The Fermi Thread - Part 3

[bill_d]

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

maybe [H] was right and BFG will go red

[Blacky]

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.

History repeats again, GTX 480 = GTX 280 (though GTX 480 is much worse), but in fermi case I don't see any die shrink soon (GTX485).

[GoldenTiger]

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

Still not seeing the "massive fail" with 1920x1200 or 1920x1080, plus 4x AA, or 2560x1600 4x AA (16x AF). Minimum framerates 20-30% higher, average 15-20% across most reviews. Some higher, some lower... . The main well-done review belonging to Hardware Canucks shows this very clearly. $400 vs. 500, is about 25% difference in price, not that out of hand for a top-end single-GPU card. Yes, it's hot... yes it draws a lot of power, but no it isn't a "massive fail".

[***Deimos***]

eVGA has 725Mhz superclocked edition - how brave of them to increase clocks by 3.5%.

GTX480 - melt an igloo in seconds
GTX480 - helping with global warming has never been easier!
GTX480 - when you see the juices on the burger, its time to flip one more time and you're done.
GTX480 - We finally beat the freezing aliens of Crysis!
GTX480 - nVidia - helping teenagers fake fevers since 1999.
GTX480 - hey baby, its hot in here.. why dont you take off that bra *wink*
GTX480 - Its time to kick as and chew bubble gum, and stop whining about a little heat - I've been to hell and back.
GTX480 - may cause dizziness, blurred vision, dry mouth, dehydration, shortness of breath, headaches, naussea, explosive diahrea

[Svnth]

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

Yeah I can imagine how upset EVGA is that they sold out of pre-orders within 30 minutes of reviews reviews going up.

[Blacky]

Still not seeing the "massive fail" with 1920x1200 or 1920x1080, plus 4x AA, or 2560x1600 4x AA (16x AF). Minimum framerates 20-30% higher, average 15-20% across most reviews. Some higher, some lower... . The main well-done review belonging to Hardware Canucks shows this very clearly. $400 vs. 500, is about 25% difference in price, not that out of hand for a top-end single-GPU card. Yes, it's hot... yes it draws a lot of power, but no it isn't a "massive fail".

The only things positive fermi has is SLI scaling and some OC headroom, the rest still fail, 6 month late fail, power consumption fail, fan noise fail , price fail, thermals fail, after being delayed multiple times and make us wait for what? 15% better performance than competition and slightly better min frames? When the competition (5870) clearly wins in all the departments that fermi failed today plus keeping a good fight in fps's. For me is a massive fail...

Yeah I can imagine how upset EVGA is that they sold out of pre-orders within 30 minutes of reviews reviews going up.

yeah fanboy's that is, they don't care to buy fail products , if you have read news the volume fermi cards are coming in april, having sold out fast already doesn't mean they have sold gazillions of cards and its just PRE-ORDERS you said it, Fermi is not enough to stop people from buying ATI 5000's...

[zerazax]

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.

During the summer after G80's release, I had a 8800 Ultra in the stock configuration in my Antec P182.

Here in SoCal, temperatures were consistently in the 90 F+ range... so my card often hit artifacting to the point where I had to keep my case open.

I left it on overnight once, and when I woke up and walked out of my room, the air was noticeably cooler I eventually got a Thermalright HR-03+ to cool it, but damn, after that summer, I've been wary of getting cards on the high end of heat/TDP without water cooling.

And to see that this card is even hotter??

[bill_d]

Yeah I can imagine how upset EVGA is that they sold out of pre-orders within 30 minutes of reviews reviews going up.

but how many was that

a pre-order is selling something you don't have yet

how do you sell out of something you don't have yet

[GoldenTiger]

but how many was that

a pre-order is selling something you don't have yet

how do you sell out of something you don't have yet

You can sell out of what you have been allocated to receive to sell . They know they're getting XXXXX units for launch, and thus put up a pre-order with a quantity of XXXXX units. Once the numbers match... it's sold out.

[MrMojoZ]

Still not seeing the "massive fail" with 1920x1200 or 1920x1080, plus 4x AA, or 2560x1600 4x AA (16x AF). Minimum framerates 20-30% higher, average 15-20% across most reviews. Some higher, some lower... . The main well-done review belonging to Hardware Canucks shows this very clearly. $400 vs. 500, is about 25% difference in price, not that out of hand for a top-end single-GPU card. Yes, it's hot... yes it draws a lot of power, but no it isn't a "massive fail".

You forgot late, expensive to make and massively hyped by nvidia. There is alot of fail going on here for what they are shipping. I'm worried about reliability as well but we'll see how that plays out.

[To(V)bo Co(V)bo]

Thats because most people probably know you generally don't directly compare multigpu cards with single gpu cards.

Might as well consider 2p & 4p rigs directly compared with 1p rigs.

Then why did people compare mcm core2quad cpu's with AMD Phenoms? The phenom was a "true quad core" compared to core2quads. The 5970 was designed to work as and like a single gpu.

The 4870X2 was made to compete with gtx285, Nvidia wasnt able to make the gtx295 for a long time till they were able to shrink and keep power in check.

[GoldenTiger]

You forgot late, expensive to make and massively hyped by nvidia. There is alot of fail going on here for what they are shipping. I'm worried about reliability as well but we'll see how that plays out.

Late matters how during gaming once it's in my hands? Expensive to make... I'm getting it at a good price, what's that matter either, I am paying $499 + ship from amazon at the moment ($4 overnight with prime) or $508 shipped from newegg once it's instock there, whichever comes first? I don't care how much or little it was hyped, it is what it is...?

[CadESin]

Thought I would upload a few pictures from the PAXEast event. And talk a bit of what I saw. I hope its not to much, but thought some people might be interested as I was.



The event was hosted by Drew Henry, General Manager, GeForce GPUs



Started out by talking about PC Gaming and how they were out to make a great cards for great gamers, and a big introduction to the GTX 480 and GTX 470, normal PR stuff. But I did like this comparison of GTX 4XX die to that of 4 Core i7 CPU's being the same size !



Nothing was said about ATI or about their cards beyond saying that Nvidia was out to build a next gen card and thus made a brand new arch. The only performance slide shown was this one comparing a GTX 480 to a GTX 285 (and thats 2X in the upper corner).



They really wanted to point out it was twice as fast as last generation.



Then came the part of the show I was having a hard time keeping a straight face. To promote the GTX 480 and 470 Nvidia came up with a new slogan. and ... wait for it ... here it is!



Maybe I am dead in side but PR like this has never worked for me, maybe it works on the general public though.

We were all given 3d glasses (2 of them had green paint on them, people who had them won a GTX 480) and so following the introduction the event went 3D.



Next came a short showing of BF:BC2 in Stereo 3D at about 30fps, Nvidia also showed off a Need for Speed Car customizer using Ray Tracing that will come with every GTX 480 and 470 sold. Looked amazing, seemed to be running at around 2fps.



The show wrapped up with a bit of fooling around with the Rocked Sled demo they had shown before and Metro 2033 in Stereo 3D at somewhat playable FPS, 30fps in Metro at best. Then they showed World of Warcraft in Stereo 3D at maybe 10-15fps, it was kinda sad to see.

Beyond the event I found a lot of GTX 480's on the exhibit floor, from EVGA, PNY, and Galaxy to name a few. The Nvidia booth was filled with 480 SLI systems by Maingear.



It was a well done event, nothing shown was that amazing when really examined, but the overall feel was impressive. It was cool to see BF:BC2 and Metro 2033 in 3D. Nvidia also had a Stereo 3D demo up of Just Cause 2 which was amazing, good frame rate too, though settings looked to be middle of the road. As well as one with Need for Speed: SHIFT.

I am unsure what I think about the slogan, CRANK THAT S#!T UP did nothing to sway me and seemed like something a High School Student would be told by his friends before doing something that ends up on YouTube.

On a side note, I also spent some time with one of the guys at the Nvidia booth who said he was in charge of the thermals and cooling. After a bit of prying he made it very clear to me that the heat sink on the GTX 480 is as big as they could make it and as efficient as possible. He seemed to extremely proud of what he had made, and after reading the reviews I see why. There is a LOT of heat to get rid of.

Overall, I will be sticking with my 5770's until I can pick myself up a 5870 2gig card, Fermi is overall, a bit of a no show.

[GoldenTiger]

Thought I would upload a few pictures from the PAXEast event. And talk a bit of what I saw. I hope its not to much, but thought some people might be interested as I was.

Thanks for the post/pics... I 100% agree on the slogan heh, really silly!

[zerazax]

Wow, thanks for the pics and recap CadESin!

CRANK THAT S#!T up is hilarious though

I mean... with the entire power consumption and noise issue we've seen, I'm not sure that was the best choice of words form PR

[Caparroz]

Nearly 30 pages after Fermi official release I'll quote myself:

Fermi threads are the lulz. I think every forum on the internet should have one permanently stickied.

Thanks to all admins and mods.

[highoctane]

Then why did people compare mcm core2quad cpu's with AMD Phenoms? The phenom was a "true quad core" compared to core2quads. The 5970 was designed to work as and like a single gpu.

Single socket is single socket, did you have pay a premium for two physical cpus & double ram or need custom profiles, no.

5970 was designed as a dual gpu solution on a single card and is priced & competes accordingly, single gpu should be self explanatory.

[Solus Corvus]

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

The only one I saw that put 2x 5970s against 2x GTX480 was ixbt. GTX480 SLI loses:

http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html

It'd be nice if more reviews included 480 SLI and 5970 CF results, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

[highoctane]

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?

Not sure about the others but PNY offers a lifetime warranty with registration.

http://www3.pny.com/GTX-470-1280MB-PCIe-P2876C434.aspx
http://www3.pny.com/GTX-480-1536MB-PCIe-P2877C434.aspx

EDIT: EVGA offers lifetime was well with registration.

[Olivon]

The only one I saw that put 2x 5970s against 2x GTX480 was ixbt. GTX480 SLI loses:

This review is total faily

[ajaidev]

I have read over a bazillion reviews now my conclusion is split in two parts:

Cons:

1080p gaming gives similar/close fps as 5870.
Eats quite a bit more than the 5870, you could have 5870 CF and still manage to save a few watts.

Pro:

AA performance seems good less of a hit.
In some games its performance is closer to 5970 than 5870, but then again 5870 CF would perform better than the 5970.

Result:

5870 2GB @ 900Mhz would close the gap with GTX 480 and it would be very close around 1080p. GTX 480 as it stands at $500 is very good card for the price. Lets see it its price does not go the way 5870 did and keeps stable at $500 "Its very hard tough"

If 5870 2GB @ 900Mhz is available around $420-$429 it would be a good alternative against the GTX 480 specially considering the less power consumption.

BTW 5870 was listed at $399 originally maybe at last AMD will offer 5870 at the release price

[Jamesrt2004]

gah really can't decide to get a new card.... or an iphone.

[Solus Corvus]

This review is total faily

I agree that the review is not very good. But I don't see any others with 2x 5970 numbers for comparison.

[SimBy]

Thought I would upload a few pictures from the PAXEast event. And talk a bit of what I saw. I hope its not to much, but thought some people might be interested as I was.

Tnx!

[gOJDO]

The only one I saw that put 2x 5970s against 2x GTX480 was ixbt. GTX480 SLI loses:

http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html
http://www.ixbt.com/video/itogi-vide...2560-pcie.html

It'd be nice if more reviews included 480 SLI and 5970 CF results, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

According to the graphs, they are close. But what they are measuring is average FPS, which isn't so important. GTX 480 SLI should deliver much smoother gaming experience due to more stable frame rate.

Further, when better nVidia drivers arrive we can expect 2x480GTX to outperform 5970 CF in min and average FPS, as well as in smoothness.