Fermi/4xx

[Otis11]

So was reading up on fermi in the news section trying to gauge the performance of this card and found it was just a bunch of people ranting on about rumors or comparing them (with little evidence and alot of speculation) to ATI cards, but from my POV the only thing that matters is crunching performance. These cards were made for that, so I'm still holding out hope that they'll deliver on that side (regardless of gaming performance).

I really don't want this to turn into the thread in the news section. I figure we're all in this for the best of reasons. I'll leave it at that.

So what do you guys think of fermi? Who's taking the plunge on this one?

[PoppaGeek]

After reading this I have had many mode swings. From crying over never being able to afford a $699 GPU to being mad over a $699 GPU to laughing over it to despair to apathy.

Of course there should be lesser models but geez this was a crappy to start off with a Fermi announcement.

[123bob]

I thought this review was pretty complete for what is known now. HERE

The thing looks like it will be a monster. It better be for $700 USD.....

Whether it will make sense for us to crunch it will take some time. For PPD per dollar, I don't know.

I'm open to all sorts of stuff when it comes to the farm though. I just look for my three biggies.

1. Initial cost.
2. Performance in PPD.
3. Power consumption, or cost to run the thing. (run-rate cost)

If something looks like it will perform, I give it a try. Of course, my total hardware budget is a small concern too....

Regards,
Bob

[CaptMorgan]

So what do you guys think of fermi? Who's taking the plunge on this one?

What do I think- at this point I only skim the news section about fermi. I can't imagine what's it's like to be Admin on this forum or in that section with stuff like this.
Plunge is the appropriate word also because it was only in the past year I purchased my first 260- and I have sworn I would not pay more than 300 for a GFX card. Of course what we are doing here is important- but for that price I would expect 1 card to do all of what stoneageman's entire farm is doing now!

[Snow Crash]

I think that fermi will be more powerful at crunching than the best we have today.
I think I can't increase my crunching power or heat envelope so to up my PPD I have to move to fermi.
I think they will stay within the PCIe spec of 300W max so my current rigs, both with Corsair TX750s will be able to feed them properly.
I think I would love to jump on one at pax east (they are saying that you *may* be able to buy one there) to replace my 285.
I think I want to see some real fermi crunching results before replacing my 295.
I think that starting my vacation (vegas baby!) on the weekend they will be at pax east is pizzing me off.
Wait a second ... I'm going to vegas, I'm not really pizzed :-)
I think I want to upgrade my machines to hexcore, ssd, and fermi.
I think my wife is going to have something to say about that.
I think therefore I am.

[ajaidev]

I have four 5850's that run milkyway@home 24/7.

I bought all four for a price of around $1300-$1350, now the performance in milkyway@home is very good mainly due to the DP factor. Now i will move on to other projects later that use SP also and report the performance.

In effect i bought a pair of 5850's for $675 which is still cheaper than GTX 480 and i am sure in DP its performance will be lower not sure about SP tough. If people just want SP well 5770 CF may be a better route, you can basically get quad 5770 for around $650.

Quad 5770 SP almost equals to Tri 5850 SP but falls a bit short.

[Snow Crash]

Nice numbers but GPUGrid does not use ATI yet.

[Otis11]

Nice numbers but GPUGrid does not use ATI yet.

Yeah, unfortunately there isn't much competition to NVIDIA in this section... Until we get that support for ATI we're stuck.

Hopefully I'll have time to read those reviews tonight!

Oh, and SC - Nice.

[Blauhung]

Yeah, unfortunately there isn't much competition to NVIDIA in this section... Until we get that support for ATI we're stuck.

Hopefully I'll have time to read those reviews tonight!

Oh, and SC - Nice.

This always makes me sad, I really want to put some points down for the project, but I tend to disagree with Nvidia's business practices. But if Fermi wins price/perf in my spending bracket I may have to go for it

[Otis11]

I agree... if there was a project I was passionate about and it scored well with ATI, I'd probably have a 5850 at the very least - but as it is... yeah.

[ajaidev]

Ya thats what i was saying the numbers looks strong and ATi's perform very well, my 4*5850's have been running milktway@home for quite some time and i have scored some serious numbers.

I was very much looking forward to fermi but then Nvidia does something like cut the DP power of the card in home consumer model I like working with milyway@home and i am willing to spend to a limit for them but i will in no way buy a dam expensive Tesla card to do DP work loads.

I have had short chats with quite a few cpu-gpu programmers and they say DP is much better than SP and in the future DP wil be preferred well why is it not used in most such crunchers today well Nvidia supports SP more readily than DP great. I hope AMD does not follow their twisted path and cut the DP feature with the next home consumer level card.

We really need ATi support in this and a several other projects the SP/DP power ATi's 5 eries offers is really strong, we need some thing to exploit it properly till that time milkyway@home is my main project..

[skycrane]

i for one wont be. ive never been on the bleeding edge, but there is no way im spending 700 for a gpu.
if i can buy 2 or 3 cards for the same price, there is no way that fermi would be faster.

[INFRNL]

I cannot buy a $700 card when my gpu limit is only $200

would love to see how these actually perform though