The GT300/Fermi Thread - Part 2!

[eric66]

It is a huge claim but see my statement above. Once again, everyone seems to be jumping down on the statement without looking at numbers that actually back it up. Look at DiRT, AvP, Heaven and BF: BC.

What ATI did is a good thing: they concentrated on making a DX11 compatible GPU by adapting an older architecture instead of taking a ton of time designing a newer one. They knew there was no point in concentrating too hard on DX11 so early into its life cycle and they were able to actually beat NVIDIA to market while offering a perfectly suitable solution.

So, yes the HD 5000 series takes a massive hit in DX11 but it was never meant to be their end-all DX11 product anyways. That name goes to their upcoming architecture that will be released when there is a good amount of games that support DX11.

have you looked at dirt 2 benchs ? i don't see awesome dx11 power of fermi series

[SKYMTL]

have you looked at dirt 2 benchs ? i don't see awesome dx11 power of fermi series

As I said: I wasn't comparing ATI's cards to NVIDIA's with my statement. Rather, it was a general observation regarding the HD 5000 series' performance in a DX11 environment. C'est toute.

HOWEVER, supposedly the GF100 series was built with DX11 in mind which could translate into great performance in supporting applications. But that is just a rumor at this point and only time will tell if it translates into better performance.

[BenchZowner]

have you looked at dirt 2 benchs ? i don't see awesome dx11 power of fermi series

have you verified and figured out that those benchmark numbers are real ?

[ since you like playing 20q ]

[***Deimos***]

A couple of online retailers have already begun taking pre-orders for NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX 480 and 470 GPUs despite the fact that cards are a month away from launch. Listings for the GTX 470 start around $500, while the GTX 480 is over $650! Surely these can't be the MSRPs for these GPUs, or are they?
NVIDIA says no. The company has issued the following statement in response to the online listings:

NVIDIA and our launch partners have not released pricing or pre-order information yet. Any Web sites claiming to be taking pre-orders should not be considered legitimate.

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I like their Unengine Heaven video. Shows card does well in difficult situations.
And with 50% more bandwidth, and 50% more DRAM, any 19/12 - 25/16 fps better be good.
Reviews and benchmarks are nice to fonddle over, but ultimately in real life nobody's gonna play L4D("1") or 3DMarks on their 480. They're old.
The heaven benchmark is the most advanced future looking, and thus far better indicator than old old DX9 crapola.

To those advocating the opposite, old school RE5 and UT3 benchmarks... fools. Does anybody really care about 240fps or 200fps? What's the point of replaying them on GTX480?

If that nice big performance gap shows up across the board in DX11 games, especially tough scenes to raise the min, nVidia's high price will be "justafiable".
In retrospect, expect PR to get mugged if all they have is HL2: 240fps vs 200fps of competition.

[eric66]

have you verified and figured out that those benchmark numbers are real ?

[ since you like playing 20q ]

well look at chinese bench pic then look at later posted unigine pic unless both are ps its obvious that they are done by same person cause numbers match each other

[ilkkahy]

If nvidia really makes loss on every sold gtx 470 & 480, does it mean that nvidia fans will prevent from buying these fermi products to support nvidia and on the other hand ati-fans will purchase them out of spite?

[NaMcO]

It's 20% better than a 5870, it's nVidia drivers, it features PhysX (better with than without) and has better game support: It sucks? Wake up please.

Oh, did i mention individual game profiles for no constant messing with settings? Hardly a loser, it's late and still a winner. Lower end card (470) makes more expensive 5870 pale heh...

[ajaidev]

Oh ya one more thing i think that both GTX 480 and GTX 470 uses analog VRM setup and this is a very curious thing to do. The reason why i said curious is that when 5870 was launched with digital VRM i asked the advantages that it will have over analog system and i was told that digital VRM works good handling lower voltage than higher ones but analog VRM works better in handling higher voltage with stability.

[Iconyu]

It is a huge claim but see my statement above. Once again, everyone seems to be jumping down on the statement without looking at numbers that actually back it up. Look at DiRT, AvP, Heaven and BF: BC.

What ATI did is a good thing: they concentrated on making a DX11 compatible GPU by adapting an older architecture instead of taking a ton of time designing a newer one. They knew there was no point in concentrating too hard on DX11 so early into its life cycle and they were able to actually beat NVIDIA to market while offering a perfectly suitable solution.

So, yes the HD 5000 series takes a massive hit in DX11 but it was never meant to be their end-all DX11 product anyways. That name goes to their upcoming architecture that will be released when there is a good amount of games that support DX11.

When you look at Fermi it doesn't shout 'gaming' it shouts 'GPGPU', I'm still not convinced that nvidia's tesselation isn't shader bound. When you have a GPGPU that powerful you can get away with a lot of stuff on syth' benchmarks, as they tend to focus on one thing at a time.

I was excited too when I first saw the numbers, but I need to see where the power comes from, because when you turn off the tesselation in that section of the benchmark there is next to nothing there.

[Piotrsama]

If it weren't for ATI's real bad CCC i would have probably purchased a 5970 by now. Meh, hurry up with the numbers already, it's becoming boring.

That's a no-reason, you can use other programs.
And Nvidia's panel isn't so awesome.

HOWEVER, supposedly the GF100 series was built with DX11 in mind which could translate into great performance in supporting applications. But that is just a rumor at this point and only time will tell if it translates into better performance.

A rumor that smells like a bunch of PR stuff, just like AMD saying that their native quad core was going to be better than Intel's "sandwiched" one.

If nvidia really makes loss on every sold gtx 470 & 480, does it mean that nvidia fans will prevent from buying these fermi products to support nvidia and on the other hand ati-fans will purchase them out of spite?

Hehe, the problem is that availability is going to be limited, so Nvidia knows beforehand what kind of losses to expect.

[RaV[666]]

It's 20% better than a 5870, it's nVidia drivers, it features PhysX (better with than without) and has better game support: It sucks? Wake up please.
Oh, did i mention individual game profiles for no constant messing with settings? Hardly a loser, it's late and still a winner. Lower end card (470) makes more expensive 5870 pale heh...

Curiously build post.
20% better figure is for 480, and thats best case REAL GAME scenario.And for sure it wont be cheaper than 5870
470 on the other hand, is mostly inferior to 5870, and about price, i havent anywhere seen thats its gonna be cheaper than 5870.Cheapest 5870 on newegg is 379$ now.And i REALLY dont think thats gonna happen.(i would love that tho).
So how 5870 can be pale in comparison to weaker 470 is beyond me.Physx ? Few gimmicks with huge requirements arent for me.
Lets hope for a cheaper than 5870 tho, it would drive 5xxx prices to their intended MSRPs and i would have a chance of buying 5850 ;-)

[labs23]

If nvidia really makes loss on every sold gtx 470 & 480, does it mean that nvidia fans will prevent from buying these fermi products to support nvidia and on the other hand ati-fans will purchase them out of spite?

LOL. Nice question, but who would want to burn a $500+ cash? If(apparently) Fermi is doomed to fail(sales-wise), then it'll be.
Hmmm, at least for Sony, the PS3 has a longer amount of time to make up for the loses, not to mention royalties.

Just saying it, no hate for Fermi though, as a consumer.

Snip...
Oh, did i mention individual game profiles for no constant messing with settings? Hardly a loser, it's late and still a winner. Lower end card (470) makes more expensive 5870 pale heh...

With all those positives in mind, we'll soon be seeing price-cut meteorites. Time will tell in the next few months.

[Arxagelos]

have you looked at dirt 2 benchs ? i don't see awesome dx11 power of fermi series

no max fps given and don't expect in dirt2 with only water,flags and crowd tesselation to see deference, in heavy tesselated games will see difference if it exist.

[Manicdan]

Curiously build post.
20% better figure is for 480, and thats best case REAL GAME scenario.And for sure it wont be cheaper than 5870
470 on the other hand, is mostly inferior to 5870, and about price, i havent anywhere seen thats its gonna be cheaper than 5870.Cheapest 5870 on newegg is 379$ now.And i REALLY dont think thats gonna happen.(i would love that tho).
So how 5870 can be pale in comparison to weaker 470 is beyond me.Physx ? Few gimmicks with huge requirements arent for me.
Lets hope for a cheaper than 5870 tho, it would drive 5xxx prices to their intended MSRPs and i would have a chance of buying 5850 ;-)

i think AMD has made enough profit and will be happy to drop 5870 to 300$ the week of nvidias release.

[highoctane]

Fermi is doomed to fail(sales-wise), then it'll be.

Fermi will sell without question regardless of performance, there's at minimum an equal number of Nvidia fanatics as there are ATI fanatics with neither group willing to touch the other brand.

[saaya]

supposedly the GF100 series was built with DX11 in mind which could translate into great performance in supporting applications. But that is just a rumor at this point and only time will tell if it translates into better performance.

pfff i dont buy that... its just as much based on Gt200 as rv870 is based on rv770, and its not a new architecture... its pretty obvious that if there was a clear goal with gf100, it was gpgpu... they went for massive shader core power, which, they CAN use for tesselation... but i really dont think that this was their original idea behind all that shader power...

[SKYMTL]

pfff i dont buy that... its just as much based on Gt200 as rv870 is based on rv770, and its not a new architecture... its pretty obvious that if there was a clear goal with gf100, it was obviously gpgpu... they went for massive shader core power, which, they CAN use for tesselation... but i really dont think that this was their original idea behind all that shader power...

Well, I guess we can agree to disagree then. Granted, the Shaders, TMUs and ROPs are still called the same thing but look at the difference:

GF100:




GT200:




Some of the main differences of the GF100 (there are MANY more)

- Large dedicated (and unified) cache structure

- Fixed function stages are now integrated into each cluster (or SM as they were called on the GT200) through the Polymorph engine

- Texture units now have direct access to the cache structure

- Scalability through unified ROP + L2 + memory controller structure

- Dedicated L1 Load / Store cache

- Incorporates a raster engine into each GPC which groups the three pipeline stages (Edge Setup, Z-Cull and the Rasterizer)

- GDDR5 memory controller

- DX11-necessary components such as a dedicated tessellator, etc.

[Behemot]

Why did Igor Stanek lose his nerves?!

Cause he does not sleep, deals 2 phone cals most the time, lies whenever possible and is totaly spinless?

[LesGrossman]

So for the last 3 months Nvidia talked about Uniengine and then Uniengine and more Uniengine and finally Uniengine. And then takes the best 5 seconds from all the benchmark run, makes a graph and then proudly shows it everywhere.
What does all this mean? You decide.

[H2O]

So for the last 3 months Nvidia talked about Uniengine and then Uniengine and more Uniengine and finally Uniengine. And then takes the best 5 seconds from all the benchmark run, makes a graph and then proudly shows it everywhere.
What does all this mean? You decide.

That most of us reading this thread will probably be buying a HD5870/5890 sometime around April 1st.

[HuffPCair]

That most of us reading this thread will probably be buying a HD5870/5890 sometime around April 1st.

This is sad but true. I about bought a 5850 the other day but I am giving nvidia the benefit of the doubt.

This is their last chance if doesnt drop they lost me as a customer for awhile.

[Jokester_wild]

This is sad but true. I about bought a 5850 the other day but I am giving nvidia the benefit of the doubt.

This is their last chance if doesnt drop they lost me as a customer for awhile.

same, im waiting to see what this shenanigans ends up with. worst case by the time I get a 5870 it will be cheaper

[saaya]

Well, I guess we can agree to disagree then. Granted, the Shaders, TMUs and ROPs are still called the same thing but look at the difference:

GF100:




GT200:

look at what? those are two different ways to illustrate a gpu, of course it looks very different

- Large dedicated (and unified) cache structure

evolution

- Fixed function stages are now integrated into each cluster (or SM as they were called on the GT200) through the Polymorph engine

tweak

- Texture units now have direct access to the cache structure

evolution

- Scalability through unified ROP + L2 + memory controller structure

tweak

- Dedicated L1 Load / Store cache

evolution

- Incorporates a raster engine into each GPC which groups the three pipeline stages (Edge Setup, Z-Cull and the Rasterizer)

tweak

- GDDR5 memory controller

thats a standard component, isnt it? its nothing special...

- DX11-necessary components such as a dedicated tessellator, etc.

weeeeelll we will see about that

i have to reword my statement though, there is def a lot more new stuff and improved stuff in gt300 vs gt200 than there is in rv870 vs rv770... rv870 seems to be 99% of a double pumped rv770, in gt300 there are at least a lot of tweaks and improvements over gt200, even though i wouldnt call it a new gpu. i think it doesnt deserve to be called GF100, it shouldbe GT300 imo... just like rv870 is just that, rv870, and not cypress, some new architecture or design etc... but hey, who cares

i think its funny that marketing has penetrated some chip companies so deeply that they even give their asics marketing friendly codenames

[trinibwoy]

saaya, I'm sorry but if you think the geometry and cache changes on Fermi are simple "tweaks" like we're used to then you should stay away from arch comparisons.....

[Sam_oslo]

...
evolution

tweak

evolution

tweak

evolution

tweak

..

Of course everything between sky and earth is a kind evolution or tweak of that , but the "Dedicated L1 Load / Store cache" is closer to a revolutionary step in this round. This gets Fermi much closer to become a supercomputer, because it is the part that support generic C/C++ program (very much like a x86 CPU would do).

This cache sits in-between all shader clusters and can be accessed by all of them. This makes it possible to have unified read/write cache, which allows program correctness and is a key feature to support generic C/C++ programs. This is actually pretty revolutionary step i would say.