The Fermi Thread - Part 3

[purefun65]

My logic is you compare hardware in the proper class, it should be quite obvious that higher cost and performance is generally associated with multigpu configurations.

I guess by your logic you must believe that a $500 card competes with a $700 card.

good responce. im saying is ati has yet to respond to fermi. price is what what supply and demand dictates as of today. so there for we can debate between multiple gpu cards or price per card is a grey area.

[Dami3n]

Today prices here,
5970-541 EUROS
GTX480-479 EUROS
55870-339 EUROS

So if you can compare 5870 vs 480, you can do the same with 480 vs 5970

[Periander6]

Denial is strong here. But the truth is, he absolutely nailed it.

No. Listen, I'm running a 4830 myself right now and my recommendation for a high end desktop GPU is and will probably remain the 5850 for the near future, but you have to give credit where credit is due. Nv has managed to jam a ton of forward looking arch improvements and GPGPU stuff into this thing and still managed to make it fairly competitive in pure GPU terms right now. That's a major accomplishment that's going to pay off in the long run. Charlie can't seem to see anything beyond the current state of the high end desktop GPU market, and his predictions of financial d00m for Nv are totally off the mark. Nv is actually way ahead of the curve on a lot of things right now, and that is going to become painfully obvious to just about everyone over the next year or two.

[***Deimos***]

Just when you thought your 850W PSU was enough for your stock PC:


It gets worse:


Power consumption figures in benchmarks can sometimes be quite revealing:
Its probable that the 5870 isn't using a good portion of its resources in Unengine Heaven.
Whether its poor driver optimization or design limitation is unknown.

Surely with crazy high power output, the GTX480 is being used 100% by driver!?
Its very possible, like i7/Phenom, that typical scenarios use much less power than special case (recall how AMD advertised "typical" not "max" Phenom power)
nVidia might then purposefully slows down shader execution in Fermi in these special non-game scenarios to ensure advertised 250W spec.

[purefun65]

Today prices here,
5970-541 EUROS
GTX480-479 EUROS
55870-339 EUROS

So if you can compare 5870 vs 480, you can do the same with 480 vs 5970

good point but the card has not been released yet. it is not available YET

[bill_d]

good point but the card has not been released yet. it is not available YET

and like the 5970 went up in price whan stock first hit the stores
you don't think the 480 will get jacked up

[purefun65]

and like the 5970 went up in price whan stock first hit the stores
you don't think the 480 will get jacked up

I'm betting on it

[zerazax]

Dead last = 10% worse?

5870 is dead last compared to GTX480.
5850 is dead last compared to GTX470.

10% worse is not dead last, it's a close finish.

You apparently don't understand English very well. Arguing semantics much?

Where did my statement that the GTX4xx's finished dead last prove to be wrong?

They ARE dead last out of the 5 in performance/watt, which clearly contradicts bamtam5's statement.

[Sn0wm@n]

Just when you thought your 850W PSU was enough for your stock PC:


It gets worse:


Power consumption figures in benchmarks can sometimes be quite revealing:
Its probable that the 5870 isn't using a good portion of its resources in Unengine Heaven.
Whether its poor driver optimization or design limitation is unknown.

Surely with crazy high power output, the GTX480 is being used 100% by driver!?
Its very possible, like i7/Phenom, that typical scenarios use much less power than special case (recall how AMD advertised "typical" not "max" Phenom power)
nVidia might then purposefully slows down shader execution in Fermi in these special non-game scenarios to ensure advertised 250W spec.

*censored* ...... wow..... seriously 850watt for sli 480gtx ??? how much watt does the mobo and cpu get into those figures????

[highoctane]

Surely with crazy high power output, the GTX480 is being used 100% by driver!?[/B]

Are there any other power consumption comparisons in any of the reviews using something like furmark?

[***Deimos***]

It runs at 95C but only runs at ~70% fan speed, it is not maxed out.

And the HD4850 was also very hot, 100C+ was not unusual at all. This is designed to run at 100C.

Also the core is at 100C, it's not like the backplate is running at 100C.....

My 6600GT also ran at 100C. But it was only like 50W. And the fan was stuck with dust. The 4850, runs near 100C on purpose to keep the fan speed as low as possible. You can tradeoff much lower temps at higher fan speed for a bit of rusling noise.

There is a HUGE difference.

On the GTX480 you cannot tradeoff fanspeed for lower temps. Fan is already at 70%+!!

If you dial it down to 30% the thing will have a meltdown = FIAL.

If you crank it up to 100%, you *might* get down to 80C - the highest I've reached when overclocking GTS250 = FAIL.

Power normalized to 5850=max (+/-20):

card	max	heaven	furmark	Crysis	comments
5970	300	264	315	258	looks pretty accurate
GTX295	289		342	287	xbitlabs OCCT:GPU is smoking!
GTX480	250	321	329	301	somebody is fibbing
5870	189	192	225	199	~200 in games vs 189 advertised 
5850	158	158	158	158	---------------------
heaven=toms, furmark=anand, crysis=anand

[zerazax]

*censored* ...... wow..... seriously 850watt for sli 480gtx ??? how much watt does the mobo and cpu get into those figures????

Well you can subtract 851-479 = 372W more for the extra card, assuming nothing else was changed. That's at the wall of course... taking a 0.85 efficiency, that's 316W (at 0.80 efficiency, its 298W). So either way, the cards are drawing WAY over the 250W Nvidia advertised.

Holy moly!

[cegras]

Best performance per watt ...


In ...


Unigine ...



....

[purefun65]

Well you can subtract 851-479 = 372W more for the extra card, assuming nothing else was changed. That's at the wall of course... taking a 0.85 efficiency, that's 316W (at 0.80 efficiency, its 298W). So either way, the cards are drawing WAY over the 250W Nvidia advertised.

Holy moly!

give or take that can be a fair assumption.

[Sn0wm@n]

did they have the usual pci express sticker on their box????

[purefun65]

well if u take 5 reviews from top websites and average it. this card eats alot of power. on avg. about 147 watts more than a 5870 under full load and in game about 92 Celsius temp

[zerazax]

well if u take 5 reviews from top websites and average it. this card eats alot of power. on avg. about 147 watts more than a 5870 under full load and in game about 92 Celsius temp

147W?

Nah, it seems to be ~100W or so across the various reviews

[***Deimos***]

*censored* ...... wow..... seriously 850watt for sli 480gtx ??? how much watt does the mobo and cpu get into those figures????

Around 150W for everything in the system except video cards.
This is based on the total power output of 57xx and 58xx.
+/- maybe 20W.

Thus, the two 480s are sharing 700W between each other. Maybe 20-40W for error and another 20W for extra power of SLI chipset... that's still 640W!

Its impossible to justify how the system could possibly use 350W, given advertised 250Wx2.

The system by itself can't use more than 226W which already included a 5750.
850W probably because EVERYTHING - PSU, CPU, DRAM, HDD, and ofcourse 480s - are LESS EFFICIENT because of VERY HIGH TEMPS caused by the 480s. I would never store critical data on hard drives in there.

147W?

Nah, it seems to be ~100W or so across the various reviews

yes GTX480 is about 100W (45%) more than 5870.
The only card worse in perf/Watt is the GTX295.. sorry GTX480 #2 place.

[highoctane]

Well you can subtract 851-479 = 372W more for the extra card, assuming nothing else was changed. That's at the wall of course... taking a 0.85 efficiency, that's 316W (at 0.80 efficiency, its 298W). So either way, the cards are drawing WAY over the 250W Nvidia advertised.

Holy moly!

Kind of an eye opener thats for sure, too bad TSMC doesn't have a high-k metal gate process on 40nm, 28nm should be high-k metal gate or at least be an option with TSMC later this year.

I'm wondering how much of a role leakage may be contributing with the high transistor count.

[grimREEFER]

did anyone compare 2x5970's to 480 sli?
im starting to think that might be the only concrete nvidia win

imo everything other matchup is so close that you can argue for either, for the most part

[Chickenfeed]

did anyone compare 2x5970's to 480 sli?
im starting to think that might be the only concrete nvidia win

imo everything other matchup is so close that you can argue for either

I'd be more interested in seeing 3x 5870. Quad scaling usually sucks. However it seems that 480 sli is hit in miss right now. In the games with good scaling, the scaling is *really* good. In the games with poor scaling, you may as well turn off your heater and save on natural gas...

[Blacky]

Nvidia partners prolly going nerdrage right now for this massive fail, after waiting so long for this...

[***Deimos***]

Kind of an eye opener thats for sure, too bad TSMC doesn't have a high-k metal gate process on 40nm, 28nm should be high-k metal gate or at least be an option with TSMC later this year.

I'm wondering how much of a role leakage may be contributing with the high transistor count.

TMSC 40nm is NOT the problem. Somehow magically AMD made a DUAL-GPU card with less power and lower idle power.

Last time I checked, 5970=4BT. GTX=3BT. 4>3 isn't it?

The problem is the design. AMD put a LOT of focus on maintaining 4870's very high performance/TDP. nVidia was focused on top performance irregardless of means.

Its exactly the same way P4 fell from grace at 3.8Ghz.

(this is why Intel doesn't just hope for 1%performance/1%power, but requires it and much higher)
Now, where are all those Dual-Fermi folks? or the Fermi laptop weirdos.. I wanna see them spin their way out.

Nvidia partners prolly going nerdrage right now for this massive fail, after waiting so long for this...

Who wants to be the first to offer 5 year warranty.. anybody? What about 3 year? Any takers? EVGA? BFG? They will provide SOME warranty (and house fire insurance), right?

Radeon HD 5870’s 27W idle board rating, achieved in part by clocking its GPU down to 157 MHz and its GDDR5 memory to 300 MHz. Nvidia goes even further, dropping clocks to 50 MHz core, 67 MHz memory (270 MT/s data rate), and 100 MHz for the shaders. Nvidia doesn’t cite its idle board power, but an educated guess would still put the GeForce GTX 480 around 60W at those frequencies

idle	core	mem	shader	power
5870	157	300	157	27
480	50	67	100	60!?

[purefun65]

Nvidia partners prolly going nerdrage right now for this massive fail, after waiting so long for this...

dude it is bad but not laughable. this arch has some legs to grow into. this card when shrunk and reworked will be a strong performer.

[grimREEFER]

My 6600GT also ran at 100C. But it was only like 50W. And the fan was stuck with dust. The 4850, runs near 100C on purpose to keep the fan speed as low as possible. You can tradeoff much lower temps at higher fan speed for a bit of rusling noise.

also, in the case of your 6600gt, it was getting hot, but it wasn't really heating up the environment too much because there wasn't much energy being effectively outputted.

in the case of a 480, it will be able to heat up a room pretty well cause it's certainly not getting hot just because of an incompetent cooler.