Nvidia GF100

[Knite]

I'm with you on that Skuzzy. 3 years ago if you would have told me ATI was going to beat nVidia at their own game, I may have laughed, but damn if ATI hasn't really socked nVidia right in the jaw with this gen of cards.

I'm a bit bummed the Fermi cards aren't more compeitive though, as I was keeping my fingers crossed that at release it'd put some pressure on ATI to get those 58xx series cards prices back down to the announce MSRPs instead of what they're floating at now.

[Skuzzy]

It just got worse.  Due to the horrible yeilds, they revised the specifications again.  The 480GTX cards will have 480 cores, instead of 512.  The 470 will have 448.

This means the benchmarks, everyone has seen, are void and the performance gains are less than before.  Probably on par with the ATI 5870 cards now.  Only the 480 costs more and uses far more power.

What they are doing is blocking dead cores in the bad chips to get the production yeilds higher.  It will take them from 7% to around 40% yeilds.  Well, at least they will not be losing as much per card as they would have if they stuck with 512 cores.

[Ack-Ack]

These dies are exhibiting an abnormal amount of transistor leakage, which is why the power requirements are so high.  I would not touch one with a 10 foot pole.  Make sure you get a really good warranty if you decide to get one of these cards.  The lifespan is going to be suspect.

When you have yeilds in the 7% area, that tells you the design has problems.  It is not just the process at that low of a figure, regardless of how NVidia's marketing would cover it.

You think NVidia would have learned after eating all those other dies for the same problems.  My confidence in NVidia's ability to turn out a quality product is eroding.

It seems that Nvidia is more interested in making "strategic partnerships" instead of making quality product these days.  Also, am I the only one that has noticed that Nvidia's decline has coincided with their purchase the makers of Phys-X and the incorporation of Phys-X into their cards?

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[Boozeman]

It seems that Nvidia is more interested in making "strategic partnerships" instead of making quality product these days.  Also, am I the only one that has noticed that Nvidia's decline has coincided with their purchase the makers of Phys-X and the incorporation of Phys-X into their cards?

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Yes, they have been very busy promoting the proprietary gimmicks of their cards, instead of real innovation. And probably the enormous success of their G80 GPU made them lazy too...a bad combination that resulted in what we see now. 

BTW, more and more benchmarks leak...the one I am looking at now has the 480 a "massive" 6,7% ahead of the 1GB 5870 and 5% ahead of the 2GB 5870. If true, NV really only has CUDA and Phys ix left to promote their cards. And the lead as the fastest single GPU card is very slim. I'm almost 100% certain that ATI will reclaim the crown in short order.

   

[Skuzzy]

Boozeman, any benchmarks you see right now are based on parts which will never be shipped.  NVidia is reducing the core counts of the parts in order to be able to get higher yields.  There isno way of knowing what the negative impact to the benchmarks will be.  What was 5-6% is now less than those figures.

[Boozeman]

Boozeman, any benchmarks you see right now are based on parts which will never be shipped.  NVidia is reducing the core counts of the parts in order to be able to get higher yields.  There isno way of knowing what the negative impact to the benchmarks will be.  What was 5-6% is now less than those figures.

Skuzzy, I'm almost 100% certain that the latest leaks are from the final spec GTX480. Those have already arrived at the reviewers and they should have actual results by now. With the NDA expiring at the end of the week, it's likely that we see more and more leaks. I just cannot imagine that Nvidia supplies them with 512 Core Fermis and then leaves the customer with 480.

[Ghastly]

Skuzzy, I'm almost 100% certain that the latest leaks are from the final spec GTX480. Those have already arrived at the reviewers and they should have actual results by now. With the NDA expiring at the end of the week, it's likely that we see more and more leaks. I just cannot imagine that Nvidia supplies them with 512 Core Fermis and then leaves the customer with 480.

How soon we forget.  It wasn't all that long ago that some bright lads found that the drivers were detecting common benchmarking software, and adjusting operations accordingly to post artificially inflated performance.

Somehow, an "Oops" like benchmarking the top bin cards and shipping the others doesn't seem so unlikely.

<S>

[Skuzzy]

Skuzzy, I'm almost 100% certain that the latest leaks are from the final spec GTX480. Those have already arrived at the reviewers and they should have actual results by now. With the NDA expiring at the end of the week, it's likely that we see more and more leaks. I just cannot imagine that Nvidia supplies them with 512 Core Fermis and then leaves the customer with 480.

Boozeman, NVidia just announced the changed spec two days ago.  They have not built any final spec cards yet.  The cards out there right now were built to the old spec, until NVidia finally figured out there was no way they were going to be able to build them that way without losing a lot of money on every card they shipped.

[Boozeman]

Boozeman, NVidia just announced the changed spec two days ago.  They have not built any final spec cards yet.  The cards out there right now were built to the old spec, until NVidia finally figured out there was no way they were going to be able to build them that way without losing a lot of money on every card they shipped.

AFAIK, those chanded specs are the finalized specs. Everything we heard about earlier were WIP specs, where shader cores, clock speeds, TDP etc. were all not set in stone yet. If they have not built any final spec 480s yet, then there is no chance to see any tests results by the time the NDA is lifted. But hey, we will know very soon. 

[Skuzzy]

Actually, someone claims to have gotten a final spec (everything is theoritical) card and it ran 10% slower than the ATI 5870.

At this point in time, who knows what anyone will have, when it comes time to lift the NDA.  It is going to be a mess.

[Boozeman]

I agree, if we consider all the cons (power consumption, price, low availabillity etc.) it should absolutely blow the 5870 out of the water performance wise to have a justification. But it's rather safe to say that this is not going happen. So the only thing left is CUDA and Physix - if you need/want those features.   

[Skuzzy]

But if it is only a couple of percentage points faster than the GTX295, then why bother at all?  The 295 card is a better card for the price and power consumption.

[Boozeman]

But if it is only a couple of percentage points faster than the GTX295, then why bother at all?  The 295 card is a better card for the price and power consumption.

Well, I'd choose a single GPU over a multi-GPU solution if perfomance is the same.
Then there is DX11 too.

BTW, isn't the 295 EOL'd ? 
 
EDIT: I forgot, the 295 is short on VRAM too. 896MB per GPU does not cut it for a such a high performance card.

[Reschke]

Its all a cycle no matter who makes what in the video card business. I remember when S3 based cards were kicking butt way back in the day...anyway when AMD and ATI went in together it choked off ATI for a while. The same is happening with Physx and nVidia now.

[Ack-Ack]

So the only thing left is CUDA and Physix - if you need/want those features.   

Even those are going to stop being selling points for Nvidia cards because ATI in it's new line of cards (also think the 4xxxx line have the feature as well) feature a GPU that is able to handle game physics using the Havok API, which, from what I've heard, is far easier to program for than the Phys-X API.


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