noise between the cards there seems to be a different sound to them. ATi cards seem to have a high pitched fan whine to them whereas the nVidia cards have a whoosh of air sound to them. One person finds the whine annoying and another finds the whoosh annoying. What was your take in the difference in the type of sound the fans make?

Moltenlava

I seriously hope your not going by the Unigine Benchmark when you say the performance level of the 470 is impressive, I guess if all you do is run that benchmark then great but really its just a synthetic benchmark, in the grand scheme of things its pretty pointless, even more so than 3D Mark.

the extra power consumption and noise is not worth it if you only benefit from the performance when running a benchmark.

From what i have read in most games the difference between ATI and Nvidia is 5-10% which i dont think is worth the additional 30%+ increase in power consumption

Are you saying the game play of the GTX 470 isn't impressive? You're still throwing out percentage numbers in you comparison even in gaming. To be honest those don't give the truth of how well the GTX 400 series cards run in games. The smoothness of game play is outstanding with the GTX 400 series cards. That's the first thing people notice with these cards, along with better graphics.

Moltenlava

I seriously hope your not going by the Unigine Benchmark when you say the performance level of the 470 is impressive, I guess if all you do is run that benchmark then great but really its just a synthetic benchmark, in the grand scheme of things its pretty pointless, even more so than 3D Mark.

the extra power consumption and noise is not worth it if you only benefit from the performance when running a benchmark.

From what i have read in most games the difference between ATI and Nvidia is 5-10% which i dont think is worth the additional 30%+ increase in power consumption.

That said i am still thinking of getting 1 or 2 GTX 480's but thats mainly due to the features of the Nvidia GPU rather than the small performance gain it has over the ATI cards but i must admit the power consumption of the 400 series is putting me off.

No actually it has nothing to do with synthetics actually more so along the lines of the previous comparison I did GTX 470 SLI pretty much out performed the games I did bench JC2, Crysis, Dirt 2, and Batman AA. There--> http://forums.evga.com...705&mpage=2#339320 Sorry about the pics bandwidth crap... hopefully will be back up in a couple of days. In the meantime there is a summary of the comparison that was done on the bottom of the post.

buddatech

Moltenlava

I seriously hope your not going by the Unigine Benchmark when you say the performance level of the 470 is impressive, I guess if all you do is run that benchmark then great but really its just a synthetic benchmark, in the grand scheme of things its pretty pointless, even more so than 3D Mark.

the extra power consumption and noise is not worth it if you only benefit from the performance when running a benchmark.

From what i have read in most games the difference between ATI and Nvidia is 5-10% which i dont think is worth the additional 30%+ increase in power consumption.

That said i am still thinking of getting 1 or 2 GTX 480's but thats mainly due to the features of the Nvidia GPU rather than the small performance gain it has over the ATI cards but i must admit the power consumption of the 400 series is putting me off.

No actually it has nothing to do with synthetics actually more so along the lines of the previous comparison I did GTX 470 SLI pretty much out performed the games I did bench JC2, Crysis, Dirt 2, and Batman AA. There--> http://forums.evga.com...705&mpage=2#339320 Sorry about the pics bandwidth crap... hopefully will be back up in a couple of days. In the meantime there is a summary of the comparison that was done on the bottom of the post.

Thanks for the reply, just from the title and the summary it looked like you were mainly focusing on the Unigine Benchmark but its good to see you took into account some recent and some demanding games to get your overall view of the 470.

just so you know if you have not picked it up from my previous posts i am not a big fan of benchmarks in general its not specific to the 400 series and Unigine it just happens to be the flavour of the month.

thanks for posting your feedback its always good to read reviews by normal users like myself who have to buy their cards retial and not get cherry picked parts straight from the manufacturers.

What's your one remaining factor?

any word on the missing support for 3x lcd's?

Another great review buddatech!  I didn't get time to check my max load wattage on the 480s but will hopefully be able to tomorrow.

Another BR for OP mods?

chizow

This was the latest "official" comment about the 256 drivers from ManuelG, an Nvidia driver engineer/liaison over on the Nvidia forums:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=164324&st=100&p=1038494&#entry1038494
 

'ManuelG' date='Apr 12 2010, 10:24 AM' post='1038494'

New drivers for the Geforce GTX 480/470 were made available last week.  GTX 200 series 3D Vision Surround should be available around May or when it is finished.

 
That was a few weeks ago, so even then it was apparent the drivers were most likely going to be delayed past April.  Its looking more and more like the 256 drivers are going to include a wide variety of fixes and features beyond just 3D Vision Surround, so we may be waiting a bit longer.....

Lol.... that doesn't sound very promising or convincing! ---> "3D Vision Surround should be available around May or when it is finished."

luv2increase

Another great review buddatech!  I didn't get time to check my max load wattage on the 480s but will hopefully be able to tomorrow.

Another BR for OP mods?

Thanks! Just post em up when you get some time.

Thanks to all that read and found this helpful!

Very nice, I was looking for exactly this to see how much power I would need for an sli 470 system.

Mind posting results for the rest of the games in terms of FPS?  I'm just curious to know how the two stack against each other in performance outside of tessellation.  If you happen to have recorded those, I mean.  I don't think you'd want to go through and reassemble the system again :P