Question about GTX 480

[Fatal_Papercut]

Howdy folks,

It's payday, which means I am seriously considering stopping by to pick up a GTX 480. I do, however, have one question that will make or break the deal for me.

I'm currently using a Radeon 5870, which has been a very good card, but with each new driver release, there is a growing problem. With many games, and sometimes with certain Blu-Ray discs, I end up with a one-inch black border around the edges of my display, which is a 1080p 42-inch LCD TV connected via HDMI. The colors also become over-saturated and bleed. I'm pretty sure it's a driver issue because I don't have this problem when I connect to a 24-inch display, nor did I have this issue over a year ago when I was running a GTX 280. The issue also grows worse with each driver update; with the latest release, I now have this problem with 3 more games that didn't have this issue before.

A Google search hasn't turned up any complaints that I could find, so this is making me hopeful. The performance upgrade from my 5870 would be minimal, but it's worth the upgrade if it means I can continue gaming on my 42" HDTV.

Thanks for any advice,

FP

[RicochetSaw]

hmm... its most likely monitor scaling... is your output set to your native resolution? also i have that card in my laptop, its actually really greats despite missing cuda, physx, and that other nvidia thing that i forgot what it was...

[dasper]

Well, if I was in your shoes I may try to hold out for another month considering AMD is talking about its 6000 series already and it could drive down the price of the 480 at the least, or you can try your luck with another AMD product and go up a generation.

As for your problem, I have not run into that myself connection to my 5830 to my 42" plasma through HDMI (ps, I hate plasma TVs and I will not buy another after this) so you may have to tweak your output settings. I remember using a Ti 4200 on a MythBox DVR where I needed to calibrate the viewable area. I am not sure where that would be in the Catalyst software.

[Fatal_Papercut]

Thanks for the replies.

I did purchase the 480, and so far, things are looking great. All of those black borders have disappeared, and I am pleasantly surprised to find that there is a very noticeable performance increase across the board in my most demanding games. Release reviews had led me to believe that the performance gains would be minimal, although Nvidia has now had a few months to tweak the drivers (I am currently running the latest beta drivers).

Most notable so far is Metro 2033; it looked great on the 5870, but it was unplayable (22 fps) on max settings @ 1920x1080 (my CPU is an AMD Phenom II X4 965, stock 3.4GHz, OCed to 3.8GHz). It now runs smooth as melting butter. I also noticed that Batman: Arkham Asylum runs better WITH PhysX features turned on than it did with the 5870 (and no PhysX, of course).

In regards to that 5870, believe me, I tried every setting under the sun. I had to keep a notepad filled with all of the various combinations of settings that I had tried: GPU scaling on/off, pixel ratios, overscan settings, etc. Nothing ever fixed the problem, and the ATI/AMD forums are overflowing with people having the exact same problem. I guess ATI should have checked to make certain that their cards worked on HDTVs before naming the card series "HD".

I had always purchased Nvidia cards in the past simply because, at the time I was shopping for a GPU, they had the best cards on the market (I always go for the high-end stuff). The 5870 was top-dog when it came out, so I went with that. If I was playing games on my 24" display instead of a 42" HDTV, I probably would have kept my 5870 until the next-gen came out (again, I was only having these problems on my HDTV). Now I have learned my lesson.

As it stands now, I'm very happy with the 480, and I will likely skip a generation of GPUs before I consider upgrading again.

Or maybe I'll just buy an Xbox. If that happens, I'd appreciate it if one of you would shoot me.

[Adrian]

Shoot you, or break your fingers? ;x

[libertysyclone]

Thanks for the replies.

<Snip>

Or maybe I'll just buy an Xbox. If that happens, I'd appreciate it if one of you would shoot me.

Glad you came back to your senses and got a more than just a good piece of silicon.

I am hoping you got an EVGA card and then you can do a Step-up in the next 90 days

I will personally come put you out of your controller misery if you go that route