For better or worse, the launch of NVIDIA's next-generation GPU architecture codenamed Fermi, a.k.a. GF100, is one of the most highly anticipated in our industry, ever. Information about the GPU has been tricking out for many months now, some of it good and some bad. Regardless of what you have chosen to believe or ignore up to this point, one irrefutable fact remains. NVIDIA is extremely late to the DirectX-11 party. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Rival AMD has used the last few months to release a myriad of DX11-class cards ranging in price from under $100 to almost $700, fleshing out a top-to-bottom line-up that caters to virtually every market segment. Today NVIDIA is announcing two high-end cards, neither of which will be available for a couple of more weeks. So while this announcement is an important move for the company, NVIDIA would have liked to have made it sooner. C'est la vie.
NVIDIA may be late with their DX11-class cards, but launching strong products that compete favorably at their respective price points may erase some lingering concerns about the company and restore faith in prospective consumers. To that end, we can finally show you what NVIDIA has in store for the hardcore gamers out there. Today, NVIDIA is officially unveiling the GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470. We have two of the flagship GeForce GTX 480 cards in house, and have tested them alongside NVIDIA's previous-gen products and AMD's Radeon HD 5800 / 5900 series, both in single and dual-card configurations. There's a lot to cover, so grab a snack, hydrate, and strap yourself in while we take NVIDIA's latest flagship for a spin around the HotHardware lab...
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Fermi/GF100/GTX400 has been a long time coming. For an industry where the major players are usually in lockstep with each other in some fashion, this latest cycle has been distinctly out of sync. In September of 2009 we saw AMD launch their Radeon 5000 series, and spend the next 6 months as the performance leader for the discrete graphics market for virtually every price point. NVIDIA on the other hand missed the latest cycle by a mile, and when AMD was delivering 5000 series cards NVIDIA could only talk about the High Performance Computing applications of their next GPU, Fermi. It would be the next big thing, both figuratively and literally.
In January we got the next piece of the Fermi story at CES, when NVIDIA was willing to talk about the gaming-oriented hardware and applications of the first Fermi GPU: GF100. We found out it would be significantly different from the GT200 GPU powering NVIDIA’s GTX200 series, that NVIDIA was going to break up the traditional fixed-function pipeline and at the same time take a particularly keen interest in tessellation. What we didn’t find out is when it would ship.
Much of this has been in NVIDIA’s hands – some of it has not. What’s indisputable is that TSMC, the chip foundry used by both AMD and NVIDIA, was not delivering the kind of yields on their 40nm process that AMD and NVIDIA were expecting. Both of them suffered for it. AMD could not get enough viable chips to meet demand for their 5000 series part, leaving a wake of disappointed gamers who could not get AMD’s latest wonder, and limiting AMD’s ability to profit from one of the few times in AMD/ATI’s history where the company had a clear lead over NVIDIA, and if you ask AMD also limiting their ability to control prices. NVIDIA meanwhile had to deal with the fact that they were trying to produce a very large chip on a low-yielding process, a combination for disaster given that size is the enemy of high yields.
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Καλά και χρυσά όλα αυτά κύριοι και κυρίες αλλά τι να τα κάνω τα κτήνη κάρτες γραφικών της AMD/ATI και της NVIDIA όταν αυτοί που κάνουν τα αληθινά παιχνίδια, τα κάνουν για Sony PS3 και Nintendo Wii; Ακόμη και στο τρισάθλιο XBOX 360;
Το μόνο θετικό από αυτές τις κάρτες γραφικών είναι ότι ΙΣΩΣ κάποια στιγμή οι εταιρίες λογισμικού θα τις εκμεταλλευθούν στο έπακρο γι ακόμη πιο "άντε γεια" εφαρμογές. Ίσως. Κάποτε. Θα δείξει.
Για παιχνίδια, όσοι έχετε μυαλό πάρτε PS3 ή Wii, αν δεν έχετε ήδη. Στη χειρότερη ένα iPad. Όλα τα άλλα είναι: "κλάιν μάιν".
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