What Happens If Fermi Turns Out To Be Awesome?

[x3sphere]

No company will ever flaunt performance figures unless they have a near monopoly of the market. Performance figures that are released too early give the competitor more time to prepare a counter-attack, whether it be increased clock speeds or price cuts.

Early information does not sway the majority of buyers. Yes, there are some impatient people who are going to buy the competitor's product due to lack of information, but the large majority (> 90%) are still going wait for the press reviews.

Assume everyone is interested in buying either a 5870 or GF100. If there's no information about GF100, then maybe 10% are going to go ahead a buy a 5870. Then on release date, GF100 gets good reviews, and 70% of the people buy a GF100. But if complete performance figures were released months early, then ATI prepares a counter-attack on GF100's release date, and only 50% of the people buy a GF100.

I realize this and perhaps I should have articulated my thoughts clearer. Not saying they have to release hard figures to the same detail and scrutiny of review sites. Figures that vaguely hint at Fermi's performance in a real-world gaming situation would suffice. I don't care how far they stretch it, doing this instills confidence in their product. Builds up hype. Nvidia did do it with the Unigine Benchmark but got blasted for it since it's not a real game. If they would have shown off the tessellation performance with a real game like Aliens vs. Predator or Metro 2033 people would get more excited. But why didn't they? Well.. perhaps the real-world advantages just aren't there.

I've been following this card since it was first unveiled at the GPGPU conference. I get the impression that Nvidia built this card from the ground up to be a computing monster. Gaming took a backseat this time.

Either way, I'm willing to wait it out to see what the final product will be like but I honestly doubt my expectations are far off the mark.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

OMG he said something negative about Keys

He's a focus group member. Seriously the guy gets free stuff from nvidia it's practically his job to defend and sell their products on the forum.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

More like a piece of bread I leave on the 480 is toast

*EDIT* oh god this POS was my first post?

LMFAO @ first post and the toast pic!

EDIT: click

 

[Apocalypse23]

Lol, man I am just sick of the Fermi buzz/hype already...*patiently awaits his 5970..(on back order)*

 

[scooterlibby]

Lol, man I am just sick of the Fermi buzz/hype already...*patiently awaits his 5970..(on back order)*

If I could get a 5970 at MSRP I would be sooo happy. Not holding out hope, though.

 

[dookulooku]

I realize this and perhaps I should have articulated my thoughts clearer. Not saying they have to release hard figures to the same detail and scrutiny of review sites. Figures that vaguely hint at Fermi's performance in a real-world gaming situation would suffice. I don't care how far they stretch it, doing this instills confidence in their product. Builds up hype. Nvidia did do it with the Unigine Benchmark but got blasted for it since it's not a real game. If they would have shown off the tessellation performance with a real game like Aliens vs. Predator or Metro 2033 people would get more excited. But why didn't they? Well.. perhaps the real-world advantages just aren't there.

A synthetic benchmark is perfect because it doesn't reveal too much information about real-world performance. Also, when you have a 50% advantage in something, you know your competitor isn't going to be able to close the entire gap with optimizations.

Both Nvidia and ATI optimize the hell out of the games/benchmarks reviewers use. Given UNLIMITED resources, they could probably make every game run 15% faster. But resources are limited, so they have to optimize the ones to look better against the competition.

Imagine this is how GTX 480 stacks against 5870:
Game A: -10%
Game B: +5%
Game C: +25%
Game D: +15%

If ATI knew the performance figures, say 2 months in advance, they would put more focus on closing the gap in games B, C, D, and ignore work on game A. The numbers would probably look like this instead:
Game A: -12%
Game B: +0%
Game C: +10%
Game D: +5%

This would force Nvidia to drop prices by $50.

 

[NoQuarter]

Well, you could call it BS, and I'd like to think it too but Fudzilla reports that Asus states their new GTX480 performs up to 50% more with Voltage Tweak....

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/18175/1/
"Asus boasts this performance boost to be up to 50%"

If this is true, then Ati is toast...

Unless you have a Radeon 4890 with 300% faster speed!

Seriously I'm positive the '50% more speed through Voltage tweak' means 50% more overclockability. As in, if you could OC it 50Mhz without voltage tweak, you can OC it 75Mhz with. So it really means nothing.

 

[cbn]

Wasn't the Fermi review supposed to be up tonight? (It is officially March 26th on the West Coast)

 

[dzoner]

I don't know when this forum turned into a rather militant ATI fanboy club, but thread after thread regurgitates various ATI-backed shill sites prophecies of doom and failure and speculates whether nVidia will go out of business if Fermi doesn't come out with 200% of the 5xxx series performance at 50% the price. The vast majority seem invested in Fermi flopping, being loud, hot, short-supplied, and just another GeForce 5800.

You don't know when because it never did?

'various ATI-backed shill sites' ... name one (besides Semi-accurate).

The vast majority are 'vested' in a hotly competitive AIB market even as they speculate on upcoming products in that market based on available info.

 

[Juncar]

OP you're a moron, ATI has the better product right now and except for a few obvious fanboys, the forum is not militantly for ATI.

 

[SunnyD]

I have a question for ... everybody:

At what point do you consider when the competition destroys the incumbent?

Ergo, at what level will you consider the GTX4x0 utterly destroying the 5800 series in terms of price and/or performance?

I ask this because right now, we're looking at an approximately $100 price difference between the 5870 and the GTX480 in terms of current retail prices. Are people really happy accepting (to make things simple - across the board) a 5% performance gain for that $100 (a 20% price premium)? I mean when you stop to think about it, 5% of 100FPS is only 5FPS, assuming the title you're playing is even capable of extracting 100FPS from your card to begin with. The ever subjective question is are you even going to notice those 5FPS difference?

Things get even more muddy when you consider 5% of those highly demanding games that might pull 30FPS is a whole 1.5FPS difference. Granted, at lower levels you might feel an improvement, but is it really measurably worth $100?

Now on the other hand, if it's the GTX470 that is competing directly with the 5870, which in some cases it probably will... that's somewhat more justifiable given the price. Especially when you tack on the additions of better folding support (arguably important to a few people) and PhysX (again, arguably important).

But honestly... the price is lackluster. Unless Fermi does better than expected by a wide margin, I think the argument is silly.

 

[reallyscrued]

I have a question for ... everybody:

At what point do you consider when the competition destroys the incumbent?

Ergo, at what level will you consider the GTX4x0 utterly destroying the 5800 series in terms of price and/or performance?

Don't use words if you don't know what they mean.

The GTX will match the ATI part if it offers 0% more performance at 0% more price premium.

The GTX will be a better card and possibly have higher overall future value if it offers 15-25% more performance for a 15-25% price premium.

The GTX will destroy the competition if it offers 50% more performance for only a 25% price premium.

 

[SunnyD]

Don't use words if you don't know what they mean.

The GTX will match the ATI part if it offers 0% more performance at 0% more price premium.

The GTX will be a better card and possibly have higher overall future value if it offers 15-25% more performance for a 15-25% price premium.

The GTX will destroy the competition if it offers 50% more performance for only a 25% price premium.

It was a subjective question. Don't be an asshole if you can't do it nicely. Though in honesty, thank you for providing your opinion on the question. So I have to ask though - 5% more performance for a 25% premium? Does that put it in failure land?

 

[Martimus]

Don't be an asshole if you can't do it nicely.

I want to learn how to be an asshole nicely. It would be an awesome skill to learn!

 

[NVIDIAMD]

http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-480-GF100-Has-Landed/?page=17
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-480,2585-16.html
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/gtx480launch/18.html
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1258/16/
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...k=view&id=480&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=16
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1831&pageID=8805
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/8
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783&p=20

 

[TekDemon]

Well, you could call it BS, and I'd like to think it too but Fudzilla reports that Asus states their new GTX480 performs up to 50% more with Voltage Tweak....

If this is true, then Ati is toast...

I think the only thing that's toast is your power supply, lol.
And ASUS puts "Voltage Tweak" claims on their AMD/ATI parts too. It says 38% on the 5870 box.

They're just "up to" numbers though, you're not getting a guaranteed 50% overclock, and looking at the power draw numbers you're definitely not getting a 50% boost without some serious PSU upgrades.

I will say that for the extreme overclocker crowd, they might get some impressive numbers out of Fermi in SLI once it's under a hardcore watercooling setup...but it seems like it's mostly just a pain in the butt for power and heat and noise for everyone else.

 

[psychoticdream]

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783&p=20

Finally, as we asked in the title, was it worth the wait? No, probably not. A 15% faster single-GPU card is appreciated and we’re excited to see both AMD and NVIDIA once again on competitive footing with each other, but otherwise with much of Fermi’s enhanced abilities still untapped, we’re going to be waiting far longer for a proper resolution anyhow. For now we’re just happy to finally have Fermi, so that we can move on to the next step.

good review from anandtech

sorry to say that'll end up being the first time i'll be switching to ATI cards if they come down in price in the next couple of weeks

 

[Grooveriding]

Time to change the thread title

'What's Happening now that Fermi has turned out not to be Awesome ?"

 

[Apocalypse23]

I think the only thing that's toast is your power supply, lol.
And ASUS puts "Voltage Tweak" claims on their AMD/ATI parts too. It says 38% on the 5870 box.

They're just "up to" numbers though, you're not getting a guaranteed 50% overclock, and looking at the power draw numbers you're definitely not getting a 50% boost without some serious PSU upgrades.

I will say that for the extreme overclocker crowd, they might get some impressive numbers out of Fermi in SLI once it's under a hardcore watercooling setup...but it seems like it's mostly just a pain in the butt for power and heat and noise for everyone else.

noted.

 

[sandorski]

We will never know the answer to the OP's question.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Congrats Nvidia!

 

[Wreckage]

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.

 

[psychoticdream]

Congrats Nvidia!

yeah nvidia congrats

on bringing us a crippled-overheated-5870-matching in performance-at-higher-prices card


65% performance gain over 5870s my ass....

 

[Maximilian]

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.

Massive power consumption, high load temps, 6 months late and not much to show for it, i guess all thats whats not to love

Oh i forgot the price as well, price sucks too.

 

[scooterlibby]

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.

Wreckage, really? Your back, and you're still doing this? Tweak Boy is at least a funny troll.