What Happens If Fermi Turns Out To Be Awesome?

[Shmee]

if it is awesome, then it will be awesome. everybody wins. but it probably wont.

 

[reallyscrued]

This forum turned into an "ATI fanboy club" because ATI has had the best products out for a while, its obvious really

Back in 2006 when the 8800 launched everyone recommended it as well, was the forum a Nvidia fanboy site then?

So yeah, of course people will flock to whatever company offers the best products, duh... But everything points to fermi being disappointing at best

This point needs to be reiterated more often.

AT forum members typically have more common sense than users on other forums/communities. (...typically.) If the mass consensus is that one company provides a better product than another, it's usually not due to brand loyalty, but rather bang for buck.

Not sure where the NVIDIA focus group lies in all this though. One thing's for sure, ATI doesn't need a focus group. Like Chuck Norris.

If Fermi rocks, good. If Fermi sucks, fuck.

 

[x3sphere]

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.

But what if Fermi does kick ass? Not just 10-20% faster for $100 more, but leapfrogs ATI's best by a substantial margin. What will the reaction be? "Yay! nVidia is stepping up and competition is good!" or "Is that the best they can do? They're months late and ATI is going to be releasing the 6xxx in few months, so this won't last. Fail!"? Are people here so eager to see nVidia faceplant that they won't be able to be objective about whatever gets revealed on Friday? It sure seems that way.

I hope Fermi turns out well, but I'm frankly doing fine with my ancient 8800GT SLI setup which runs just about everything I throw at it well enough, so if it sucks, it won't matter much to me. I can wait until a cool game comes along that demands an upgrade and then see who's best. It's nice not having to worry about dropping a chunk of change whenever the new hotness comes out. I've done the gottahaveit! upgrade thing way too many times, so it'll take something darn impressive to make me get my wallet out.

There's no "what if." The leaked benchmarks are already telling of Fermi's performance, as is Nvidia's unwillingness to share numbers. Also the TDP numbers for Fermi have already been revealed, it does run hot. That's a fact. The 512SP variant of the 480 sucks nearly as much power as a HD5970.

Believe me, if the GTX400 series blew away ATI's equivalent, Nvidia would be flaunting performance figures all over the place. Instead, they are being rather secretive, trying to drum up hype through other means (see 3D Vision).

I'd love to see a ultra competitive Fermi but it's not going to happen. That's the harsh reality.

 

[blanketyblank]

If Fermi is awesome then they will be much like the nintendo wii or ps3 at release for at least a year or so. That is you will be unable to buy them anywhere without standing/sleeping in line. People will hoard them and sell them for insanely marked up prices on ebay, and ATI still doesn't have to change its prices.

In fact even if Fermi sucks I still expect the above to happen, but to a lesser extent. That is lower prices on ebay and the drought would only last a few months.

 

[dookulooku]

Believe me, if the GTX400 series blew away ATI's equivalent, Nvidia would be flaunting performance figures all over the place. Instead, they are being rather secretive, trying to drum up hype through other means (see 3D Vision).

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.

 

[qazwsxokmijn]

I hope it's going to be substantially greater than 5870 so I could grab 2x 5870s for a much lower price.

 

[SolMiester]

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.

But what if Fermi does kick ass? Not just 10-20% faster for $100 more, but leapfrogs ATI's best by a substantial margin. What will the reaction be? "Yay! nVidia is stepping up and competition is good!" or "Is that the best they can do? They're months late and ATI is going to be releasing the 6xxx in few months, so this won't last. Fail!"? Are people here so eager to see nVidia faceplant that they won't be able to be objective about whatever gets revealed on Friday? It sure seems that way.

I hope Fermi turns out well, but I'm frankly doing fine with my ancient 8800GT SLI setup which runs just about everything I throw at it well enough, so if it sucks, it won't matter much to me. I can wait until a cool game comes along that demands an upgrade and then see who's best. It's nice not having to worry about dropping a chunk of change whenever the new hotness comes out. I've done the gottahaveit! upgrade thing way too many times, so it'll take something darn impressive to make me get my wallet out.

LOL..snap here!!, i dont get time for gaming anymore, however the spite coming out by some is unreal!

 

[SolMiester]

It certainly will be awesome. Hard for myself to go high range these days - as the new games are not that much more awesome as most are console ports or as the new term goes - developed for cross platform. Still fun, but a low mid range part does just fine on my monitor.

Its quite spooky the number of crap ports coming over, I cant understand the R&D cost ATi & NV must be putting into new cards only to have console game ports not require their power...confused?

 

[Lonyo]

Its quite spooky the number of crap ports coming over, I cant understand the R&D cost ATi & NV must be putting into new cards only to have console game ports not require their power...confused?

As long as income exceeds expenditure, it doesn't really matter all that much.
Both NV and ATI have been somewhat profitable, or at least have not made overall huge losses over the past couple of years.

What is their other choice? Not spend money on R&D and have their competitor take 100% of the market because they aren't playing anymore?
Then there's the GPGPU aspect, especially for NV. And the CPU+GPU on one chip element for AMD/ATI.

What else would they do except spend money to compete with each other?

 

[at80eighty]

looks like the OP woke up from a deep slumber - simply hilarious


As stated often - I love seeing both companies do well & push each other in terms of tech & price. I really would hate to see Fermi fail. (Presently) I have no need for CUDA and little use for PhysX so a quality product from their end will make ATI step up their game accordingly & hopefully drop prices a bit for the 2GB 5870 or the 5970


As for the state of PC gaming - it does suck because most developers see greater $$$ in console devlpt. IMO that should change after 2 things:

1) more people using/duplicating the Live Create feature of CryEngine3 to develop games for PC/PS3/Xbox simultaneously and save on that porting bollocks

2) Further down the line - once the next revision of consoles come in with beefier horsepower - it should bring console gameply up to speed with what we consider acceptable/great PC graphics right now (and imo they are pretty damn good already)

ymmv I guess

 

[1h4x4s3x]

OP
I'm afraid, the world isn't black and white.

 

[Apocalypse23]

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...

 

[FHDelux]

I would love to justify the cost of a Fermi card. Unfortunately, its pretty much been the case that if a company doesn't have anything to brag about, they build hype instead. If the thing was going to blow the 5XXX series away we would have had loads of benchmarks already.

ATI really stepped up with the 4XXX and 5XXX series, they are phenomenal. I never liked ATI because their drivers are such garbage, but even with the crappy drivers, my 5870 blows away any of the NVIDIA cards i've had by a signifigant margain.

 

[Genx87]

Well the FX5800 ultra was hilarious. Imagine how annoying having a guy with that card next to you at lan must have been.

Cant imagine it being much louder than my 4850. That thing spins to 110% even while watching youtube videos. No idea why, but it does. Loudest video card I have ever had and I owned an Nvidia 5900.

 

[Lonyo]

Cant imagine it being much louder than my 4850. That thing spins to 110% even while watching youtube videos. No idea why, but it does. Loudest video card I have ever had and I owned an Nvidia 5900.

77dB according to AT, vs 62dB for HD4850 and 67dB for two HD5870's in Crossfire (the loudest combination tested -> http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3679&p=16).

I know my HD4850 gets damned loud when the fan really gets going, but it's entirely possible/probably that the 5800Ultra was still louder at 77dB.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/nvidia/geforcefx/review/nvidia.zip
Check it out for yourself (AT's review video in zip).

 

[Piotrsama]

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...

They even say it on the article:

Then again, the 50 percent claim sounds a bit overly optimistic to say the least.

50% by doing a magical voltage tweak on air and using stock heatsink, yeah, sure....

 

[SlowSpyder]

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...

Something tells me what Asus isn't telling you is that you have to supply your own liquid nitrogen...

 

[MJinZ]

Have you played BFBC2 or metro?

There are lots of titles installed on my pc that challenge it...

I laugh at those pitiful games people actually spend money on.

 

[Avalon]

Cant imagine it being much louder than my 4850. That thing spins to 110% even while watching youtube videos. No idea why, but it does. Loudest video card I have ever had and I owned an Nvidia 5900.

Take off the cooler, clean it with compressed air. Clean the thermal paste off the cooler and the GPU, and apply something that is actually decent, like MX2. Problem solved.

 

[RussianSensation]

I laugh at those pitiful games people actually spend money on.

BFBC2, Metro 2033, Crysis/Crysis WH, Stalker: Call of Pripyat - those 5 games actually benefit from 5870 CF, because you can play every single other game with a single card. I guess you bought the latter 3?

 

[dguy6789]

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...

A GTX 480 that is 50% faster than stock would still be slower than a 5970 and almost certainly more expensive.

 

[Genx87]

Take off the cooler, clean it with compressed air. Clean the thermal paste off the cooler and the GPU, and apply something that is actually decent, like MX2. Problem solved.

It has done this since day 1. It isnt that big a deal really. I spend so little time on my computer now anyways. I just think the card itself is really loud.

 

[SunnyD]

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...

Up to 50% faster... than what? :sneaky:

I love ambiguous claims. Let's dissect it, shall we?

"Up to..." : Uh oh... that's kind of like saying my cable company provides me "Up to" 20Mbps internet bandwidth. I'm sure it can, but 99.9999% of the time I get about 4Mbps tops.

"50% faster" : Okay, I'll bite. 50% faster. YAY! 50% faster... wait. 50% faster than what? A Riva TNT or a 5870 or a Volvo? The implied metric is 50% faster than a stock voltage GTX4x0, but is it? :hmm: The way marketing guys work, probably not.

"Voltage Tweek" : Okay, you and I both know that volt mods generally allow for overclocking headroom. But they don't explicitly make that link anywhere. Joe Consumer says "Cool, Voltage Tweek makes it go faster!" so Joe Consumer cranks the voltage, but never touches the clocks. lulz.

For some reason I'm thinking ATI has very little to worry about with this particular card.

 

[dug777]

Take off the cooler, clean it with compressed air. Clean the thermal paste off the cooler and the GPU, and apply something that is actually decent, like MX2. Problem solved.

The stock reference 4850 hardly looks especially loud in relative terms when compared to the current generation of cards, at least when compared by an unbiased and independent source:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3746&p=5

That said, mine has an Asus Glaciator HSF and is entirely whisper quite, even at 100% I can't hear it over the two 120mm fans on medium in my Antec Sonata III

 

[RussianSensation]

"Voltage Tweek" : Okay, you and I both know that volt mods generally allow for overclocking headroom. But they don't explicitly make that link anywhere. Joe Consumer says "Cool, Voltage Tweek makes it go faster!" so Joe Consumer cranks the voltage, but never touches the clocks. lulz.

I think that's even going too far. I would bet that most consumers would think that the card has already been voltage tweaked and is up to 50% faster than the stock version. You think the average computer buyer even knows you can adjust voltages on a graphics card? But I am sure a good portion of enthusiasts that actually buy the GTX480 will care. So it would be interesting how many enthusiasts make up the sales of GTX480 vs. OEM/Average Joes.