Honestly, I'm the nerd that reads hardware reviews on a daily basis. Here is the full review of the GTX 470 & 480 from these guys. If you don't care for all the mumbo-jumbo, click to the last page and you'll get their summarized opinion (actually testing and results on previous pages).
GeForce GTX 470 & 480 review
The article also states that the drivers for the Nvidia's were beta, given that performance will improve with updated drivers. However, the case remains that the nvidia cards run extremely hot. They literally tried cooking an egg on it. Nvidia has come out and said that they are meant to run hot (and consume a lot of power). Nvidia: GeForce GTX 480 Was Designed to Run Hot So you're going to need that much more power to run these cards. Guru3d does go on to say that the GTX480 is faster than the ATI 5870, but in my opinion, taking everything that matters into account (price and performance), the ATI cards are dominant.
I'm no fanboi of either. All judgement is based purely on actual price/performance. When it comes down to it, both manufacturers produce very good cards. It's neck and neck for the most part as they've both got pro's and con's that are fairly equal in weight.
Sorry if this post is scatter-brained, I'm at work and doing about 10 other things while I pieced, typed and linked this post together.
GeForce GTX 470 & 480 review
And as of now, the ATI cards are about ~$80 cheaper.Admittedly while very strong, both the GeForce GTX 470 and 480 are not a slam dunk homerun compared to the fastest ATI 5800 series single GPU solutions.
The article also states that the drivers for the Nvidia's were beta, given that performance will improve with updated drivers. However, the case remains that the nvidia cards run extremely hot. They literally tried cooking an egg on it. Nvidia has come out and said that they are meant to run hot (and consume a lot of power). Nvidia: GeForce GTX 480 Was Designed to Run Hot So you're going to need that much more power to run these cards. Guru3d does go on to say that the GTX480 is faster than the ATI 5870, but in my opinion, taking everything that matters into account (price and performance), the ATI cards are dominant.
I'm no fanboi of either. All judgement is based purely on actual price/performance. When it comes down to it, both manufacturers produce very good cards. It's neck and neck for the most part as they've both got pro's and con's that are fairly equal in weight.
Sorry if this post is scatter-brained, I'm at work and doing about 10 other things while I pieced, typed and linked this post together.