nVidia's Fermi to be called GTX 470 and 480

[v8envy]

Not really surprising, but not great news either. This implies Fermi is going to be *very* expensive if it's not cost effective to neuter/harvest the cores for a midrange solution.

DX11 is not mandatory at the mid/low end. Think of it as the X800 series competing vs the 6800. Only pixel shader 2.0, but they still sold as mid/low end cards just fine.

So I suspect there won't be DX11 support in the nv mainstream product lineup for at least six months if the mid 300 cards are just 200 series (or dare I say g92?) with new stickers.

 

[dguy6789]

All signs so far have pointed towards Fermi being incredibly expensive to produce.

 

[hdfxst]

Will the desktop series have a different directx version than the mobile series?The 300m series is 10.1 http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_m_series.html

 

[GaiaHunter]

HD4xxx didn't support DX11 either. Until it was added. Not saying this is what will happen with GTX3xx, but saying it will "never" happen is probably a bit extreme.

Different cases - lots of what was required for the "old DX10"/"almost all DX11" was already in the R600.

 

[Creig]

Excuse me, but the GTX3xx moniker was purely specualtion by reviewers given that there was no official branding yet for GF100. It was only known as GF100 or Fermi until now.
And there still isn't any confirmation for final branding names.

Yes, I know. It was a joke playing on Nvidia's fondness for rebadging cards, hence the "" at the end. I'm sure everybody else realized it was simply a small joke.

 

[crisium]

I think the funnier joke was us all collectively laughing at "excuse me" being posted on a forum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPxY8lpYAUM&fmt=18

 

[ViRGE]

I don't know what people are complaining about. If the DX11 parts being part of the 400 series, then that's great. It means there won't be any confusion over what is DX11-capable, as the 300 series is already populated with DX10.1 cards.

 

[Keysplayr]

I think the funnier joke was us all collectively laughing at "excuse me" being posted on a forum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPxY8lpYAUM&fmt=18

Well, you can't say I wasn't polite.

@Creig: Gotcha, and thanks. My funny meter has been a bit off this past week.

 

[Hyperlite]

I find it a little difficult to swallow that they think they could get away with re-launching a DX10 part. That would mean their "new" mid-range cards would have fewer features than any part in ATI's last gen range. This will be interesting to see, indeed.

That said, the 4xx naming scheme makes sense. With nV's newfound for the "shrink and rebadge" process, it plays well, and isn't arguable IMO. I'd love a $100 GTX260, but only if it was packing at least DX10.1. Which is kinda where this process falls short, because it means the low and midrange cards don't get any new features that are independent of performance. Tessellation has the potential to add a lot to games it seems, though i'm more interested in the multimedia features. As someone else suggested, maybe a lot of that will be passed off to CUDA apps, which would be great.

 

[v8envy]

Since the 210/220/240 are all DX10.1 40nm parts based on G200 I'd think 10.1 is practical for a mainstream shrink of higher end parts as well.

But I think your hopes for a $100 40nm GTX260 are misplaced. The 240 is intended for that price bracket, with a 250 targeted for the low $100s as well. It'll be priced about the same as the 5770 with marketing positioning PhysX as the feature to prefer over DX11.

 

[Hauk]

If this news is true, then I don't think Nvidia would add DX11 support to the GTX 3xx, probably just DX10.1 like they did already with the 310.

But you guys are right, a GT200b on a 40nm process, with DX10.1 and a 256bit bus using GDDR5 would be a nice card. It should be able to beat a 5850 by a bit, while also costing NV about the same amount to manufacture, as it's size should end up at around ~345mm^2. Almost the same size as Cypress (338mm^2).

That's an interesting point, maunfacturing costs will certainly play a role. ATI launched 5850 at $249 so we know it can easily be there again, maybe even cheaper if necessary. Man, seems like a 10.1 part would be futile. Let's see what happens..

 

[tviceman]

That's an interesting point, maunfacturing costs will certainly play a role. ATI launched 5850 at $249 so we know it can easily be there again, maybe even cheaper if necessary. Man, seems like a 10.1 part would be futile. Let's see what happens..

$259.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3650

 

[Munky]

Yay, let's rebadge the g92 one more time into a gts350, and rely on consumer stupidity to sell out products!

Looks like Nvidia was so fucused on the high end fermi, they didn't really have a plan on scaling it down to mainstream parts anytime soon.

 

[Stoneburner]

Nvidia has failed. I'm going to get the 5770's now, they aint coming down in price

 

[tweakboy]

I think nvidia is in deep trouble.

They first said the Fermi has 512 shaders. Soo well stick to that until otherwise notified.

The ATI 5890 has 1500 shaders. That is 3 times more shader. What does nvidia have to say about this. I think nvidia blew it!

 

[Maximilian]

I think nvidia is in deep trouble.

They first said the Fermi has 512 shaders. Soo well stick to that until otherwise notified.

The ATI 5890 has 1500 shaders. That is 3 times more shader. What does nvidia have to say about this. I think nvidia blew it!

No such thing as 5890.

If it ever exists it will have more than 1500 shaders.

ATI shaders and nvidia ones arent comparable.

 

[soccerballtux]

This should put the 480 on par with ATI's 4800 series.

 

[toyota]

I think nvidia is in deep trouble.

They first said the Fermi has 512 shaders. Soo well stick to that until otherwise notified.

The ATI 5890 has 1500 shaders. That is 3 times more shader. What does nvidia have to say about this. I think nvidia blew it!

you say the most inaccurate things in your replies. its as if you dont even know what you are talking about. there is no 5890 and it would have at least 1600 sp since even the 5870 has that. ATI could not make a 1500 sp card anyway based on the way they do sp. ATI and Nvidia have completely different architectures and the number of sp cannot be directly compared.

 

[Hyperlite]

I think nvidia is in deep trouble.

They first said the Fermi has 512 shaders. Soo well stick to that until otherwise notified.

The ATI 5890 has 1500 shaders. That is 3 times more shader. What does nvidia have to say about this. I think nvidia blew it!

Erm. First of all there is no such thing as a 5890. Secondly, you cannot compare ATi and nV shaders.

 

[v8envy]

Erm. First of all there is no such thing as a 5890. Secondly, you cannot compare ATi and nV shaders.

And even if the two shaders performed roughly the same per unit there is still clock rate, fill rate, memory bandwidth and latency...

So yeah. Declare them dead based on targeting the HTPC crowd and designing a non-competitive gaming GPU if you must. But a postmortem based on shader count is very premature.

 

[thilanliyan]

Even if they are nothing more than renames, I don't see a problem as long as they are priced appropriately. It would be cool if ATI did it too. Wouldn't you guys like to be able to buy a 4870 or GTX 260 or 4890 or GTX 285 for $100-200?

4870s, 4890s, and GTX260s have already been selling in the $100-$200 range. The GTX285 has not been but the 4890 is so close in performance and sold for much less already.

 

[Munky]

4850's are selling for under $100. Best bang for the buck IMO.

 

[happy medium]

4850's are selling for under $100. Best bang for the buck IMO.

Best price I could find on a 4850 1gb is 117$ shipped

I think a 5750 1gb for 13$ more is a better deal.

 

[Munky]

Best price I could find on a 4850 1gb is 117$ shipped

I think a 5750 1gb for 13$ more is a better deal.

There's two 512MB 4850's on newegg right now for $99.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102824
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131162

1GB isn't so important for a sub $100 card.

 

[akugami]

I think nvidia is in deep trouble.

They first said the Fermi has 512 shaders. Soo well stick to that until otherwise notified.

The ATI 5890 has 1500 shaders. That is 3 times more shader. What does nvidia have to say about this. I think nvidia blew it!

They are different architectures. You can't compare them solely by "shaders" because this is the same as the megahertz ratings between AMD CPU's and Intel CPU's. Hell, look at Intel's Pentium4's and their own Core2Duo's. C2D's will outperform a P4 at the same mhz rating.


As far as the renaming goes, it's still from a rumor site. If the rumor is true, I think nVidia is having trouble keeping the costs down for their new architecture. While this is not a problem for the high end, it means that for the low end, and lower mid-end, you'll be stuck with a rebadge of last year's GPU's. Now, this is not as bad as it seems because if you're buying sub-$150 video cards, you're usually not worried about the latest technologies.