ASUS ENGTX480-2D1-1536 Geforce GTX 480 Videocard Review NVIDIA does stress that the Geforce GTX 480 is more than just a gaming card however. It's the first videocard to use NVIDIA's Fermi architecture, which is a radical departure from the design of previous Geforce videocards.  79% Rating:    Table of Contents Filed under: Video Cards Published:  Author:  External Mfg. Website: ASUS Jun 09 2010   J. Apong   Home > Reviews > Video Cards > ASUS ENGTX480-2D1-1536

Sisoft's Sandra's GPGPU (general purpose graphics processing unit) benchmark analyzes the ability of the GPU to perform Mandelbrot equations to generate fractals. These same types of equations are used in tasks like image processing, video encoding and scientific simulations, giving an index of how well a GPU can perform in this test.

SiSoft Sandra 2009 ver 15.72 - GPGPU Processing Native Float Shaders: (Mpixel/s) Points Ranking Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD 1000 ASUS EAH5850 DirectCu Top/2DIS/1GD5 744.74 ASUS ENGTX480 2DI/1536MD5 744.35 Native Double Shaders: (Mpixel/s) Points Ranking Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD 556.2 ASUS EAH5850 DirectCu Top/2DIS/1GD5 398.71 ASUS ENGTX480 2DI/1536MD5 151.8

SiSoft Sandra wasn't able to take full advantage of the CUDA cores inside of NVIDIA's Geforce GTX 480. Given how much emphasis NVIDA has placed on double-precision shaders for its GPGPU processing, this is a little dissapointing.

SiSoft Sandra 2009 - GPGPU Memory Bandwidth	Source: Sandra

The second part of Sisoft's Sandra's GPGPU measures the videocard's memory bandwidth, which will directly affect the overall performance of GPGPU applications.

SiSoft Sandra 2009 ver 15.72 - GPGPU Memory Bandwidth Internal Memory Bandwidth: (GB/s) Points Ranking Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD 111 ASUS EAH5850 DirectCu Top/2DIS/1GD5 87.63 ASUS ENGTX480 2DI/1536MD5 114 Data Transfer Bandwidth: (GB/s) Points Ranking Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD 4.73 ASUS EAH5850 DirectCu Top/2DIS/1GD5 4.72 ASUS ENGTX480 2DI/1536MD5 5

The numbers here are much more in favor of the ENGTX480-2D1-1536. Even through the Radeon HD 5870 has faster GDDR5 memory (5GHz vs. 3.7GHz), the ASUS ENGTX480-2D1-1536's wider memory bus interface (384-bit vs. 256-bit ),tips the scales in NVIDIA's favor.