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Review: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 - tested in SLI and compared to Radeon HD 5870 XF

by Tarinder Sandhu on 20 April 2010, 08:57 3.0

Tags: GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), ZOTAC

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaxwh

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HEXUS.bang4buck and HEXUS.bang4watt

Get ready for a lot of numbers.

In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,200 and 2,560x1,600 frame-rates for five games, normalised them* and taken account of the cards' prices.

But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen five different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from other sources and pricing tends to fluctuate daily.

Consequently, the tables below highlight a metric that should only be used as a yardstick for evaluating comparative performance with price factored in. Other architectural benefits are not covered, obviously.

1,920x1,200

Graphics cards HIS Radeon HD 5850 XF 2,048MB HIS Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 TOXIC 2,048MB Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 XF 2,048MB Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 SLI 1,280MB ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB BFG GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB BFG GeForce GTX 285 1,024MB EVGA GeForce GTX 275 896MB
Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 481.63 479.12 355.58 563.62 342.43 295.68 432.89 566.47 345.82 363.16
259.49
234.23
Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 364.78
364.02 297.49
411.80
289.59
254.29
334.22 414.57
277.4
295.16
224.23
202.39
Current pricing, including VAT £450 £550 £360 £620 £310 £225 £440 £620 £310 £350 £275 £199
HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,920x1,200 0.811 0.662 0.826 0.664 0.934 1.13 0.759
0.669
0.894
0.843
0.815 1.017
HEXUS.bang4watt score at 1,920x1,200** 0.812 0.793 0.8 0.832 0.905 0.892
0.704
0.710
0.699
0.584
0.598
0.552

2,560x1,600

Graphics cards HIS Radeon HD 5850 XF 2,048MB HIS Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 TOXIC 2,048MB Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 XF 2,048MB Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 SLI 1,280MB ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB BFG GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB BFG GeForce GTX 285 1,024MB EVGA GeForce GTX 275 896MB
Actual aggregate marks at 2,560x1,600 343.42
346.21
258.93 402.14 244.84 209.08 290.29 401.15 229.71 264.78
NA
NA
Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 2,560x1,600 288.72
284.53
224.47
318.77
216.92
175.2
240.53 311.23
199.2
233.2
NA
NA
Current pricing, including VAT £450 £550 £360 £620 £310 £225 £440  £620 £310 £350 £275 £199
HEXUS.bang4buck score at 2,560x1,600 0.642 0.517 0.623 0.514 0.7 0.779 0.547 0.502 0.643 0.666 NA NA

* the normalisation refers to taking playable frame rate into account. Should a card benchmark at over 60 frames per second in any one game, the extra fps count as half. Similarly, should a card benchmark lower, say at 40fps, we deduct half the difference from its average frame rate and the desired 60fps, giving it a HEXUS.bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.

** the HEXUS.bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against peak system-wide power-draw that's shown on the previous page: the former is divided by the latter. Bear in mind that FurMark, the application used, tends to load up NVIDIA cards a touch more than AMD's.

The HEXUS.bang4buck score only takes the performance and price into account, of course. 

Evaluation

The performance of two cards is undeniably impressive in SLI. Look at the 1,920x1,200 numbers and we see that the aggregate results increase by 63.8 per cent. At 2,560x1,600 the scaling hits 75 per cent. Coincidentally enough, the aggregate results are very similar to two Radeon HD 5870s, and, given that they're identical in price, this is why the HEXUS.bang4bucks are also similar.

Overclocking

We increased the single card's fan-speed to 80 per cent (<4,000rpm,  but still loud) and then forced up the clocks. From the default 607MHz/1,215MHz/3,348MHz clockings for core, shader and memory, respectively, we hit 698MHz/1,396MHz/ 3,870MHz, representing decent increases over stock. System-wide power-draw increases from a peak 397W to 439W, however.

Looking at the 2,560x1,600 results, Far Cry 2 (8x AA) performance rose from 42.18fps to 47.8fps and DiRT 2 DX11 from 40.48fps to 45.05fps.