Fermi to launch at PAXEast... hope you like dissapointment

For those lucky enough to be headed towards PAXEast, you might be able to get hands on time with Nvidia's Fermi graphics cards, as well as a chance to maybe carry one or two of those cards home.

However, those interested in Nvidia's next chip might want to ready what SemiAccurate has to say on the matter:

http://semiaccurate.com/2010/02/20/s...gtx480-scores/
http://semiaccurate.com/2010/02/22/f...sting-appears/
http://semiaccurate.com/2010/02/22/f...ch-26th-march/

Okay, in all fairness, Charlie is from TheInq, a site noted for it's lack of reporting accuracy, but Charlies been calling Nvidia's actions fairly reliably for a while now, and his own postings fit with what I've been hearing. The top-end Fermi card, the reported GF100 / GTX480, isn't actually any faster than the currently shipping RadeonHD 5870 in real games. The card is faster in tessellation benchmarks, but only because the existing tessellation benchmark, Heaven, doesn't work like a normal game.

Something I haven't heard, but Charlie has, is that Fermi's current drivers also have issues with DX11 / OpenGL 3.2, with various texture corruptions and other display problems. This does explain why it's been rumored that Fermi will only launch with DX10 / OpenGL 3.0 drivers...

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Then, there's the first big issue. The pricing. SabrePC is placing the GTX 480 at a list price of $699... That's the same price point as the RadeonHD 5970... if you can find one. That's also $300 more than the 5870... of which the GTX 480 is no faster then.

The GTX 470, the weaker card, is slotted with a price tag of $500. That's $100 more than the HD 5870... and if the GTX 480 can't outpace the Radeon card, it's a fair presumption that a slower version of the GPU with less shaders won't be outrunning the HD 5870 either.

Then, there's the second big issue. The heat and power usage. The RadeonHD 5870 pretty much shares the same thermal and power profiles as the RadeonHD 4870. The GTX 480... at idle, is still running the fans at 60%+ speed. Charlie's sources reported the fans were stuck at 70% speed. There's no way around it, the GTX 480 is HOT.

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Okay, If the performance is where it's being reported to be, Nvidia's going to have no choice but to launch the GTX 480 and 470 at price-points equivalent to, or slightly higher, than the existing RadeonHD 5850 and 5870 cards. If any of these cards are sold, the financial loss is going to make the GTX versus RadeonHD 4x00 series situation look profitable.

I also don't expect that Nvidia will be shipping me cards to test before the launch... and I suspect Anandtech and HardOCP are also out of the running for press samples right now.

Thanks for the very informative post, Saist.

Also, great title. I laughed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Guess it was a good time for me to jump ship back to ATI. Enjoying my 5870 so far.

Looks like I'll be holding onto my GTX 275 for a bit longer. Thanks for the info, Saist.

I'm not surprised by any of this.

The price, it's a big chip. A really big chip in comparison to ATI's RV870. It's not going to be cheap to make or it's initial yields high. Then you have nVidia's traditional "performing nearly as well as our previous gen twin GPU card" and pricing it as such. In this case the GTX 295, which is currently over $500.

As for performance I believe the problem comes down to one word. Power. I'm not sure if nVidia wanted to introduce a card that requires three, PCIe power connectors. Easiest fix, run the chip slower and maybe at a lower voltage. Don't be surprise to see this card with two 8-pin PCIe connectors. And of course power also means heat. Anyone care for a three slot video card?

As for the drivers. Unlike the 8xxx, 9xxx and GT200 chips, the Fermi isn't just throwing more SPs on a die and calling it a day. There are significant differences in the underlying organization. So I would imagine that the drivers may need to be built from the ground up to use this chip at full capacity.

It is also possible that nVidia is planning on releasing a revamped driver with significantly improved performance after seeing what ATI will do to counter the Fermi. Brand the new drivers with a catchy powerful sounding name (Xviscerator) then kick back and watch the buzz as the new drivers kick the performance up by 30% in whatever games are being used at the time for benchmarking. God, I'm starting to think like a marketing person.

I also believe that nVidia actually doesn't care about the high end video card market right now. The Fermi cards are really targeted at Wall Street/University/national labs for HPC, High Performance Computing, applications. There isn't a pricing pressure in that market right now, at least nowhere near the same as in the consumer video card market. As gamers balk at the pricing, the majority of Fermi chips manufactured will be for the HPC market.

I"m going to wait for more confirmation on some of the specs etc. I"ve read a few blogs that are calling semiaccurate a bunch of fud, and I prefer not to rely on just one site for information.

The Price points I"ve seen from ZDNet are shoing $680 for the 480 and $500 for the 470. The real question is will they be worth it.

Yes, buts great news for those of us still waiting to grab the higher end 2xx cards. Price's fall when the next gen is released (even if it sucks because of the buy it nao peoples).

Even better, PAX is right before my birthday. I can get myself a little gift on the cheap. Woot!

Bah... I don't care if Fermri is an overrated card with an air conditioner built onto it, all I want is pricing to drive ATI's cards down a bit. Looks like I'm not going to get that

Curse you Nvidia! The reviews for the Radeon 5830s are coming in and every one says about the same thing: "this would be a good card if it was $20-40 cheaper"!

Yea, it appears that while the HD 5830 is about 10-15% faster than the HD 5770, it's a 25% slower than the HD 5850. On top of that it uses more power than the HD 5850, due to it's higher clock speed.

List prices for HD 5770 ~ $180; HD 5830 ~ $250; HD 5850 ~ $300; so base on performance the HD 5830 should be priced around $220. Problem with that it is still uses the same large GPU that's in the HD 5850 as well as the same board. Sure it's a neutered version of that chip with half of the ROP circuitry disabled as well as an additional 320 SPs but the manufacturing costs for everything else must be similar.

I bet in a month we'll see it's price dropped to near $220. It outperforms the GTX 260 and the GTX 275 is nowhere to be found. And with nVidia saying that there isn't going to be a Fermi based mid level card any time soon, ATI will be happy to fill the niche between the GTS 250 and the GTX 285 with three cards at various price points to nVidia's one.

oog. http://hardocp.com/news/2010/02/26/f...icing_reported :: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20100225PD202.html

There is also an alternative explanation to the reported performance numbers. The card is so powerful that games are now CPU bound.

We'll see what the mass tech media thinks of the card once it comes of NDA and is benchmarked on a dozen different tech sites if the card and GPU are a bomb or the bomb.

There's too much bull being slung around. Just wait for official news before you get yourself into a tizzy.

How's NeoAGF for information?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...&postcount=594

I really hate it when I can't sleep.

Psyte the large picture listing power requirements, etc. is a photoshop job, and a poor one at that. Compare the 6 in 600 to the 6 in 6-pin, different font. It looks to be a GTX 280 picture originally.

Edit: Nope my bad. It's a pic from a box mock up at CeBit. Still it's a bad photoshop job by the guy whose job was to do the mock up.

I'm pretty sure the new nVidia cards have the same two dual-DVI outputs on the back, which is pretty disappointing. Probably going to go ATi this round because they have two dual-DVIs and a mini-displayport for 3 monitor eyefinity fun.

Well as the date comes closer, the rumors are a changing. The lastest is this.

I'm not sure, mine came with my computer from ibuypower.com. Dunno where they get theirs, though I think they're based in California.