The Fermi Thread - Part 3

[damha]

nVidia was stuck in a narrow 75Mhz zone, between 574Mhz - 651Mhz, for many years. (From 7900 GTX, to 8800 GTX, 8800 ULTRA, 9800 GTX, GTX280 all the way up to GTX285).

Until a couple days ago the only exception was 9800GTX+/GTS250. Even the 40nm GT240 clocks in at meagre 550Mhz.

On air, 800. With better cooling 900. Perhaps they use higher voltage than necessary to compensate for TSMC channel length variance.



Dunno. But they aren't just changing core clock - mem too.



At launch I recall, GTX280 was < 9800GX2. In contrast, Fermi is consistently > GTX295. Performance, especially DX11, (in my mind) is outstanding.

The *only* problem with Fermi is power/heat. If they "fixed" it before maybe they can do it again:
GTX280 600Mhz 230W "close" to 250W Fermi - really more like 300W.
GTX285 650Mhz 180W

5870 scales poorly with clocks. At 950 or even 1000Mhz, it wont make up Fermi's 25-30% lead in DX11+AA. So a 200W, 750-800Mhz "GTX485", would just extend that lead.

Problem with GTX280 analogy is that 55nm was available and used by AMD for 1.5 years... 40nm is already the half-node shrink of 45nm.

You buy a GTX480 first!

And live with:
- $200-$300 premium over the 5870
- lower oc (if you oc)
- super hot case
- A family complaining about the noise levels in the house, your PC is competing with the vacuum cleaner
- at least $7/month additional cost on your monthly bill if you game an average 2 hours/day and your cost is $0.8/kWHr (for us it varies from 0.7 to 0.9) (check here for your state. If you live in NYC, OWNED)
- If you don't have a 1000W psu, another $200 in cost
- No oc headroom if you don't get a waterblock or don't water cool (water block? +$200)
- High chance of failure. If the GPU runs at 100°C I can't imagine what the VRMs are running at. I wish someone tested this card with an infrared scanner. There is no way these cards will not have high failure rates, logic + history have proven this to us
- Poorer AF quality (you can claim it is not noticeable, doesn't change the facts)
- PhysX/CUDA
- 10-15% faster performance than the 5870

If I get a 5870, I live with:
- No CUDA/PhysX
- 10-15% slower performance

All I can say is, if that satisfies you then by all means do not let anyone stop you from experiencing the greatness of the 480.