Home

 › 

Reviews

 › 

Nvidia GeForce GTX 470: Is it Any Good?

Nvidia

Nvidia GeForce GTX 470: Is it Any Good?

Key Points:
  • The GTX 470 was released on March 26th, 2010, for $349. Now you can find it for less than half that price on sites like eBay or Free Geek.
  • The GTX 470 is not for someone who is looking to play new Triple-A games as they are released or even some heavier non-Triple-A games, as this card will not be able to handle it. 
  • This graphics card can be used for very light gaming and some remedial visual driving, and it has a low power drive.

Let’s take a trip back in time to the era of PC building, where it wasn’t quite as flashy as it is today. To the grand old year of 2010, a full 12 years ago. This is long before the time of GPUs with Ray Tracing, or DLSS, like the RTX 470 “new hotness” siblings of today, like the RTX 3070 and 3080. When released, it was listed as a performance mid-range card and only had only HDMI and two DVI outputs. 

Now, you might take one look at this graphics card and say, “NVIDIA‘s GTX 470 is old and busted,” but don’t make your judgment yet. Instead, I will take a look at some performance benchmarks on this card to see if this card is really old and busted or if it is old and trustworthy. 

Nvidia
The Nvidia GTX 470 has 1280MB of memory capacity.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 470: Best Deals Today

Keeping in mind that this card was released 12 years ago, almost all the reasonable and trustworthy listings are on eBay. In other words, our typical go-to’s for Amazon, New Egg, and Best Buy were entirely unavailable. The one for $65.00 is from one of my favorite used sellers, “Free Geek,” so be sure to keep an eye on their listings for well-tested used products. 

GTX 470 Overview

Release Date and Price

The GTX 470 was released on March 26th, 2010, for $349. Now that you can find it for less than half that price, it is a downright steal.

 Different Models

Only one other GPU shares a similar name to the GTX 470, the GTX 470M. Unfortunately, the GTX 470M is the laptop version of the graphics card, has much slower clock speeds, and the laptops it’s in are so slow it is not really worth taking a look at. 

 Features

Not always seen as a feature nowadays, the GTX 470 has two DVI ports, so if you are still running some old monitors that only accept DVI, this card might be worth looking at more. 

Specifications

Clock Speed:608 MHz
Memory: 1280 MB
Memory Type:GDDR5
Shading Units: 448
Video Output:1xHDMI, 2xDVI
Interface:PCI 2.0 x16
Slot Width:Dual Slot
Length:9.5 Inches

 GTX 470 Review

So, I took the $70 plunge and bought one of these GPUs to test out. I must say, for the price, I am pleasantly surprised. Don’t get me wrong, most of the games I tested, I had to play a 1366×768 and even then at medium quality, but modern games did work on it. 

Games ran mostly smoothly, and my older PC fans will be delighted to know that I was able to run Crysis on it. I got it to run stable at 1920×1080 on ultra settings at a whopping 33.8 FPS.  Crysis is no longer the end-all-be-all gaming benchmark, but I thought that with a card of this era, the only true test still falls on Crysis’ shoulders. 

If you want to use this graphics card for anything other than light gaming (I mean very light) and some remedial visual driving, you might be disappointed. Running off of HDMI, I could only drive one monitor due to the lack of other ports, and the age of the card really started to show when I opened up Premiere to run some export tests. I could not get the card to run any of the benchmarks correctly and at a resolution that is considered barely useable in today’s video standards. 

GTX 470 Pros and Cons

Pros!Cons!
Extremely low cost. 
Games mostly need to play at 1366×768 to be playable. 
Low power draw.
Only one HDMI port on the card.
Is still usable for light games.Not a lot of practical uses outside of gaming. 

GTX 470: Is it A Buy?

Buy it if…

The GTX 470 is a buy if you are looking for an ultra-low-cost GPU that is still usable for some gaming or if you have an old PC that you want to turn into a small Home Theater PC. This is also a good in-between GPU. Say that you are building up a PC and can’t find a compromise somewhere else in your budget, this might be a good option with a clear upgrade path in the future. 

This card would also be a winner for a small form factor that you are trying to keep very quiet and cool. The power requirements of this card are incredibly low by today’s standards. The TDP is 215, and the recommended PSU is only 550W. Could you imagine if you put an RTX 3060 in a PC with only 550W? There would be no power for anything else on the PC. 

 I also got the nostalgia kick from seeing the old design of cards that I haven’t seen in quite some time. So if you are looking to build a dream PC from 10 years ago, be sure to pick up one of these for a low price. 

Don’t buy it if…

The GTX 470 is not for someone who is looking for an everyday performance that can compete with modern-day cards. If you are looking forward to playing new Triple-A games as they are released or even some heavier non-Triple-A games, this card will not be able to handle it. 

This is not your card if you want to use creative programs like Adobe Creative Suite or Blender. As I covered earlier, the GTX 470 could barely keep up with some export benchmarks in Premiere at modern-day resolutions. 

Largest robotics companies

NVIDIA designs GPU’s, APIs for data science and high-performance computing, and SoCs for mobile computing and car manufacturing.

Final Thoughts

As much as I have enjoyed reviewing this card, I think the nostalgia might have clouded my eyes. 12 years ago, this was a top contender GPU. When you installed it on your PC, you just knew that games were going to look and feel better. Now, in 2022, those things I knew in 2010 are wildly different. I can now easily play games at 1440p or even 4K – no more of this 1366×768 nonsense.

This is not to put a cloud over anyone else’s retro parade because I know I have certainly enjoyed the one I was able to share with you, but more to put a warning label on the parade. This GPU was tremendous and still surprisingly holds up, but if you are looking to relive the glory days of maybe when you first started building PCs, it might be kind of a letdown. 

Up Next…

Frequently Asked Questions

How good is the GTX 470?

The GTX 470 is a good GPU, but compared to modern cards it does not stand a chance. It can run games on medium to low settings though, and it’s not too bad for the price.

How old is GTX 470?

The GTX 470 is 12 years old.

Is GeForce GTX still good?

Compared to modern GPUs like the RTX 3080, the GTX 470 does not compete, but by itself, it performs respectably well, considering it is 12 years old and you can find it for less than $100.

When did the GTX 470 come out?

The GTX 470 came out on March 26th, 2010.

To top