GeForce 400 Has Entered the Building

Our friends at NVIDIA have sent us a GeForce GTX 470 to play around with. Second most-powerful in a family of four cards, its siblings are the GTX 480, 465 and 460. The 460/465 cards are the “Budget Gamer” line coming in the mid $200.00 mark and the 480 is the headliner in the show coming in varying flavors around $500.00. The 470 is going for $320.00 to $350.00 right now from various online retailers and will be the primary focus of today’s scribbling.


So, the first thing we ask, what are the primary differences between the 470 and the 480. Let’s take a look at the raw numbers:

The physical i/o connections on the card are identical with the exception of the power connectors, the 470 uses 2–6pin and the 480 uses 1-6 pin and 1-8 pin plug. There are grumblings about there being no media connector and dings against NV’s HDMI audio but, honestly, if I’m going to plug my plasma into this bad boy the audio will be going from my HD audio card directly to my audio receiver.


Aside from the aspect of the faster GPU and bigger hardware feature set, the big difference between the GF 400 series cards and their predecessors is DirectX 11. While the current list of DX11 games is very short it is expected to grow soon and much sooner than the 2 – 3 years some folks in the online community were projecting. With HL 2 part III and Starcraft II and on the list I’m really looking forward to seeing the difference in image quality and performance.


Unfortunately my GTX 280 died a hot and violent death shortly after receiving the 470 so side-by-side benchmarks will have to wait until I get the RMA’d card back. I can say that I have seen improved performance in Metro 2033 (now maxed out and with DX 11 features enabled) Just Cause 2 and even World of Warcraft.

On top of comparing this GPU to the 280, I'm really hoping to get my hands on another 470 to play around with 3D Vision Surround.