The Fermi Thread - Part 3

[***Deimos***]

Computer history is whimsical and key pivotal moments seem to happen in August.
2002: 9700pro came out. $399. Same 100fps in Quake3 as GF4. Great AA performance. Nothing special. DX9 wasn't released yet. XP was about to ship.
2 years later, the elegance of the 9700pro bore fruit in Far Cry. ArtX, creators of GameCube, new design evolved into X800, X1800s and XBOX.

But the most key pivotal time in computer history I can imagine in MY lifetime - 1995.
- Win95 was launched catapulting Microsoft from millions into billions.
- IE and Netscape Navigator.. the web had begun.
- Playstation! No more blocky scrollers. 3D! Gaming opened to those beyond 10yr olds.
- Voodoo and Quake were being polished off to launch in 1996.
- and Pentium Pro was launched!

Wait, "whats that?" you ask. Surely it can't be as big a deal as Win95!?
It was power hungry. Huge die made on 500/350nm with novel offdie cache. Same 200Mhz max clock as Pentium.
And Win95/apps sometimes ran slower than on Pentium.

Pentium Pro
First x86 server processor. First OOO architecture. RISC core running CISC, with pipelined FPU - starting idea for SSE. Intel's 4th 32bit processor, but first actually optimized for 32bit performance. And it was the seed that evolved into famous Intel cash-cows like Pentium2, Pentium3, PentiumM and 11 years later, Core2.

IMHO, Fermi is NOT the great leap G80 was. Unlike the 9700pro and Pentium pro, Fermi is already MUCH faster from day1 and will only get faster. And DX11 games show amazing performance. All the unified cache, C++, GPGU etc was a bold leap forward by nVidia. They could have done like 5870, and just doubled up the G200 and saved themselves all the headaches.

In the near future, DX11 games and GPGPU application will reveal and demonstrate more of Fermi's design advantages. And ofcourse it will be basis for future designs. I wouldn't be surprised if 5 years from now, Unreal5 or Doom6 use OpenCL/C++ and requires Fermi architecture, just like Vista/Win7 require DX9 (9700pro) for Aero.

Although, A++ for architecture design, I still wont buy the product (GTX480). I just dont have $$$ and haven't even finished playing through pile of DX10 games. But, by the end of summer, kinks and availability should be fixed, and who knows, maybe even "200W low power" (as ironic as that sounds) versions. Maybe I'll make the Win7 plunge and pick one up. 5870 better for now, but Fermi definetly more future proof.