The GT300/Fermi Thread

[saaya]

Well, Ferni is not a gaming GPU, so gaming numbers will be OK but the real money is in GPGPU

says who? nvidia... and you believe them?
theyve been talking about gpgpu and tegra as big cashcows for 2 years now everytime they are questioned about the success and profits of their desktop and workstation parts and they need something to distract investors
but how much have they made with gpgpu so far?
how much have they made with tegra?

sure those markets have potential and their products do too, i guess... but does that pay their employees salaries? it only does if their employees get paid in stocks, cause in the stockmarket claiming to have a big product tomorrow means swimming in cash today, but in the real world things work differently

I disagree, that's AMD's style of marketing, NV likes to compare their products to their previous generation. It's much like Apple forever comparing themselves to MS and MS comparing themselves to their older product. It's bad marketing bringing good or bad attention to your rival, making as if they don't exist is the ultimate in arrogance which works.

traditionally, yes... but then what was all the hype at the end of last year?
what was all the hype at gtc? if that wasnt an attempt to get people to camp on their cash then what was it?

it didnt work very well, and now that they have actual fermi silicon and are close to launch, supposedly, they have the chance to do some REAL pr damage and get people to camp... so why hold out? to keep ati in the dark about the exact specs and perf numbers for a couple of weeks? as if that would make any difference to atis pr campaigns or future designs... a few weeks are nothing in that regard, and ati has a good enough idea where fermi perf is at already and probably has a pr campaign lined up already...

im pretty sure, they dont show anything because its not that great... they need more spin power to make the numbers look great as the numbers themselves arent overwhelming...

The GeForce GTX 265 and 275 will stick around for the first half of the year as Fermi isn't expected to reach such low price/high volume at the start of its life."

and they cant cut the prices of those parts that much cause they arent making much with them as is... so what does that mean for prices?
historically nvidias strategy has always been to offer slightly-notably higher perf than the competition and charge extra for it.

as i see it there are 2 possible scenarios:
1) 360 beats 5850 and 5870, in which case the 380 should beat the 5970
2) 360 is at least as fast as a 5850 but doesnt beat the 5870, and in that case the 380 probably cant beat 5970 either, and nvidia needs a dualgpu card ()
im pretty sure that nvidia will aim for the first, but itll come down to yields... if they have a notable amount of chips that has less working blocks than what they need to beat a 5870, then they will HAVE to create a part that sits between the 5850 and 5870.

anyways, it boils down to this, 360 will probably cost 400-450$ and 380 will cost 650-700$, and a 395 would probably cost 900$+. heres a big hint imo, a 395 would be pretty expensive, and despite the thermal and power issues, even a 999$ retail price would mean that nvidia makes less money on it than on a 380. which makes no sense... why would you launch a highend product that either costs so much nobody buys it, or costs close to your current highend product but you have a lower margin on it. the only reason would be PR, to have the performance crown...

so if nvidia prepares a 395 already, it means they fear they wont capture the perf crown with a 380. that they prepare it doesnt mean they will launch it though... they might have it in the pipeline for a while, like they did with the 8800 Ultra...

if nvidia really preps a 395, to me that means that a 380 wont be able to beat a 5970, or at least not notably.

i'm still running g92's, they've served me well, it's a good product when priced right. i just want to see at least 3 gf100 based geforce cards.

yepp, totally agree... g92 was a very nice chip... g200 is terribly inefficient compared to it...

i agree with you, we can wait, true performance is really a year away with driver maturity....

i dont think so...
i used to think the same, but drivers dont improve performance that much... there have been several articles proving this myth wrong... over a year the perf usually only improves around 10%
there are just a lot of bugs with a game here and there that get fixed and that then gives a unique performance jump of 30% or 50%...