Quote Originally Posted by Sn0wm@n View Post
unless nvidia goes the rebrand route ... LOLL





so because amd has a new gen stuff and if nvidia still uses gpu's based on the gf100 series ... they can change the name without architecture mods and be ok with it without being burned to stick ???


its a rebrand if they do this .... nothing else ... and i hope everyone who said amd did one for the 6k series will cry foul when this happens
I agree with Diltech in basically this 5 series name is being forced by AMD hand. It would be harder to sell a 4 series when AMD has released released its 6 series parts.

If we look at the juniper to barts and gf100--> gf104 technology, their is probably more differences in the architecture of gf104 than barts shift.

GF104 has a change in ratio of everything. 48 Shader blocks instead of 32, significantly different TMU ratio changes, ROP ratio is different.

Gf100

* 16 CUDA cores (#1)
* 16 CUDA cores (#2)
* 16 Load/Store Units
* 16 Interpolation SFUs (not on NVIDIA's diagrams)
* 4 Special Function SFUs
* 4 Texture Units

GF104
* 16 CUDA cores (#1)
* 16 CUDA cores (#2)
* 16 CUDA cores (#3)
* 16 Load/Store Units
* 16 Interpolation SFUs (not on NVIDIA's diagrams)
* 8 Special Function SFUs
* 8 Texture Units

"Ultimately superscalar execution serves 2 purposes on GF104: to allow it to issue instructions to the 3rd CUDA core block with only 2 warps in flight, and to improve overall efficiency. In a best-case scenario GF104 can utilize 4 of 7 execution units, while GF100 could only utilize 2 of 6 execution units."

It also lowered the fp performance in favor of decreased size like barts.

Anandtech, even said part of the gtx 460 naming is conservative.

"Given these differences, we’re a bit dumbfounded by the naming. With the differences in memory and the differences in the ROP count, the two GTX 460 cards are distinctly different. If NVIDIA changed the clockspeeds in the slightest, we’d have the reincarnation of the GTX 275 and GTX 260. NVIDIA’s position is that the cards are close enough that they should have the same name, but this isn’t something we agree with. One of these cards should have had a different model number – probably the 768MB card with something like the GTX 455. The 1GB card does not eclipse the 768MB card, but this is going to lead to a lot of buyer confusion. The best GTX 460 is not the $199 one."

If AMD didn't change their series to 6xxx, Nv probably wouldn't have gone with a gtx 5xx name change.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/a...range-market/2

If you look at what changes they made to the actual chips, NV did more with with gf100 --> 104 changes than AMD did with cypress technology to barts. Barts seem more about rebalancing cypress and adding better tesselation performance.

A gf110 based on gf104 technology(instead of gf100) is just as much of a change as juniper to barts. Not performance wise but architecturally.

Not saying it would be right but they almost have to because AMD has released their 6xxx series.

I think everyone will be seriously impressed though considering how many problems gf100 has(its kind of a mutt of an architecture, a cgpu that does games), if gf110 is able to get 20-30% more performance out fermi architecture on 40nm(for the same or lower power usage). Honestly most people have low expectations for fermi on this process, including myself and as result, a g110 that is able to take cayman honestly would be a pleasant surprise for everyone. Because with performance per watt and performance per die size they are pretty big losers to everyone except benchers.