The GT300/Fermi Thread - Part 2!

[-Sweeper_]

Tom Petersen Director of Technical Mkt at NVIDIA describes how the performance of GeForce GTX 480 compares to existing solution. We highlight the different aspects of the benchmark and how the new GeForce excels in tessellation. Tom also offers a quick peak at how 3DVision Surround is pushing PC gaming forward

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpdPSZB8A8E

check this out

[***Deimos***]

Surprisingly clear PCB photos of the
GTX470
GTX480
HD5870 for comparison

comments on razno's Fermi PCB photos:

470:

• 9+2 blue, 3 red capacitors, by constrast 5870 PCB only has 5 med caps.
• 4 phases for GPU (big ass inductor + 3 FETs each)
• Huge DRAM chip looking inductor + 2 caps and 3 FETs for GDDR5 Vddq
• no visible IC for Vreg on right side of board, 1 med and 3 small DIP IC on left.
• silk screen for 3 extra caps on right, and 2 small IC on left

480:

• 6 phase power? 5870 only had 4!? (same 3 FET for each phase setup)
• 4870's 2 big caps and huge inductor for GDDR5, replaced by tiny caps and inductors??
• 6 blue, and 8 big red caps
• 6 extra (tiny) chips for each phase (with silly putty still on)
• to the right of vent holes PCB looks barren
• 1 med and 2 small IC on left. Guessing big Vreg chip under white square.
• silk screen for 4 small and 1 large IC on left.
• silk screen for extra 3rd 6ping power connector !!
• smaller vent holes than 470! and 470 had 3 mounting holes around them!(fans screws to pcb)??

Interesting observations compared to AMD:
5870 uses 4 phases, 5850 uses 3 phases. Both nVidia and AMD abandoned 1 PCB for all GPU long ago.
Despite 2x SP, 5850 has ~power as 4850/4890 - 100-120W. Very unlikely for GTX470.
GTX470 has so many capacitors on right, no room for full heat sink.
Obvious absence of nVidia display chip.. and DVI+DVI+HDMI -> no eyeFinity equivalent?

[KingOfsorroW]

check this out

The guy needs to see the dentist. Other than that it really looks like fermi is going to hit the market in the end of this months. (I sold two of my 5870s today...)

[highoctane]

Surprisingly clear photos of the 480/470 PCB... not long before we get volt mods like for 5870:
http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7053

Umm it says 5870 and has 8 memory chips for 256bit bus.

Sharp image of Radeon HD 5870 PCB

[damha]

Umm it says 5870 and has 8 memory chips for 256bit bus.

lol.. 9/18/2009

[Teemax]

check this out

Thanks for the video!

Since I'm nice :P I took the following screenshots for your digestion:


It looks like:
- Charlie's and other's rumor that GTX480 kicks HD5870's arse in Unigine Heaven benchmark is true.
- 3D surround is likely a software response to ATI's eyefinity. They plugged the 3rd monitor into the second GTX 480.


It's nice to finally see something REAL from NVIDIA!

[zerazax]

heise.de (in german) has new information about the GTX470

shader@1255 MHz
RAM@1600 MHz

Vantage-X 7511 (compare GTX285/HD5850/HD5870: 6002/6430/8730)
Vantage-P 17156 (compare HD5850/HD5870: 14300/17303)

Unigine benchmark
4xAA [fps]: 29/22/27 (GTX470/HD5850/HD5870)
8xAA [fps]: 20/19/23 (GTX470/HD5850/HD5870)

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldu...lt-946411.html

Hmm, if those #'s are true... slower than a 5870 at higher settings?

[ajaidev]

All this proves one theory of mine, Nvidia believe in using tessellation as a distinctive feature in DX11 from their rivals. Without heavy tessellation "tessellation in Heaven is very heavy" there is a chance that 5870 2GB comes close to GTX 480's performance.

I think Nvidia will make a huge deal about tessellation and most TWIMTBP games will include heavy tessellation effects that ATi cards just cant work with.

[zalbard]

I think Nvidia will make a huge deal about tessellation and most TWIMTBP games will include heavy tessellation effects that ATi cards just cant work with.

How's that?

[Dark-Energy]

All this proves one theory of mine, Nvidia believe in using tessellation as a distinctive feature in DX11 from their rivals. Without heavy tessellation "tessellation in Heaven is very heavy" there is a chance that 5870 2GB comes close to GTX 480's performance.

I think Nvidia will make a huge deal about tessellation and most TWIMTBP games will include heavy tessellation effects that ATi cards just cant work with.

Yeah, I strongly believe this too. Nvidia made Fermi to handle tessellation better against ATI.

Just read this off of gametrailers forums. "It's something like this, ATI cards have a dedicated unit called a tessellator that can only perform tessellation related functions and since it's a dedicated unit it has fixed performance. Nvidia has a flexible solution that can allocate performance to where is needed, if tessellation is demanding it will allocate resources toward it accordingly, if not more resources will be dedicated to increase performance for shaders etc."

So basically why it's faster is cause it can allocate and is dynamic. Now, what I would like to see is tessellation being disabled, and then see the performance. It's probably a safe bet to say the performance will be very close, but I don't know. I'm speculating that the 480 is going to be faster than the 5870 anyways in regular games, the question is how much. Could be 20%, could be on par, these are all with common games. Don't know about the 470, could be slower, or it could catch up in some games. Though, what worries me is with tessellation enabled seeing the 5870 struggle. They're going to have to come up some kind of solution in the future when more games come out this year that use tessellation. The only thing they have right now is the dual GPU cards that could beat it, but at the same time they are dual GPU and there's the micro-stuttering issue, and the fact that 60fps single gpu doesn't equal 60fps on a dual GPU.

Don't know about the roadmap though, the only thing I can think of is Northern Islands, but that's still a ways away. ATI could really be stuck in a rut here with tessellation until new hardware comes out.

[ajaidev]

How's that?

When tessellation will only have a ON and OFF option and the ON option will enable heavy tessellation that only Nvidia h/w can handle and ATi's 5870 may have a difficult time handling heavy tessellation.

What Nvidia will have is a legit excuse of why the games perform better on Nvidia hardware than ATi one. Just like Nvidia Physx was the keyword for 2009, tessellation may as well be a keyword for Nvidia for 2010 !!

[SKYMTL]

How's that?

Current ATI cards get castrated when tessellation is enabled.

[bill_d]

When tessellation will only have a ON and OFF option and the ON option will enable heavy tessellation that only Nvidia h/w can handle and ATi's 5870 may have a difficult time handling heavy tessellation.

What Nvidia will have is a legit excuse of why the games perform better on Nvidia hardware than ATi one. Just like Nvidia Physx was the keyword for 2009, tessellation may as well be a keyword for Nvidia for 2010 !!

maybe if you want to run without af and aa, but i think i'll wait is see benchmarks from reviewers

[Musho]

Lol, guys, look at this screenshot. Nvidia is magically using version 1.1 of heaven. This could bring an improvement to the FPS numbers of heaven. We don't know whether they used 1.1 or 1.0 for their HD5870 benchmarks... Also, the HD5870 seems to catch up with higher IQ settings. I would love to see a benchmark with atleast 8x AF and 8x AA.

[Dark-Energy]

I'd like to see the benchmark with AA and AF maxed out too.

[Dr_Swizz]

When tessellation will only have a ON and OFF option and the ON option will enable heavy tessellation that only Nvidia h/w can handle and ATi's 5870 may have a difficult time handling heavy tessellation.

What Nvidia will have is a legit excuse of why the games perform better on Nvidia hardware than ATi one. Just like Nvidia Physx was the keyword for 2009, tessellation may as well be a keyword for Nvidia for 2010 !!

You might be very well be right about that. It certainly sounds typically like Nvidia.

[HuffPCair]

Well I just saw on nvidia driver site they already have 300 series on the list for driver downloads. So it must be getting close.......errrr

[annihilat0r]

Except this is not the 300 series

[trinibwoy]

You might be very well be right about that. It certainly sounds typically like Nvidia.

It sounds typical of Nvidia to highlight their product's advantages? Hmmm, I wonder why other companies haven't thought of that brilliant idea!

[jaredpace]

I wonder why the GTX 480 has a two pin fan connector and GTX 470 has a 4 pin one?

one white two-pin connector is for a luminescent logo

[eric66]

Current ATI cards get castrated when tessellation is enabled.

uhmm yeah but only problem is that nvidia is only good in demos never saw any tesellation games tested

[annihilat0r]

never saw any tesellation games tested

I am inclined to think this is because there are no such games

[eric66]

I am inclined to think this is because there are no such games

wha ? dirt 2 stalker AvsP

[Tim]

It sounds typical of Nvidia to highlight their product's advantages? Hmmm, I wonder why other companies haven't thought of that brilliant idea!

lol so true.

[annihilat0r]

avp maybe, haven't played it. dirt 2 and stalker? if 1 pixel changes because of tessellation I don't call it tessellation

what I call tessellation is the awesome rocky ground in Unigine Benchmark. I don't care if the left pocket button of an enemy is rendered in tessellation or not