AT fermi review is up!

[happy medium]

To me the major difference between Nvidia and ATI is that Nvidia has already made its architectural change. We are still waiting on ATI to do the same.

So next round we could see Nvidia catch up as it only needs to do process tech refinements for 28nm. ATI, on the other hand, needs or plans to do both architecture and process.

P.S. With APUs designed the way they are (high GPU power relative to memory bandwidth), I would expect ATI to go heavy on tessellation for N. Islands.

I agree totally. I don't think you'll see N. Islands till at least Christmas of this year.

 

[Acanthus]

This would've been more impressive 6 months ago.

I think there is probably still room to grow for fermi via drivers... This thing is a computing power house.

We will see how it does after a die shrink. I will take a look then.

 

[dzoner]

Bunch of $10 to $20 price cuts on the 58xx cards at Newegg. New low 5850 = $279.00 Sapphire.

 

[happy medium]

This would've been more impressive 6 months ago.

I think there is probably still room to grow for fermi via drivers... This thing is a computing power house.

We will see how it does after a die shrink. I will take a look then.

Yea, this is a good point,I'm pretty sure Ati shot there load with the 10.3 catalyst. I exspect 10% more performance fairly soon from Nvidia drivers.

 

[happy medium]

Bunch of $10 to $20 price cuts on the 58xx cards at Newegg. New low 5850 = $279.00 Sapphire.

Hmmm great news.mabe I wont have to crossfire.

 

[happy medium]

Aren't these the highest clocking Nvidia cards? The 480 is Oc'ing in the 800+ range and the 470 is close to 750. I had to overvolt the 8800GT just to get it close to 750.

I had my 9800gtx+ @ 820 core. I've seen gtx 285's over 700 easy.

 

[SlowSpyder]

While I think Fermi drivers will improve, you guys have to remember this thing was supposed to be out months ago. Nvidia should have pretty mature drivers already.

 

[HurleyBird]

The thing with minimum frame rates is that it could just be one or two frames rendering that slow, or it could be hundreds... thousands. Just as important is frame stability, the closer the card stays to average the better (higher maximum frame rates ARE NOT a good thing). Not many do this, but if you want to give anything more than an average you should supply an entire graph of the running time.

Oh, and I think both architectures can still get huge gains from better drivers. Should be an interesting fight between GTX480 and the inevitable overlocked 2GB SKU from AMD.

 

[happy medium]

While I think Fermi drivers will improve, you guys have to remember this thing was supposed to be out months ago. Nvidia should have pretty mature drivers already.

When I see a card beating another by 20/25% in a few games, then tanking in games like Left For dead and have no sli perfromance in Wolfenstein at all , I seem to think the drivers are not so good.

Nvidia's game performance is usually fairly evenly spread, don't you think.

 

[happy medium]

The thing with minimum frame rates is that it could just be one or two frames rendering that slow, or it could be hundreds... thousands. Just as important is frame stability, the closer the card stays to average the better (higher maximum frame rates ARE NOT a good thing). Not many do this, but if you want to give anything more than an average you should supply an entire graph of the running time.

I agree, but I rather have a game give me 60 fps and 30 minimum ,then 55 and 14 minimum. Thats the difference between stutter and smooth.

I wish the AT review would have looked at more minimums over a better selection of games, and yes with a graph like you said.

 

[happy medium]

On a brighter note, those sli'ed gtx 285 were smoking ha?
I was imppressed (shocked),beating a 5890 in some tests.

 

[MrK6]

To me the major difference between Nvidia and ATI is that Nvidia has already made its architectural change. We are still waiting on ATI to do the same.

So next round we could see Nvidia catch up as it only needs to do process tech refinements for 28nm. ATI, on the other hand, needs or plans to do both architecture and process.

P.S. With APUs designed the way they are (high GPU power relative to memory bandwidth), I would expect ATI to go heavy on tessellation for N. Islands discrete cards.

Definitely a possibility - ATI's next architecture could be a steaming pile. All I'm saying is that Fermi's a disappointment, but there's a lot in the pipeline for both sides that's coming sooner than later.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

You don't have to post 3 consecutive times you know. The edit button is there for a reason

 

[OCGuy]

EVGA direct pre-orders sold out already.....

Why would Newegg put them all up if they wouldnt be out until the 12th?

 

[Dark4ng3l]

EVGA direct pre-orders sold out already.....

Why would Newegg put them all up if they wouldnt be out until the 12th?

Newegg has plenty of cards listed that are not in stock.

 

[spinejam]

this is certainly good news for AMD -- at least their graphics division is doing well.

 

[Corporate Thug]

*yawn*

I'm just going to throw another 4870 in my rig and call it a year.

 

[GotNoRice]

I'm absolutely blown away by how well the ~2 year old 4870x2 holds up against not only the 5870 but the GTX480. Guess I'm good to go with two of them

But seriously, I got my 4870x2's for about $200 each. It's amazing that you can buy that much performance for so cheap. I noticed the GTX295 holding up well against Fermi as well.

It seems like as the 5xxx and GTX4xx cards battle it out the real value is in used hardware. With the way DirectX11 works being able to run directly on 10 and 10.1 hardware it only makes it a better deal.

 

[tnt118]

Looks awesome to me. Fastest chip out there with the most features. What's not to love?

I guess heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Can't believe this guy. I love Nvidia, but there is no way to sell Fermi as anything other than a big dud.

Not calling any specific posters out, but I'm fine with things playing out this way.

OK, so Nvidia is able to outperform ATI by a margin of 10-20%, depending on resolution... but at a very real premium (both in terms of price, noise, and power draw).

There are people in both camps who are going to be very happy. Some for having the absolute best, regardless of the costs; and those who are getting 95% of the advantages with none of the sacrifices. A win for both crowds?

 

[n7]

Fastest single GPU card, yup.

But look at the price, the heat, the power consumption, the noise.

Not very impressive at all.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Hmm, after finally getting to read the review once the dust has been settled here are my thoughts.

The GTX470 is 5~15% faster overall than HD5850. Sometimes it catches up to the HD5870, but most of the time its in between the two. On the other hand the GTX480 is 5~15% faster overall than HD5870. There are situations where these cards are 20~40% faster, whether or not its because of the game engine/cheat/etc remains to be seen. However the most eye catching was the minimum frame rates. Of all the reviews Ive come across, the performance difference is somewhat huge. I have several ideas of why this might be but the point is that Fermi based video cards will provide a "smoother" experience than the AMD counterparts. Some people have said its because of the lack of VRAM, but even at lower res they are beaten by a fair amount.

Performance is definitely lackluster for a 6 month delayed part, but give it time and driver maturity (seeing as it is a new architecture) I think we will truly see what video cards on Fermi is capable of. I can see how it resembles the R520/R600. The former was only 5% faster but soon stretched its legs as drivers matured to widen that gap (and even more so as games started to take advantage of S.M 3 and other complex effects). Both of these had power related problems, but were eventually fixed and were led to its derivatives that were quite impressive.

Which leads me to the other performance aspect of Fermi. Things like tessellation performance is impressive but how useful this is in the real world remains to be seen. If you are interested in compute side of things, then this is one of the shining points of Fermi. The benchmark numbers speak for itself. If AMD had a head start with process technology, tessellation and DX11 what not, nVIDIA has a massive head start on the GPGPU/compute side of things. No one knows how much openCL will take off (or in matter of fact GPGPU in general) but this gap could widen. If AMD does indeed take this path too, then their advantages when it comes to transistors/die size etc are diminished because of the added functionality/logic.

Power doesn't look too good for Fermi. However idle power consumption isnt too bad as i thought it would be. Its around 10~15W higher to Cypress based video cards. The GTX470 here doesn't look too bad in this compartment. It has a very minor advantage in idle power consumption and just a little higher at load compared to a GTX285. The performance between the two is quite big so its not a bad upgrade. Sound isnt a issue here seeing as its on par with the GTX275 (lower than GTX285/HD4890) unless your more sensitive to noise. If furmark stresses this card up to 93C, I doubt any games would ever make this card reach that level of temperature. This applies to every other card (much like how AMD cards failed on furmark but were fine in real world situations) Im not sure why people are bitching about getting better PSUs, when most of us have ~600W PSU with very high efficiency levels.

But the real problem here is the GTX480. Idle power figures are ok, but the load figures are up the roof. Imagine if a similarly clocked full fledged Fermi must've been like. Noise figures look worse as well, but I doubt this card can topple even the FX5800 ultra because it had a much whiney tone to its noise characteristics. Imagine running a 40mm fan at an insanely high rpm. However what AT have showed is the worst case scenario (aka furmark). So real world figures would be lower for all cards in that list.

All in all, I think the card to consider getting is the GTX470 if people are looking to upgrade from last gen cards now. The HD5850 on one hand is more power efficent, cheaper and less noisey but the GTX470 is better in both minimum fps and overall performance (With a similar power/noise characteristic of a GTX285/275). The latter handles DX11 effects like tessellation better, much stronger compute performance and has PhysX if that is of any interest. Im betting more performance from future drivers to come. 10~30% could be possible as they can now shift the focus to optimizing the performance rather than focusing on stability/compatibility.

GTX480 on the other hand doesn't seem to cut it. Its power characteristics are horrendous, and performance is lacking in comparison. However, if one was able to watercool these in an SLi configuration I would do it. Power isnt an issue, and noise wouldn't be an issue. Quite a dream setup for a selected few seeing as it destroys everything.

 

[SunnyD]

Fastest single GPU card, yup.

But look at the price, the heat, the power consumption, the noise.

Not very impressive at all.

But but... it does PHYSX!!!!!! :sneaky:

 

[ugaboga232]

The problem is, I don't think they really updated the architecture. Sure they added lots of geometry and tessellation stuff, but no real work was done on the rest of the chip. Check AT's review, you can see its barely above 2X performance of 285 in PhysX. Though, its better than Ati's loss of shader power going from R700 to R800.

I think G200 to GF100 was about the same as G80 to G200 in architecture improvements gaming-wise. Same deal with the Ati cards. There haven't been any radical changes since R600 and G80. Sure we have had tessellation, DX11, and just more stuff, but nothing I would consider a completely new architecture. However, as we have seen, major refreshes work just as well.

Fermi was slightly better in performance and price than I expected, but the temperature, power, and noise are turn-offs. If both dropped by $50, then I can see some better competition. Fermi also had better OC headroom than I expected, though 5870's have much more. Also, these could be cherry-picked review samples (possible, though unlikely).


The 5850 is looking like the card to get, with the 470 in 2nd place depending on its true price and overclocking ability. A 5850 can oc and be 95% of an oc'ed 5870, so it should equal or beat an oc'ed 470 (remains to be seen).

 

[Silverforce11]

How is it that a 480 actually draws more power than a 5970?? That is insane if you think about it, 2xGPU with more transistors combined on the same process. This then points to the NV rated TDP of 250W, it basically is a lie. It should be the "leaked" 295W since that is above the 5970. The same for the 470, its rated TDP is 215W but again, it draws well above that in gaming or furmark. So it appears NV is using best case scenario numbers, changing it close to release date.

Its not all doom and gloom for Fermi, actually i am impressed with its OC headroom. Other sites manage to get the 470 to ~720mhz and the 480 to ~800mhz. So there is potential for squeezing an extra ~12% performance with OC. BUT, to keep the temperatures steady you have to run the fan at stupidly loud levels. I game with headphones, but i get annoyed at my 5850 running at 40% fan speed when OC (which is pretty low db), pulling dbs into the high 60s and 70 is just absurd.

One interesting bit, why is AT's bad company 2 bench putting out such low scores for fermi, other sites have it much higher.

All that being said, it doesn't change the landscape much. A 5850 with its 25% OC headroom is still the best bang for buck.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Fastest single GPU card, yup.

But look at the price, the heat, the power consumption, the noise.

Not very impressive at all.

I think all they were looking for is to have the faster card. The rest will come later.

Anyhow, there's no reason to even upgrade if you have a higher end DX10 part like a GTX260 or similar really.

Honestly I'm not impressed with either company's offerings. The games just aren't there to demand so much money for a new card these days. For what they're asking I could buy a Xbox360 or PS3 and 4 games.