NVIDIA GF100 & Friends speculation

[FrameBuffer]

Does this apply to both tesselation enabled and disabled? Would mean the 5870 could about keep up with GTX480 without tesselation in that benchmark. Since it's claimed cat 10.3 should boost tesselation performance we should probably wait for this before drawing any conclusions. That said, I've no doubts that the GTX480 _is_ faster with tesselation, if not the whole distributed geometry processing would be completely pointless...

iirc 10.3 doesn't have uengine fully optimization yet.. possibly another month or two..

 

[mczak]

iirc 10.3 doesn't have uengine fully optimization yet.. possibly another month or two..

Ok. Thought AMD might try to have that ready by the time GTX480/470 launches...

And while I'm posting, the thread's way too Heaven-centric at the moment (it's not a game!) and too conversational. Stick to something with cred, not NV's cherry-picked stuff on non-final configs on a version of a non-game you can't determine.

Well, it's the only benchmark so far which highlights the most interesting aspect of fermi (the distributed geometry processing). You're right though there's not that much credible information there.

Anyway, one thing I find interesting is that all the leaks are only about GTX470 (well those including some hard benchmark numbers or clocks), not GTX480. Coincidence?

 

[rpg.314]

it will challenge the 5970 in Dx 11 titles (might not with high levels of AA because the 5970 is going to have more bandwidth available to it). I don't remember anyone saying, at least I didn't say unigine didn't reflect real games, well to a point it doesn't since there are other things that will be going on in games, but from a graphics point of view its pretty good assessment.

In the dragon frame, 60-80% of the triangles are ultimately culled. In what way is that anywhere close to a realistic comparison with real games?

 

[FrameBuffer]

Originally Posted by Razor1
it will challenge the 5970 in Dx 11 titles (might not with high levels of AA because the 5970 is going to have more bandwidth available to it). I don't remember anyone saying, at least I didn't say unigine didn't reflect real games, well to a point it doesn't since there are other things that will be going on in games, but from a graphics point of view its pretty good assessment.

whether the demo is representative of actual gaming experiences will only take time but honestly for anyone to say that the GTX480 is somehow "challenge the 5970" while by all appearances the GTX470 runs almost smack dab between the 5850 and 5870.. somehow we are to believe that the GTX480 with + 64bit memory, + 32 to 64 more "Cuda" cores, 8 more tmus and 4 more rops is going to yield a near 45-60% performance increase needed to match the 5970. The only way I see that happening is if there is no CF profile (the 5970 is running 1 GPU) or NV has been sandbagging everyone secretly know the GTX470 will easily match the 5870 (+15%) and the GTX480 will run 30% faster. (Edit: and of course there is the issue of the bigger and better "5990s".. ie higher clocked 5970s with 4GB ram reportedly scoring as high as 20% faster).

edit: bad math time

Maybe my math is off but iirc the GTX at 800/1600Mhz ram (3200 effective) at 384 bit would just about be equal to the 5870 (4800 effective) at 256bit. The 5970 has an aggregate BW of 256 GB/s (128x2) while the GTX480 in SLI should demolish it (based upon pure BW) with 307GB/s assuming it has the same exact mem clock as the GTX470, though I'm still holding out for a much higher clock rate.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Cypress hasn't really proven itself to be kickass either at DX11 or DirectCompute as yet so I'm not sure what you mean. Where are AMD's demos!?

They released two demos that were pretty impressive IMHO... the Mecha thing and the depth of field one. Both are more impressive from a technical standpoint than anything, but that's the point, right?

I can assure you that Cypress' DirectCompute (which is part of DirectX11...) performance is quite good in my experience. Obviously if Fermi was 100x faster it would look bad in comparison, but literally everything I do on Cypress makes my GTX 280 look extremely dated.

I can imagine tessellation being faster on Fermi, but I'm not convinced that anything other than a synthetic case that is heavily over-tessellated is going to demonstrate it, but we'll see. For everything else I just can't see Fermi being significantly faster, and I can foresee it being slower in some areas.

Of course I have no numbers for Fermi, but I can vouch for the impressiveness of Cypress *especially* in future-looking workloads. That said, I'll be super-happy if Fermi blows me away in even a couple areas!

 

[Grall]

literally everything I do on Cypress makes my GTX 280 look extremely dated.

Care to elaborate on what exactly it is you're doing, and what the respective performance numbers are...? *curious*

 

[mczak]

Maybe my math is off but iirc the GTX at 800/1600Mhz ram (3200 effective) at 384 bit would just about be equal to the 5870 (4800 effective) at 256bit. The 5970 has an aggregate BW of 256 GB/s (128x2) while the GTX480 in SLI should demolish it (based upon pure BW) with 307GB/s assuming it has the same exact mem clock as the GTX470, though I'm still holding out for a much higher clock rate.

I think it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense that the GTX480 had such a low memory clock. Granted, it doesn't seem to make much sense for the GTX470 neither, but speculation says it's just due to power requirements. However, GTX480 should be able to draw quite a bit more, hence it might not be necessary to drop memory clock (though I wouldn't quite expect the 1.2Ghz the HD5870 features).
The only other reasons I can think of why you'd design a card with a 384bit memory interface instead of a 256bit one even though they'll offer the same amount of bandwidth would be so you'd be able to offer more memory, or for being able to use more rops - but neither of that makes much sense to me (for the latter, you could redesign the rops so you can clock them higher instead for example).
Unless something's wrong in the design of the gddr5 memory controller and nvidia just can't clock it any higher - though you'd think it shouldn't have any such problems, after all gt240 (which also only has 800Mhz gddr5 clock, though that card isn't really starved for bandwidth) is out for a while.

 

[ap_]

They released two demos that were pretty impressive IMHO... the Mecha thing and the depth of field one. Both are more impressive from a technical standpoint than anything, but that's the point, right?

Hoping this isn't off-topic, the depth-of-field demo seems to be based on this paper by Justin Hensley (now at AMD): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdo...4CC49688?doi=10.1.1.90.8836&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Of course, accelerated using "features such as atomic operations and shared memory."

 

[Doomtrooper]

I for one applaud both companies(ATI and Nvidia) for delivering state of the art hardware for the PC enthusist, but really as I get older I see no reason for the average consumer to invest in big $$$ graphic cards. The game developers have spoken, so has retail chains like EB, hell even Wallmart...there is not a PC game (s) in development that warrent the kind of money invested to play video games on a PC, what > 60 fps at HD resolution is not good enough ??
Most of the features included in modern video cards are not even looked until they are three years into maturity, tesselation was included in hardware on a Radeon 8500, now it is a game breaker four years later ..really (technology demos need not apply, they don't sell well).

I have and always will be a PC Gamer, which is where I find us the dying breed....M$ trys to sell O/S by preaching improved graphics API, yet when you go to any video game store you have little to look at...maybe a 5x5 foot section of PC games vs. 1500 Sqare feet of consoles. A quick look at the top selling PC games tells all:

1 PC The Sims 3 Electronic Arts Jun-09
2 PC World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack Blizzard Entertainment
(Activision Blizzard) Nov-08
3 PC The Sims 2 Double Deluxe Electronic Arts Apr-08
4 PC World of Warcraft: Battle Chest Blizzard Entertainment
(Activision Blizzard) Sept-07
5 PC Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Activision
(Activision Blizzard) Nov-09
6 PC World of Warcraft Blizzard Entertainment
(Activision Blizzard) Nov-04
7 PC The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack Electronic Arts Nov-09
8 PC Spore Electronic Arts Sept-08
9 PC Dragon Age: Origins Electronic Arts Oct-09
10 PC Empire: Total War Sega of America Mar-09

I'm sure my HD 5970 or possibly a GTX 480 will play all these forward looking titles sweet.

 

[eastmen]

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1402418&postcount=2657

what memory is it using then. The memory information posted here sugests 800mhz but there is no 800mhz just 1.2ghz memory undervolted and down clocked to 800mhz.

 

[eastmen]

I for one applaud both companies(ATI and Nvidia) for delivering state of the art hardware for the PC enthusist, but really as I get older I see no reason for the average consumer to invest in big $$$ graphic cards. The game developers have spoken, so has retail chains like EB, hell even Wallmart...there is not a PC game (s) in development that warrent the kind of money invested to play video games on a PC, what > 60 fps at HD resolution is not good enough ??
Most of the features included in modern video cards are not even looked until they are three years into maturity, tesselation was included in hardware on a Radeon 8500, now it is a game breaker four years later ..really (technology demos need not apply, they don't sell well).

I have and always will be a PC Gamer, which is where I find us the dying breed....M$ trys to sell O/S by preaching improved graphics API, yet when you go to any video game store you have little to look at...maybe a 5x5 foot section of PC games vs. 1500 Sqare feet of consoles. A quick look at the top selling PC games tells all:

1 PC The Sims 3 Electronic Arts Jun-09
2 PC World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack Blizzard Entertainment
(Activision Blizzard) Nov-08
3 PC The Sims 2 Double Deluxe Electronic Arts Apr-08
4 PC World of Warcraft: Battle Chest Blizzard Entertainment
(Activision Blizzard) Sept-07
5 PC Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Activision
(Activision Blizzard) Nov-09
6 PC World of Warcraft Blizzard Entertainment
(Activision Blizzard) Nov-04
7 PC The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack Electronic Arts Nov-09
8 PC Spore Electronic Arts Sept-08
9 PC Dragon Age: Origins Electronic Arts Oct-09
10 PC Empire: Total War Sega of America Mar-09

I'm sure my HD 5970 or possibly a GTX 480 will play all these forward looking titles sweet.

Gamers are migrating to steam and other download services though. While we are a dying breed its not that bad really.

Ibought dragon age and battlefield bad company retail because i got them for half price , however i buy everything else on steam and so do 90% of the ohter pc gamers i talk to and are in my guild.

 

[Lonbjerg]

I for one applaud both companies(ATI and Nvidia) for delivering state of the art hardware for the PC enthusist, but really as I get older I see no reason for the average consumer to invest in big $$$ graphic cards. The game developers have spoken, so has retail chains like EB, hell even Wallmart...there is not a PC game (s) in development that warrent the kind of money invested to play video games on a PC, what > 60 fps at HD resolution is not good enough ??
Most of the features included in modern video cards are not even looked until they are three years into maturity, tesselation was included in hardware on a Radeon 8500, now it is a game breaker four years later ..really (technology demos need not apply, they don't sell well).

I have and always will be a PC Gamer, which is where I find us the dying breed....M$ trys to sell O/S by preaching improved graphics API, yet when you go to any video game store you have little to look at...maybe a 5x5 foot section of PC games vs. 1500 Sqare feet of consoles. A quick look at the top selling PC games tells all:

1 PC The Sims 3 Electronic Arts Jun-09
2 PC World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack Blizzard Entertainment
(Activision Blizzard) Nov-08
3 PC The Sims 2 Double Deluxe Electronic Arts Apr-08
4 PC World of Warcraft: Battle Chest Blizzard Entertainment
(Activision Blizzard) Sept-07
5 PC Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Activision
(Activision Blizzard) Nov-09
6 PC World of Warcraft Blizzard Entertainment
(Activision Blizzard) Nov-04
7 PC The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack Electronic Arts Nov-09
8 PC Spore Electronic Arts Sept-08
9 PC Dragon Age: Origins Electronic Arts Oct-09
10 PC Empire: Total War Sega of America Mar-09

I'm sure my HD 5970 or possibly a GTX 480 will play all these forward looking titles sweet.

I for one am glad to play eg. Crysis and ARMA2 and I do look forward to Metro 2033...games that push my PC to the limit..and beyond.

The curse of the consoles I guess...a big potential market to say no to if you go past DX9 specs and 720P resolution, but fortunately some develpoers have the balls to push through.

The day PC gaming dies, I won't by a console...I just won't game anymore.

I guess I am more quality over quantity gamer

 

[Ailuros]

what memory is it using then. The memory information posted here sugests 800mhz but there is no 800mhz just 1.2ghz memory undervolted and down clocked to 800mhz.

For one the GTX470 has as I said 10*128MB= 1280MB on board memory (see 320bit bus *ding ding ding*) and NOT 1536MB (12*128MB see also 384bit bus) as the GTX480. As for what speced GDDR5 the GTX470 contains look around maybe some picture that floats around might expose something more.

 

[mboeller]

IMHO;

GTX470 <-> GTX480 using the leaked but legit benchmarks from Heise.de and the comments of Nvidia @ PCGH:

GTX470 / HD5870 in the Unigine benchmark is 29/27 fps (7,5% faster)

Nvidia said, that the GTX480 is ~30% faster in the HD5870 in the same benchmark,

Therefore the GTX480 could end up ~20-25% faster than the GTX470.

 

[Ailuros]

How long can you really run around that dreaded dragon and not get bored?

Given (besides all other possible aspects) that the 480 most likely will have a lot more raw bandwidth than the 470, the more bandwidth becomes a bottleneck the higher the difference of the first to the latter. And no I don't think anyone would invest in a 480 in order to drive it in the same resolutions as a 470.

 

[leoneazzurro]

IMHO;

GTX470 <-> GTX480 using the leaked but legit benchmarks from Heise.de and the comments of Nvidia @ PCGH:

GTX470 / HD5870 in the Unigine benchmark is 29/27 fps (7,5% faster)

Nvidia said, that the GTX480 is ~30% faster in the HD5870 in the same benchmark,

Therefore the GTX480 could end up ~20-25% faster than the GTX470.

Except that we don't know if the systems setups (especially drivers) are the same in both cases.

 

[aaronspink]

Hmm then why would they state time and time again, its going to be the fastest graphics card , I would think its more then just Unigine where they are leading.

Gee, cause marketing its as slower would be so stupid that even Nvidia wouldn't do it?

 

[aaronspink]

That's true. But I'm still inclined to believe what we have seen so far all official numbers, are the gtx 470, outside of that one video of Heaven. So if the gtx470 is truly right around the HD5870 guess what, 5-10% is not where the 480 is going to be.

Yep, 480 will be in reviewer hands and shipping...... How many releases and reveals can we do again? Does shipping 5 to newegg count as released?

 

[aaronspink]

Well, it's the only benchmark so far which highlights the most interesting aspect of fermi (the distributed geometry processing). You're right though there's not that much credible information there.

We don't even really know that! For all we know they are using very canned drivers.

Anyway, one thing I find interesting is that all the leaks are only about GTX470 (well those including some hard benchmark numbers or clocks), not GTX480. Coincidence?

Hard to leak something which no one has...

 

[aaronspink]

what memory is it using then. The memory information posted here sugests 800mhz but there is no 800mhz just 1.2ghz memory undervolted and down clocked to 800mhz.

Or you just don't have a non-public pricing/availability sheet.