In addition, the NVIDIA GF116 core based GeForce GT 550/GT 530 will come in Q1 2011.
The GeForce GT 550 and GT 530 are to be based on the GF116 core - the successor of the GF-106 Core on which the previous models of these cards were built. Number of stream processors should still be up to 192 (four groups of SM), the core size will not change, but some people say which may be increased to five SM 240 stream processors, but no confirmation.
Excellent work from Nvidia on the GTX 560. Nothing not expected really, but still impressive.
Some reviews said these were already in GF104 (don't know if it's true but I always had the suspicion it could be the case). I didn't find any quote indeed that there are ANY functional changes at all (things like minor bugfixes).I was reading the Anandtech review, to see what kind of architecture improvements they included in the GTX560 comparing to GTX460 and I am left disappointed. They just reworked some transistors. Not even the Z-cull improvemnts of GF110? Or are they already present in the 460?
The full speed FP16 texture filtering appeared indeed first in th GF104, but when reading GF110 reviews I remember the improved Z-cull being described as a new feature. I expected it to appear in the GF114 too. Would proably require some specific tests to find out.Some reviews said these were already in GF104 (don't know if it's true but I always had the suspicion it could be the case)
I am rather curious about how they compare to the more "traditional" heat pipe designs with respect to efficiency. The Cayman chips dump a lot of heat and I imagine that it's challenging to manage cheaply in the 2 slot cooler format. My only qualm would be the blower noise, but whatcha gonna do when you need to move air in that direction.And the vapor chambers are excellent for the products they were designed for.
Agreed, they had the chance to kill AMD in this segment but seems like the mutual agreement is that both of them can make some money ..I think Nvidia priced it wrong. If they had priced it at $239 with 2GB and $219 with 1GB it would be getting much more positive reviews, but I don't know whether Nvidia's margins would allow for such aggressive pricing. When they released the 460 they were in a much weaker position, the 480/470 were much less successful and Nvidia had lost a lot of market share. This time maybe such aggressive pricing is something Nvidia can afford not to do.
Agreed, they had the chance to kill AMD in this segment but seems like the mutual agreement is that both of them can make some money ..
If so expect AMD to whistleblow at some point. The weaker company always blows the whistle first to avoid fines...
Hmm I'm confused too with the lineup including 560 TI and old 460 for now. So what will 560 non-Ti be? Lower clock? And 555 7 SMs and less clock (that is, pretty much rebadged 460 1GB) ?more likely to see GTX 560 without the suffix...but with disabled CUDA cores? Confusing Charlie crap again...
I think the "forgot about gamers" part was really mostly only attributed to GF100 (and GF110), which have the uber-fast (but disabled for most products) DP, and things like ECC, not the whole Fermi family. And by the looks of it that stuff doesn't hurt too much neither.I am impressed with the longevity of Fermi...after all that was said wrt to Nvidia forgetting about gamers cue white-noise ..GF114 has been in a class of its own! It is smaller than Cayman yet it competes well...
Well the HD 6950 1GB at similar price looks like a nice answer to me. It's not like that's a whole lot more expensive to manufacture, the die size difference is quite minimal, they use the same memory chips, and the pcb probably has similar complexity (given the power draw is near identical).i dont think AMD has an answer for it...
Yes, this makes sense. More careful routing is probably needed, and high frequency noise might be more of a problem. It is unclear though to me if the pcb is actually more complex in this case (I was primarily basing this on power draw) but it could be.I seem to remember Dave saying that a very high memory speed also involves some PCB complexity.