Its still not too shabby as you say, but i would hate to buy a slightly 'gimped' card just to be an early adopter.  I'd rather wait until all 512 are available. 

The TDP looks good,t hanks for the link bro.

That was at most of the review sites, fudzilla is too full of crap most of the time for my taste, but had the shortest link and I can't CP.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/nvidias_hot_rod_gtx_480_powerful_and_power_hungry

Looking good even with only 480 cores enabled...

j

Pacov provided this link, it's pretty damn funny!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZXhR1ibj8

anyone know how much that is going to cost? i heard not all the shaders work because of AMD or something.

Not really. It puts up higher numbers then a card that is $100 cheaper, but not significantly so in real (as opposed to synthetic) benchmarks. Except for sky high power usage of course. The performance difference per dollar just isn't there.

The biggest problem is that nothing is using what a top end card does these days. They were always niche products, and they're even more so now. For the overwhelming majority of the market, these cards aren't worth the money.

I think ATi is going to be drinking Nvidia's milkshake this year.

Nvidia's new cards aren't much faster than ATi's 6 month old GPU's. Nvidia's cards also cost more, consume more power, run hotter and have a lot bigger die size coupled with lower yields, which will limit how much Nvidia can lower prices.

To top all that off, ATi will have its' next gen GPU's ready to go in Q4.

I'm somewhat concerned about the 90c idle temps with dual moniters and the jet turbine that cools it. The thing that really kills me is how are you going to be able to sli these guys with a 200 degree heatsink 1/4 of an inch away from the back of the bottom card. I bet Nvijdya named it gtx480 because you need a 480 rad for each gpu.

I want to see the cooling design if nvidia ever try to put two of these together in the same card 500+ W of power drawn. Guess it would scale well though from the reviews i have seen.

Unless nvidia have missed something minor that can significalty reduce power (heat produced) requirements i cant see the 4xx cards going much faster. 10 percent (20 tops) of preformance gamers have a rig that would not need significant upgrades to support the 480 at resonable temps.

(If anyone has any doubts i much prefer ati thinking when it comes to graphics cards cheep or resonable requirements so they can be replaced when you need it).

I think I'm gonna keep my 5870 for the summer and get a gtx 480 for the winter.  Maybe I could also use it as a toaster!

You could also use this to be humane.  If you got a giant case and a pentium d in it, and overclocked everything, you have made a nice shelter for a homeless family during the winter!

I really don't see that happening, nvijdyas strategy was to make an huger gpu to avoid dual gpu cards in the first place. Also, reading stuffs nvijydas says no way to tri sli on air anyways. Would be an interesting card though... 3-4 8 pin connectors and a stock asetek gpu cooling solution of some sort.

I wonder how much power my Nvidia 7900 GT draws.

NVIDIA states that the maximum peak is 82 Watt for the 7900 GS. So fo a GeForce 7900 GS NVIDIA recommends a 300-350 watt power supply with 22-23 ampere on the 12 volts rails.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/nvidia-geforce-7900-gs-nvxfxsparkle/3 

google is your 'friend'

GT is a few percent more ...;)

XFX is supposedly not manufacturing the GTX 400 series

hhhhhWHAT?!??!

This was posted yesterday so i dont think it is an April fools joke...

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/xfx_skipping_fermi

Its not because of amd...They had a problem with production that left 480 cores as the max stable setup...

I didnt read all the posts here (too many) but Nvidia DOES have DirectX 11 with the new 400 series.

Now I cant directly answer your question, because its not just about ATI or Nvidia is general. It depends on what requirements you have (e.g. gaming, video editing, home theater pc, etc), how much money you can give, stuff like that.

Both ATI and Nvidia have their bargains, but as for their latest series of cards it is like this:

ATI 58xx series cost a little less, draw less power, and are generally cooler than Nvidia.

Nvidia 400 series are faster, support CUDA, PhysX, and they have better quality than ATI.

I can give you a lot more details and point out the best card for your money, but you need to tell me how much you can afford to spend.

seems Nvidia has failed with their new cards i think i'll go for the cheap ATI and see if its worth getting new ones in Q4 when the new ati come out.

atm i got a Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT on imac running bootcamp lol, old computer had two Ati Redons 800 no shader 3   they were top end for 2004 and 2005.

Dude, just buy an ATI radeon 5830 for about ~200 - 220 $.

Or you can buy ATI's perfect bargain, the Radeon 5770. Seriously, this card is worth every peny, about ~150 $.

The thing is, that if you dont want to spent a lot of money, which from what I understand, you dont, ATI is your only choice, because their cards totally dominate the mid-range field.

But if you want to go for the big fish, then just buy a Nvidia GTX 470 (350$) and you are a happy man.

Just DONT buy low end cards! Its the biggest mistake you can make. If you dont have enough money just wait, but low-end card = not for gaming.

Tom's Harware has never failed me. Check it out: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2569.html

Save up for that ati 5970 2 gb card.   On newegg its currently 700 but if you hsop around some places have it for about 600$   thats my current strategy.

You cant make a biggest mistake than this. If you spend more than 500$ for a gfx card, like the 700$ 5970 like you said, you WILL have the fastest card on the market, but only for....how long? I give it 1 year TOP. Because when the next generation of cards arrive, you would have spent 600-700$ for a card that is outdated. And that is NOT good.

I know that you will say you can always buy the next gen best card on the market, but this isnt something good for your pocket if you spend 600$ every year just for a gfx card now, is it?

Before you decide on a purchase check out Gamespot's review of the new Nvidia GTX 480. Read about it Here. I've got some more imput on this subject but no time to post it right now. Later this evening I think I'll post some more specs and some of my personal experiences between ATI and Nvidia that might help you.

I dont want to be a nazi here, but Gamespot isnt such a good reviewer for gfx cards.

I can build a whole quad core computer for that price.

Yeah the 5970 is powerful, I cant say I disagree, but its just so much uneeded power. A 5870 has all the power you will ever need, imo.