Windows 7: 480 Or 5870

Getting a new graphics card. I hear alot about the two.

Could some1 list me some pros and cons on each. Im wanting to max out crysis, My old nvidia card's capacitors blew up because of heat issues. I hear 480 has terrible heat issues and consumes more power?

Whats the cons of more power consumption too?

Which should i get!!

If you look at some of the videos on Youtube, there will be some benchmarking tests.
For example, YouTube - GTX 480 Vs HD 5870 EXTREME Tessellation Showdown and there are plenty of others for you to look at there.

The 480 does run hot in comparison to the 5870 and it certainly does use a lot more power.

More power means more expensive to run. It depends on who pays the power bill at your house.

It also needs a good quality PSU. At a guess, I'd say your current PSU may not be up to scratch.


It is more powerful than than the 5870 and nvidia drivers are arguably better than ATI.


The 5870 does run cooler and uses a lot less power.


At your resolution, the 470 is also a good alternative.

If you can afford to wait a little bit longer, the 470's replacement is reportedly more powerful, runs cooler and uses less power than the 470 and is due relatively soon.

I'm not sure what the actual power consumptions of the cards are, but the 5870 has two 6 pin PCI-E power connectors, so it should draw less than 225W max. The GTX480 has one 6 pin and one 8 pin, so it should consume less than 300W. I've seen suggestions that he cards come pretty close to these limits in practice.

How heavily will you use it? That extra 75W translates to about 658 kW hours in a year if you ran the card flat out 24 hours/day. In practice, it would be much less. (That's not entirely fair - the 5870 is known for its particularly low power consumption at idle, which is the way graphics cards spend most of their time.)

Both cards exhaust most of their heat outisde the case. I doubt that there would be a significant temperature rise in the case with a 480.

You might need a better PSU with the 480, and the fan on a 300W card would make more noise at maximum than a 225W card.

The 480 has 1.5GB of VRAM standard, vs 1GB for the 5870. That may be significant with high-resolution monitors. I'm not sure where the break point would be. I expect that there'd be no benefit at 1680X1050. (Are there games that can run at 3360x1050?)

Hmmm i see. Well i want to upgrade to the antec signature 850W psu. as my psu is just a stock psu from my old system. I need a replacement now as my card has blown, although it still seems to be working? :S 2 of the capacitors burst. hmmm could it damage the rest of my system to keep using it?

I've never seen an example of a blown graphics card taking out the rest of the system.

On the other hand: do you feel lucky?

I'd be more optimistic if it was easy to remove the blown caps entirely, but I wouldn't be competent to do that safely. Are you?

Nope ill just leave them in haha

You can't go wrong with the SG-850. Excellent PS, I have on myself.

Which card to get? Do some reviews & comparisions.

Good luck

I would pick GTX 480 in m case because I need the cuda, physx, and my pc case already have a nvidia sticker logo. Other than that I would pick the HD 5870.

Yeah all reviews argue good cases. BUT the 480 is more powerful and will give better fps. I have always been with nvidia and i want all the technology that comes with it. The drivers, and expecially physx. And its better for dx 11 which is the future. also as for the heat issue. My case has 4 fans so i doubt that will be an issue.