Comparison Revisited, Methods Refined: Nvidia GeForce GTX 480/470 vs. ATI Radeon HD 5870/5850

Ok, serious question here:

First up, props to TS for this review, I was already leaning towards dual 5870's for my next build due to their lower temps and better bang for buck, the ONLY thing which may sway me is the supposed better performance of the Nvidia's when it comes to computing. (ie, rendering in Adobe Premier)

So, my question: How big is the gap between the Nvidia's and the ATI's when using the GPGPU functionality? Should I be willing to tolerate the heat, noise (including running the case fans faster), power consumption and purchase higher purchase price for the sake of the raw number crunching power?

Anyone able to offer an insight?

Here
CUDA and ATI Stream....have a ball Mr. Dead-thread-resurrector. I'm pretty certain anyone with pretensions of parallel/GPGPU computing doesn't need a gaming review to make up their mind about what SDK they should be using.

wow, 3 weeks is dead around here? Ok, fair enough. Thanks for the links.

i own the hd 5870 , im very pleased to say i run everything on max settings with no problem. The card is awesome , i have never been a fanboy of ati or nvidia and hope i never turn into one. no doubt ati have provided the best bang for the buck. the 480 is a very impressive card but fails in my opinion to heat issues and only leading by a couple of frames .

however , i do love cuda and physx..... shame ati doesnt come naturally with them.... but...

found out recently how to unlock phsyx using an nvidia card along with my hd 5870 and vuala! power of the 5870 along with physx! brilliant....

hope nvidia brings something out mind blowing in the future , however , i think i will be stayin with at i for many years to come if they keep up the good work.

After reading the entire review and posted comments I decided to order 480gtx, here is why:
First of all I am not a fan boy of neither, I have 4870 in my other system, I still even have 1950xt...voodoo3 2000, geforce4600, radeon64 ddr, radeon 9700, geforce 3.. you name it.
I always try to buy stuff like this based on price\quality comparison, as of August 4th I could find gtx480 for $440 CND selling on new egg, cheapest 5870 that I could find is $399... so why not pay extra 40 dollars and get a better card overall (every website shows that 480 gtx is more powerful than 5870.. sorry but that is true, if it was not I would go with 5870 instead)

That's about it =)

Look, Nvidia kicks ATI *** everytime. Their cards are beast end of. I'm no Nvidia fan boy but every night i take time out to sit in my room and put green things up my **** and scream out Jen-Hsun Huang! Jen-Hsun Huang!