Eric Garay

True to the never ending game, NVidia recently released their newest GTX470 and 480 graphics processors. It’s been about a year since ATI released their ever popular 40nm GPU found in the HD 5870 and HD 5970 that has been setting record after record. In the absence of a formidable challenger, ATI has been doing extremely well market wise.

Strangely, reviews and commentary have been sheepishly going back and forth trying to explain NVidia’s performance numbers. Some have said the GTX480 is the fastest GPU on the market, while others as well as regular users from the game front have shown it to come up short. In fact, save for a couple aging game titles and DX11 testing on this test bench, ATI’s two stallions have out paced or kept up on my own test bench.

What the reference GTX cards (key word here is reference) do excel at is heat and noise. This GPU is extremely hot in the literal sense. The GTX470 easily tops 80C with fan noise just short of 60 dBA. The GTX480 tops 90C and grinds out 60+ dBA. That heat is a by product of the GPU and the required power to operate. And, it’s the poor reference GPU coolers that don’t do the cards any favors.

Because of the current GPU’s issues, video card manufacturers are left to pick up the pieces in order for them to make a living. Except for the die hard fan boys, unbetrothed enthusiasts won’t be attracted to any video cards sold with the stock heat sinks. So, vendors are going to have to get creative by adding after market cooling solutions.

Take MSI’s NVidia Geforce GTX260, 275, and 285 video cards for example. They were all given the Twin Frozr-Dual-Fan heat sink which looks looks very cool and works great. It would not surprise anyone to see something similar carried over to the GTX470 and 480 to make it a more acceptable solution. Of course, based on what manufacturers are paying for the GPUs, they can’t add much without increasing the price to us all.

Consumers don’t want a video card with a red hot GPU coupled with a loud GPU cooler. But, we really don’t want to pay the extra money for better cooling solutions if the cards are slower than ATI’s current offerings. And, given this economy, manufacturers don’t need the extra burden of trying to push the GTX470 and 480 video cards while eating the cost of improving the cards just to sell them.

Even ATI has been smart enough to lower the prices enough to back their card’s performance, that an aftermarket cooler is feasible and worth the cost even though it doesn’t need it. Yours truly has seen the above video card produce 3D performance reaching temps of 60C and lower. Puts a little more perspective on  the game as it’s being played.

Ultimately, it looks like NVidia didn’t accurately estimate the market’s impressions or expectations whether it be the consumer or their partners. Perhaps, NVidia should seriously consider knocking off another $50 or more per GPU just to help maintain some, if not all, of their market share.

Don’t fret, if you’re a die hard NVidia fan. You can at least count on the their partners to do a better job and figure out ways to bring you something worth the price. NVidia just might not be happy with the terms.

E3 is over and I’m finally home. Usually, I like going to tech events of these sorts. But, this time, I was a fish out of water since it’s mostly about games as opposed to the hardware that makes the games run. This is where E3 slipped up and comes up short. You can’t have games without the hardware. And, the opposite is true. Games drive hardware vendors to give us better and better graphics.

That said, the games that should push our current PC and console graphics a bit more are Battlefield 1943, Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.

Of the three, OF:DR looks to be about as realistic as it can get. It’ll be an interesting match up comparing MW2 and DR. The detail seen in DR is pretty impressive and could mean your graphics is going to have to do some work!