NVIDIA GF100 & Friends speculation

[Silent_Buddha]

But would the 5870 be $400 bucks if nvidia launched a full gtx 480 back in oct or nov ? I'm not convinced that it would have been. I think that both the 5850 and 5870 have been very high margin parts for ati these past 6 onths.

That would have totally depended on what Nvidia would have priced Fermi at. Considering the state of 40 nm at the time was extremely bad yields for Fermi would have been even worse than now when producing the same A3 spin. I don't think they could have priced a 480 low enough to force 5870 to readjust price at that time.

Now fast forward to today and I could certainly see 5870 being lower in cost as both cards would have benefitted simultaneously with fixed 40 nm production thus allowing Nvidia to attempt to be more price competitive.

Regards,
SB

 

[aaronspink]

FRONT
BACK
Mod Edit: 3MB png (?!) pics ahoy!

Compare the GTX280 GTX285 8800GTS and the "Fermi" (GTX470) coolers.
May Fermi heatsink a little bit bigger, than 8800GTS heatsink, but the fan smaller!

Maybe the cheapest cooler in this compare the Fermi cooler.

AND THIS SO HOT?!

yes, the fan may be smaller, but the power is significantly higher. its a ~2A fan. The cost of a fan isn't in the plastic blades, fyi.

Also, the fermi heatsink is a far more advanced heatsink than the others shown. First its an exposed heatpipe contact cooler, second it has 4 heatpipes distributing thermals to the fins vs the others which have 3.

 

[aaronspink]

Well economies of scale will determine that. You could have said the same thing about DVD drives years ago when they were going for 400-500 a drive. Try backing up anything on a single DVD these days, I would gladly welcome cheap 50gig+ discs to burn to.

Well when you find those cheap 50gig+ discs let me know...

Problem with BR is that it is expensive and it has no real drivers. If it had come out 5 years earlier and didn't have HD-DVD to compete with it might have been able to establish itself.

 

[MrBelmontvedere]

HD-DVD is dead and buried. remember how many years it took DVD to replace VHS? the same thing will happen with BR. it will take a few more years for BR drives to become common in PCs. DVD will not last forever.

 

[Kurt]

Back on topic now, please? &more pretty pictures!

 

[Vincent]

Has anyone ran the DX11 benchmark between 5870 and GTX470 on Metro 2033 ( from STEAM ) ?

 

[Arty]

Has anyone ran the DX11 benchmark between 5870 and GTX470 on Metro 2033 ( from STEAM ) ?

$100 says its faster on the GTX.

 

[eastmen]

I don't think AMD ever realized in what sorry state GF100 was in during 2008, so I doubt they ever took that into consideration when speccing up Cypress XT.
You might want to speculate it was conservative once AMD realized a couple of months before launch that nVidia would need a tape-out Home-run to ever put the Fermi architecture against the Evergreen architecture, at least on the high-end parts.

I don't think AMD ever underestimated GF100 and drew up Hemlock as a worst case scenario. A 4870X2 that needs to keep up appearances while you get your refresh out.

At most AMD would've had a couple of months of free running with an impending graphical curbstomp had there be no such thing as a Hemlock.

P.S. A pricewar Eastmen? for that you need:
A. A product on the market and available
B. A product that is priced low enough to take away sales from your part because of perf/$ and "awards" in direct comparisons.

Those two are not a given (yet) so I wouldn't bank on that.

Hey is it to much to ask for a 5850 at $200 bucks. Unemployment only goes so far !!!!

 

[eastmen]

Has anyone ran the DX11 benchmark between 5870 and GTX470 on Metro 2033 ( from STEAM ) ?

Its a TWIMTP title. I have little doubt that it will be faster on nvidia. That is why I don't buy those titles until they are cheap.

 

[Ailuros]

I don't think AMD ever realized in what sorry state GF100 was in during 2008, so I doubt they ever took that into consideration when speccing up Cypress XT.

After reading Anand's Evergreen development story, I doubt it was a matter of "speccing up" in 2008, but rather "speccing down". Execution tells you if it was the right move or not

You might want to speculate it was conservative once AMD realized a couple of months before launch that nVidia would need a tape-out Home-run to ever put the Fermi architecture against the Evergreen architecture, at least on the high-end parts.

They could probably sense even somewhere in mid 09' that NV will not have it easy if ever to go into production within the year. But at that spot it's way too late to change anything fundamental.

I don't think AMD ever underestimated GF100 and drew up Hemlock as a worst case scenario. A 4870X2 that needs to keep up appearances while you get your refresh out.

That and the fact that AMD "serves" the high end/enthusiast segments since RV670 with dual chip SKUs. Flipping back to Anand's article they changed plans to go for a high end single core chip somewhere in early 2008.

P.S. A pricewar Eastmen? for that you need:
A. A product on the market and available
B. A product that is priced low enough to take away sales from your part because of perf/$ and "awards" in direct comparisons.

Those two are not a given (yet) so I wouldn't bank on that.

Yields at TSMC are IMHO still nowhere near "perfect" and supply constraints are a headache too. When TSMC kicks in Fab14 aside of Fab12 in ~Q3 then they estimate themselves a potential of 160000 wafers/quarter compared to the current 80000.

With that in mind I'm not willing to "forecast" anything until I see GF100 launching and how availability exactly looks like.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Crysis 2 will rely on the artistic design of it's environment ( heavy post processing , beautiful sets , attractive lighting models , shining colors ..etc), to boost it's visuals , rather than graphics brute force , but graphics complexity will remain the same .

They did that in Crysis Warhead , which looked better than the original Crysis , despite having lower texture resolutions , .. that was a consequence of designing beautiful levels .

Erhm?
Cysis Warhead has reduced I.Q. over Crysis, what are you talking about?

 

[onethreehill]

One of the GTX 480 OC Editions consumes 305W
http://translate.google.com.tr/tran...etimi_305_Watt_olabilir-18648.htm&sl=tr&tl=en

 

[trinibwoy]

I don't know if I'm a typical PC gamer, but I haven't used a game disc in years. If it's not on Steam, I'm not buying it. I barely need the DVD drive, let alone a Bluray drive. I don't think I had anything in that DVD drive since installing Windows 7 in October.

Same here. I yanked my drives over a year ago and now I share an external drive between my desktop and laptop. So far I've only used it for Win7 and the free copy of FC2 I got with my card. Steam all the way. But I guess we are limited to the capacity of retail media and it's too bad.

OTH, is that a factory overclocked 480 pulling > 300w? How did they swing that?

 

[ShaidarHaran]

One of the GTX 480 OC Editions consumes 305W
http://translate.google.com.tr/tran...etimi_305_Watt_olabilir-18648.htm&sl=tr&tl=en

Great! Can't wait to see the performance of such a beast!

 

[ShaidarHaran]

OTH, is that a factory overclocked 480 pulling > 300w? How did they swing that?

I don't believe OEMs buy factory overclocked cards, other than the likes of Alienware/Voodoo/Falcon NW/etc. Unless you're building a high-volume PC for the masses, who cares about PCI-e certification?

 

[Archaeolept]

Breaking the 300 watt barrier shouldn't matter for those cards' intended audience, but it does help play into the zomg Fermi is teh powerhungry beast bad juju.

 

[neliz]

Breaking the 300 watt barrier shouldn't matter for those cards' intended audience, but it does help play into the zomg Fermi is teh powerhungry beast bad juju.

Ehm.. if a slightly OC'ed part does indeed break the 300W barrier.. doesn't that mean that it is a power-hungry device?

As far as I know, real OC'ed cards are not showing up for a good while.

 

[Archaeolept]

well, of course, but it's not really a line that I would think nvidia would be happy with pushing...

Just think that it's a bit of a bad idea to mention these things yet... unless they really need something to point forward to, ie. in order to say "sure, we're not beating the 5870 by much, but just wait till next month!1"

 

[trinibwoy]

If with 50% more transistors and 50% more power they can't beat the competition by a tangible margin then they aren't going to get there with little tweaks. If the 470 is as close to the 5870 as those early numbers indicate then I see no reason for them to be pushing the limits of the PCIe spec on the 480 just for a few % points. Why not just overclock the 470 instead?

 

[eastmen]

If with 50% more transistors and 50% more power they can't beat the competition by a tangible margin then they aren't going to get there with little tweaks. If the 470 is as close to the 5870 as those early numbers indicate then I see no reason for them to be pushing the limits of the PCIe spec on the 480 just for a few % points. Why not just overclock the 470 instead?

The 470 may just be close to the 5870 because of frame buffer limitations.

Of course if those benchmarks of the 10.3s vs 9.12 are correct the 5870 might get a whole lot faster just in time for the 470/480 launch