The Fermi Thread - Part 3

[Chumbucket843]

Wow, looking at the Hexus benches, 480 is crazy fast in some games, but so "slow" in others when compared to 5870. Crysis is a major dissapointment for me.

But let's see how the other reviews do. I hope that it will shine more in future heavy tesselated DX11 games.

it might be driver related. the big variations in performance hints at that. gt200 was VERY consistent from game to game. it could be AA like gtx280 shortly after launch, remember when the 4870 beat it in crysis with aa on? when we get more reviews we can get a better idea of drivers.

[zerazax]

Apparently FarCry 2 and HAWX use a lot of triangles, which Fermi is good at, which is the reason for their significant leads

The performance delta of Fermi is astonishing though... the 480 goes from being 10% below a 5870 to 50% above depending on the game. It "averages" out to 10-20% range depending on settings (if you take out the synthetic benchmarks), but I don't think we've ever seen a card have THAT big of a gap between performance values over a card, i.e. most cards might be 10-30% faster than a previous card, not -10 to 50% for example.

Incredibly high power consumption and temperature. Even if you don't care about power consumption, you will care about temperature.

This is true. My friend had to RMA his GTX280 after a few months... twice! (thank god EVGA is literally next door to us)

He picked up the GTX 285 later and the lower heat has prolonged his card life a lot

I agree. I don't care a second for crysis though,

Ironically, that's what most Nvidia fans cared about.... but now it doesn't matter

Talk about role reversals

[Marios]

197.13 are official WHQL drivers

[zerazax]

it might be driver related. the big variations in performance hints at that. gt200 was VERY consistent from game to game. it could be AA like gtx280 shortly after launch, remember when the 4870 beat it in crysis with aa on? when we get more reviews we can get a better idea of drivers.

I actually think this is due to the architecture, and not drivers.

At B3d, most people agree that Fermi has new tri/clock power. Games like HAWX take advantage of triangles greatly. Look at the 5770 CF scaling vs. a 5870. A 5770CF is exactly the same as a 5870... and yet it can perform >> than a 5870 due to the extra cards triangle advantage.

So in triangle intensive games, Fermi sees its biggest gains.

However, in traditional texture or shader powered games (Crysis for example), Fermi falls short.

So I don't think its drivers at all, but architecture related

[Nightcover]

197.13 are official WHQL drivers

so?
they used 197.17 in the hexus review.

[MrMojoZ]

Spotty performance (driver issues?), massive power reqs and high price. These are not living up to the hype from my point of view. I really wanted to like Nvidia again for something beyond folding.

[annihilat0r]

Apparently FarCry 2 and HAWX use a lot of triangles, which Fermi is good at, which is the reason for their significant leads

The performance delta of Fermi is astonishing though... the 480 goes from being 10% below a 5870 to 50% above depending on the game. It "averages" out to 10-20% range depending on settings (if you take out the synthetic benchmarks), but I don't think we've ever seen a card have THAT big of a gap between performance values over a card, i.e. most cards might be 10-30% faster than a previous card, not -10 to 50% for example.

Yeah, this means that the Fermi architecture is really different from both ATI and previous NV cards.

Call me an optimist but I do think the obvious lack of performance in some games might be corrected somewhat by future drivers.

Nobody should buy a card because of possible future driver optimizations, though

[Macadamia]

Oh- and once you enable DX11 effects in DiRT 2 that require shader power, does the GF100 have less power to triangle setup so many polygons?
Tessellation in D2 (DX9 vs DX11) actually makes the GTX 480 less competitive.

So the GF100 will be blazing fast in Quake 3 and less effects intensive games, but once you crank post-processing, texturing, and especially shading, there' less/no advantage? (Heaven doesn't use extensive pixel shaders or post processing btw)

Good hypothesis?


@anihihilat0r - the possibility of them not optimizing for crysis is _________

[Chumbucket843]

We have already established Uningine is in NO WAY a good way to see real game experience. nVidia supposedly has the ability on Fermi to shift all its resources to tesselation, where as HD5870 has it as a set fixed resources. During real gaming Fermi wouldn't be able to run like that as it has to use its resources elsewhere.

is "we" you making up bull? if nvidia can have great tessellation performance on unigine (look at scaling too) it should be applicable in any other game. all HLSL is the same so nvidia can do the same amount of optimizations as ATi.

[Nightcover]

Oh- and once you enable DX11 effects in DiRT 2 that require shader power, does the GF100 have less power to triangle setup so many polygons?


So the GF100 will be blazing fast in Quake 3 and less effects intensive games, but once you crank post-processing, texturing, and especially shading, there' less/no advantage? (Heaven doesn't use extensive pixel shaders or post processing btw)

Good hypothesis?

post-processing is makeup for a poorly made game ( graphics wise) back in the good'old days when post-p wasn't used that much, they looked a lot better.

anyway, you can see it still perfoms great in crysis:
http://image3.it168.com//2010/3/26/1...50a09bcaac.jpg

[Vardant]

The performance delta of Fermi is astonishing though...

I was thinking the same thing. I don't remember any card being like that. It goes from being slower than HD 5870 to being as fast or faster than HD 5970.

Is it drivers or just some engines suit the card better? That's the most important thing now. Single GPU card with HD 5970 performance would be great.

Ironically, that's what most Nvidia fans cared about.... but now it doesn't matter

The same thing happened to tesselation and Unigine benchmark on the other side.

[96redformula]

is "we" you making up bull? if nvidia can have great tessellation performance on unigine (look at scaling too) it should be applicable in any other game. all HLSL is the same so nvidia can do the same amount of optimizations as ATi.

Just see Uningine 2.0 thread, its got your answers as to how creditable it is....

I personally like the benchmark itself as it shows tesselation it action, but hearing things like nvidia licensed its own version 1.1 and some of the other things in the thread keeps me from considering it creditable to compare cards.

[[XC] Oj101]

i dont get it, nVidia took 6 months to bring Fermi out, and when its released it does nothing but "tie" the 5870 which has been out for 6 months, seems like ATi is ahead of the game, only if the drivers were released faster with more bug fixes, ATi would be whipping the floor with nVidia. If those numbers are true, nVidia is in alot of trouble, more power than 5870, more expensive, but same performance, gee i wonder which one i would buy

That sounds exacly like the HD2900, yet it sold well.

[hurleybird]

It's looking like Fermi having 480/512SPs is more due to power consumption than anything else. Having less SPs means they can clock higher while staying (just) within the 300W PCIe requirement, so it looks like they sacrificed some shader performance in order to increase texturing performance and pixel pushing power. If that's the fact, we probably won't see a 512SP version until a shrink or significant respin, or as some kind of 'ASUS MARS' type product that exceeds 300W.

[RaV[666]]

Oh- and once you enable DX11 effects in DiRT 2 that require shader power, does the GF100 have less power to triangle setup so many polygons?
Tessellation in D2 (DX9 vs DX11) actually makes the GTX 480 less competitive.

So the GF100 will be blazing fast in Quake 3 and less effects intensive games, but once you crank post-processing, texturing, and especially shading, there' less/no advantage? (Heaven doesn't use extensive pixel shaders or post processing btw)

Good hypothesis?


@anihihilat0r - the possibility of them not optimizing for crysis is _________

Seems very likely, crysis is heavy on shaders.

[Macadamia]

post-processing is makeup for a poorly made game ( graphics wise) back in the good'old days when post-p wasn't used that much, they looked a lot better.

<WTF>
<WTF>
<WTF>

anyway, you can see it still perfoms great in crysis:
http://image3.it168.com//2010/3/26/1...50a09bcaac.jpg

140Ws of greatness!

[damha]

[ig]http://www.abload.de/img/unigine2010-03-2321-1515tl.png[/img]

[ig]http://www.abload.de/img/unigine2010-03-2321-19a6rt.png[/img]

I guess that sort of answers my question, but it really doesn't.

In order for us to determine the true benefit of tessellation over standard polygon rendering is give me a scenario with similar complexity one done in tessellation the other using old school methods. Otherwise you aren't really making a point.

That's like saying "look how slow this car goes without turbo vs this other similar, but a 1000 pound lighter, car with a turbo!". The inverse of that analogy might make more sense but I think both apply the same meaning: not a fair comparison.

[ElSel10]

Well, if you take 5970 into account, actually we have the pretty same scenario. And let's not forget the 5990 which is ready and waiting for Fermi to show up and put it into shame.

Plenty of people are interested in single GPU vs single GPU. The 5970 is also ~$200 more than the 480, and a 5990? Come on, it's just an overclocked 5970 to 5870 speed, and it will likely be extremely expensive, probably $300 more than the 480.

Not to mention, using your logic, since the 5970 already beats it, what's the point?

[Nightcover]

<WTF>
<WTF>
<WTF>



140Ws of greatness!

All new games are over-shaded and stuffed with all kinds of stupid annoying graphics 'enhancements' can't beat it!

ex. Rainbow six Vegas 2

[Chumbucket843]

evga pics!!

^^ the 480 costs more than the 5870 and 470 because it comes with a new feature: the george forman grill.

[zerazax]

Has the major power usage thing been confirmed across different reviews? It's one thing if one review has it pegged at > 100W more, but if 3 or more say the same thing... then we have an issue

is "we" you making up bull? if nvidia can have great tessellation performance on unigine (look at scaling too) it should be applicable in any other game. all HLSL is the same so nvidia can do the same amount of optimizations as ATi.

That depends on how tesselation is done in relation to the rest of the card.... which will be based on architecture

Yes yes DX11 was slapped on for Dirt2 and other DX11 games, but the Hexus benches showed the card falling down in DX11 so I'm not sure how to explain that at all

[Motiv]

Plenty of people are interested in single GPU vs single GPU. The 5970 is also ~$200 more than the 480, and a 5990? Come on, it's just an overclocked 5970 to 5870 speed, and it will likely be extremely expensive, probably $300 more than the 480.

Not to mention, using your logic, since the 5970 already beats it, what's the point?

Well we already have the factory OCed 5870's, I suspect they'll be the answer for ATI until the refresh comes along.

[Motiv]

Has the major power usage thing been confirmed across different reviews? It's one thing if one review has it pegged at > 100W more, but if 3 or more say the same thing... then we have an issue

The hexus review was slightly lower than the other leaked site!

That depends on how tesselation is done in relation to the rest of the card.... which will be based on architecture

Yes yes DX11 was slapped on for Dirt2 and other DX11 games, but the Hexus benches showed the card falling down in DX11 so I'm not sure how to explain that at all

The 5870 beats the 480 in stalker (DX11)

[Gorguls]

The hexus review was slightly lower than the other leaked site!

Wrong.

[sideeffect]

Yes the tessellation test in Unigine heaven 2 has an advantage for Nvidia because they perform tessellation using Cuda and can assign more card resources than they would be able to in a game where other effects are also rendered.

In games that use tessellation like Dirt2 performance is very similar to the ATI cards.

The card performs quite well though and will only improve with newer drivers. The ATI performance has gone up some 10 - 20% since launch due to more optimised drivers.

The performance per watt isn't very good though.