Introducing the GTX 570 – the GTX 480’s Performance at $349

Overclocking

When it first launched, it was wrongly assumed that the GTX 480’s high thermals and high TDP would limit overclocking. However, the maximum temperatures achieved with “worst case” FurMark showed temperatures in the upper 90s C with thermal throttling coming into play at 105 C. Clearly the GF100 GPU was built for high thermals and gave us good overclocks; the reference GTX 480 clocked +150 MHz on its core, from 700 MHz to 825 MHz and the Galaxy GTX 480 SOC – thanks to its outrageous Arctic-Cooling VGA cooler – clocked to 850 MHz with stock voltage. Now we have a much cooler running GF110 GPU and we want to overclock it further from its 732/1900 MHz clocks.

This editor has his own set of criteria for overclocking the GTX 570.  We do not raise the fan speed nor do we increase the voltage.  Even so, we found the GTX 470 to be just a bit hotter-running than our GTX 580 which has a slightly beefier cooler according to Nvidia.  When playing games, we would regularly see temperatures in the 60s and 70s C with excursions into the low-80s – about ten degrees C warmer than with our GTX 580.  We also noticed that the GTX 580 seemed to be very slightly quieter than the GTX 570 although we could not measure it nor quantify the audible difference. Enter the Galaxy Xtreme Tuner overclocking tool and notice the overclocked settings that we achieved with GTX 580.

Reference >> the new OC:

772/2004 MHz >> 850/2004 MHz: Here are our GTX 570 clocks:

Reference >> the new OC:

732/1900 MHz >> 815/2000 MHz

An overclock of +83 MHz on the core brought us some solid performance increases which you can see in the Performance Summary (next page) although we never were able to catch the stock GTX 580’s performance.

Power Usage

Power usage is important for many people as a very hot running GPU is not only not “green”, it throws warm air into your room that your air conditioner must work extra hard to compensate for. Of course, for those of us like this editor who lives where it is cooler than warmer, a small space-heater in ones PC is a plus. We have seen that the GTX 480’s TDP specification, which is 250W, is far more than the HD 5870’s 188W TDP – and both the GTX 580 and the GTX 480 requires 6-pin+8-pin PCIe connectors. As we contrast the GTX 480 with the HD 5870, only 6-pin+6-pin PCIe connectors are required for the Radeon HD 6870/HD 5870 and also for the GTX 570. We are unable to provide you with a solid apples to apples comparison with Furmark by running GTX 570. This new card has has added a power draw limitation system to their card. Three sensors measure the inrush current and voltage on all 12 V lines (PCI-E slot, 6-pin, 8-pin) to calculate power. As soon as the power draw exceeds a predefined limit, the card will automatically clock down much the same as it does when a safe temperature is exceeded. As with temperatures, this limiter will restore clocks as soon as the overcurrent has ended. We are uncertain how this new safety feature will affect extreme overclockers. We will emphasize however, that the GTX 570 runs much cooler than the reference GTX 480 and is far quieter. When the GTX 570 spins up under load, it is about as quiet as the HD 5870 or the GTX 580; in contrast, the reference GTX 480 was much like the much nosier, last generation dual-GPU card, HD 4870-X2. We can confirm also that our GTX 280 is noticeably louder than either the GTX 570 or the GTX 580 at every fan speed.

Performance Summary and GTX 570 Overclocked results

Here is our performance summary which compares the overclocked GTX 570 (825/2000) with the stock GTX 570 (721/1900) as well as the GTX 480, GTX 580 as well as AMD’s top two single-GPU video cards, HD 5870 and HD 6970.  The GTX 480 is directly compared with the GTX 570 and “wins” and “ties” are in bold.  The games are grouped mostly by DX9 > DX10 > and DX11 and somewhat in chronological order of release.  Average framerates are compared.

We see the GTX 570 at $350 generally at least as fast as the formerly priced $500 GTX 480 – all while using less power and giving off less heat!

Price to Performance

It is pretty clear from our 24 games and two synthetic tests that the GTX 570 is a potent GPU to put against AMD’s upcoming Cayman video cards – the HD 6950 and HD 6970 which are the forthcoming replacements and upgrade over the current HD 5850 and HD 5870 video cards. The new GTX 570 – at this snapshot in time – has the clear distinction of being the fastest video card in its class – the fastest single DX11 GPU video card in its unique class; and at a suggested retail price of $349, sets it just above the average price of the GTX 480s which are likely to drop further.

GTX 480 has been steadily gaining on the HD 5870 in performance with newer GeForce drivers and the GTX 570 is also simply in a higher class than the current top Radeon, the HD 5870.  Of course that card is about 14 months old and can be got for close to $250 – about $100 less than the GTX 570 Considering the awesome, cool and quiet cooler and the overall slightly better performance in newer games, it is a no-brainer to go for Nvidia’s new GTX 570 solution if you are considering buying a GTX 480.

We also expect that some of its success will depend on market pricing and also what AMD does with their Radeon pricing which appears to be dropping as AMD responds to GF110. But if you want a fast single GPU with an awesome cool and quiet VGA cooler, the new GTX 570 gives you your cake and allows you to eat it also with much better than GTX 470 performance at the same price that it was introduced at 8 months ago!

Please note that although the GTX 480 is being replaced by the GTX 570, the GTX 470 is still current in Nvidia’s line.  They are pleased with its sales at their new discounted pricing which puts it into the $250 range and keeps a potent video card in their line up until later GTX 500 series video cards replace it.