The Fermi Thread - Part 3

[MrDiaz]

Update (March 18th):

GeForce GTX 480 : 512 SP, 384-bit, 250W TDP, US$499

GeForce GTX 470 : 448 SP, 320-bit, 225W TDP, US$349

Internal benchmarks reveal that GeForce GTX 470 is some 5-10% faster than Radeon HD 5850 and similiar for GeForce GTX 480 over the Radeon HD 5870. Interestingly, the TDP of GeForce GTX 480 is almost similar to Radeon HD 5970 which is a dual GPU card. Interestingly, our sources revealed that there are indeed plans for dual Fermi cards and the TDP of the card is probably gonna be mind blowing.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/nvidia-g...aled/8635.html
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Update (March 19th):

XFX Retail Boxing + Card revealed:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/...ards-pictured/

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Update (March 22nd):

GTX 480: Shader clock at 1401MHz, GPU Clock 700MHz, Memory clock 1848MHz, 384-bit memory interface, 1536MB of Memory. TDP 250W

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/18170/1/
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Update (March 24th):

http://futuremark.yougamers.com/foru...70&postcount=1

Thanks to a "certain" friend of mine who's under the NDA, i've had a quick look at nVidia FTP with pics, "reviewer's guides", drivers an most improtantly a whole plethora of the GTX470/480 benchmarks against the HD5850 and HD5870 and from what i've seen, the GTX480 beats the HD5870 easily by 25% on average. Sometimes it's 10% sometimes 50-60% but the GTX480 always wins.

They used the 10.2 ATi cats for their comparison by the way.

So yeah, don't read too hard into certain people's fear mongering anti-nVidia BS.

Asus' product will pack a special (supported?) feature that will allow the user to tweak the voltage to "shift into overdrive" to make things "50% faster."


Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/fer...tage,9965.html

[-Sweeper_]

sounds reasonable

[MrDiaz]

Honestly I really doubt this pricing. Knowing nVidia and their pricing history...

[-Sweeper_]

Honestly I really doubt this pricing. Knowing nVidia and their pricing history...

we've heard u$366 for the GTX470 from a chinese website; €450 for the GTX480 from FUD and now this....

maybe its true...

[nsegative]

If it's not 599 for the gtx480 I will be honestly impressed.

[RPGWiZaRD]

I think GTX 470 will probably rather be 349 - $399 and be around HD 5870 performance levels or slightly behind depending on game and GTX 480 499 - $549 with around 20~25% lead over HD5870 in avg and up to 40~50% or so in tesselation heavy benchmarks. Would love to be wrong but I can see this coming by now. Really looks like NVIDIA failed even more this round despite this was supposed to be a huge step up from last gen. Sure it's got its specific strong points but in pure gaming performance it's probably not really that convincing, if all games were using as much tesselation as Unigine Heaven benchmark it would compete very decently but unfortunately that's not gonna happen during the time ATI has time to counter NVIDIA.

Knowing NVIDIA and looking at what kinda chips and strategy NV choose it's quite obvious the OP mentioned figures are slightly on the optimistic side. NVIDIA has expensive chips that needs to be sold as high as possible at launch, it usually charges like 5% more than ATI would because there's still people buying and since there's lots of greenboy fans around still and to try and keep ATI from lowering the prices to very low levels after a while which forces NVIDIA to sell the cards with very little to no profit at all. Better start with as high prices as possible, below $349 for a GTX 470 and $499 for a GTX 480 sounds very unlikely. At least if there's still some sense over at that company. ^^

I remember the very optimistic speculations some months ago incl me of GTX 480 performing like 50~70% better than HD 5870 and very close to HD 5890 levels, seems like that was nothing more than a very silly dream. ^^

[Zed_X]

YEAH, that prices are correct! I told ya before a week!

[annihilat0r]

YEAH, that prices are correct! I told ya before a week!

as far as I remember you told something more than $500 for GTX 480 and more than $350 for GTX 470?

[Helloworld_98]

I think GTX 470 will probably rather be 349 - $399 and be around HD 5870 performance levels or slightly behind depending on game and GTX 480 499 - $549 with around 20~25% lead over HD5870 in avg and up to 40~50% or so in tesselation heavy benchmarks.

Nvidia's Unigine bench graph disagree's it will be that good, and that's coming from the company releasing the thing.

edit: BSN is a load of rubbish, nvidia stated GTX 480 = 225w (turns out to be 275w according to SA), also 480 cores, why? you're chopping off 32 cores for no reason.

I'm quite sure the retailers which posted a few weeks ago have a better price idea than BSN.

[Cybercat]

If it's only 20-25% faster overall, I consider that a failure.

[Jasonx82]

rumor has it, GTX 480 has only 480 cores and not the 512???

[annihilat0r]

rumor has it, GTX 480 has only 480 cores and not the 512???

yeah. I think that's a pretty much established fact at the moment.

[screwtech02]

Somebody forgot to add the 20% gratuitus Newegg markup too.....

[MrDiaz]

If it's only 20-25% faster overall, I consider that a failure.

At the same price point? I don't see how you consider that a failure (for us costumers anyway) If you are to expect a >50% performance increase at ~$500 price range you are seriously dreaming of a world that has yet to exist!

[Helloworld_98]

At the same price point? I don't see how you consider that a failure (for us costumers anyway) If you are to expect a >50% performance increase at ~$500 price range you are seriously dreaming of a world that has yet to exist!

you're forgetting that Nvidia put a load more R&D money into Fermi than ATi did with the 5xxx, and ATi can drop prices a LOT if they need/want to

[RPGWiZaRD]

If you are to expect a >50% performance increase at ~$500 price range you are seriously dreaming of a world that has yet to exist!

No1 said he expected >50% performance increase at $500, however there was probably a lot of people here that initially expected like 50% increase but at 600 - $650 or so. So it depends on your wallet if you concider this as a great thing or not if above prices would be true, for performance enthusiasts it's bad news but for the performance/price enthusiasts it would be good news.

[Jasonx82]

yeah. I think that's a pretty much established fact at the moment.

Dohhh im a bit sloww

[annihilat0r]

you're forgetting that Nvidia put a load more R&D money into Fermi than ATi did with the 5xxx, and ATi can drop prices a LOT if they need/want to

And you're forgetting that the 5xxx architecture is nothing new but it's a 2900xt with a lot more cores. You're also forgetting that the 2900xt was a design that took a lot of time, the 2900xt itself was late, hot, and underperforming. Yet now look at how that design made AMD the GPU leader in pretty much every price point right now.

I've got a feeling this will repeat in Nvidia this time.

[MrDiaz]

No1 said he expected >50% performance increase at $500, however there was probably a lot of people here that initially expected like 50% increase but at 600 - $650 or so.

I'm just looking at it from an "affordable" point of view. I'd rather pay the same price of the current 5000 series for 20-25% performance increase, specially better if you're looking to buy a powerful card these days.

[RPGWiZaRD]

I'm just looking at it from an "affordable" point of view. I'd rather pay the same price of the current 5000 series for 20-25% performance increase, specially better if you're looking to buy a powerful card these days.

So would I too but just saying there are prolly quite a lot of disappointed users here on XS if it's like only 20~25% faster. And no ATI would definitely drop prices significantly if above prices are to be expected so it won't have such an advantage. Compared to what prices were at launch of 5800 series and what they still are today (aren't they still like expensier ~ around same levels as at the launch, can't remember when such thing last time happened), I'd be SHOCKED if prices weren't lowered. AMD really price gauged as much as they possibly could this time around but when GTX 4xx series arrive you will probably start seeing the pricecuts.

[MrDiaz]

So would I too but just saying there are prolly quite a lot of disappointed users here on XS if it's like only 20~25% faster.

Well yeah if pricing is not an issue for people of course they would embrace the highest performance increase, who wouldn't?

I don't see myself (and I believe I speak as the majority of us) are willing to lay >$700 for a card!

[annihilat0r]

if it's like only 20~25% faster.

I doubt it's even going to be that much.

[MrDiaz]

I doubt it's even going to be that much.

Ready to bash nVidia if that isn't the minimum performance I see!

[[XC] Oj101]

If this is true... I was about to buy a GTX260 to tide me over till I can afford Fermi and then demote it to PhysX but at this price point I might just jump straight to Fermi.

[Helloworld_98]

I'm just looking at it from an "affordable" point of view. I'd rather pay the same price of the current 5000 series for 20-25% performance increase, specially better if you're looking to buy a powerful card these days.

don't forget that a lot of people already have ati 5's, I'm not going to just but a 470 or 480 if it's only 20% better than CF 5770's when I can just pay £100 for the extra card over £300 for a replacement.

and that £200 could be put towards a next gen, water cooling or the Intel 980x/970