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So ladies and gents, was fermi a fail after all?

I don't really think either manufacturer has had any proper failures since the GeforceFx series.

The fermi hasn't be a massive success for nvidia, but it hasn't exactly been a failure either...... just an average generation of cards.
 
To be honest it's almost a yes. If your comparing Nvidias position from pre-fermi to post fermi then we're looking at a large set of cards that like some have mentioned weren't as powerful as Nvidia wanted us to believe, were stupid hot (yes we can all spend hundreds on water cooling to keep them under control but that's not really comforting) and power crazy. I wouldn't touch a 480 gtx and some other cards. Fermi isn't a failure because its competitive, they're back on track with good offerings like the 560, 580 etc. and I'm a man who wanted a 5850/70 for ages and ended up picking up a gtx 460 because it won out in my opinion. But the truth is the architecture is almost a step back, the heat and noise are unwelcome and I don't think them being the more powerful cards means much as they were more than likely going to be anyway just like the GTX 295's and 280's were.
Nvidia had bad pricing, power draw, heat and temps while only managing to carry on having the performance crown. That doesn't matter squat when I'd rather pick up a 6950 and flash it to a 6970 because its far cheaper and won't suffer from sucky power, noise and temps. Fermi has some great cards, but it has a lot of duds so for me it is a 50/50 failure. Can't call it a failure but its a poor show in many cases.
 
Initially fermi was a big fail, too costly to make, too expensive to buy, too hot and power hungry. However when the 470 got down to around £170-£180 I thought yeh, now I'm interested, I can stick an aftermarket cooler on it and now its the bees knees for me. Will do me nicely until next Xmas.:D

The newer 460\560\570\580 are obvious improvements but Amd are still the bang for buck kings for me with the 6950 unlocked. I think Fermi is a big fail as Nvidia would have had many many more sales if Fermi had been up to scratch from the off. Kudos to Nvidia though for kind of turning it from a disaster into a minor success.:)
 
@#22

^^ logic fail, 580/570 run cooler or the same as the 6970/50 yet overclock way better and from reviews are quieter, an overclocked 570 will go to town on a clocked 6970, Nvidia are in the driving seat now.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
@#22

^^ logic fail, 580/570 run cooler or the same as the 6970/50 yet overclock way better and from reviews are quieter, an overclocked 570 will go to town on a clocked 6970, Nvidia are in the driving seat now.
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Hence why I said they came out with good cards such as the 560 / 580. The 570 was implied in that too and I did give Nvidia there dues in saying some were good and even mentioned several (460, 560, 580) but stated many failed. Also I did state Nvidia had the performance crown so nothing you mentioned was a logical fail on my part in any way :confused: After all when it came to the 6950 I was talking about price to performance in which I'd rather get a 6950 and flash it than get a 480 (which is where the heat and noise came in) or a 570 (due to price) to be honest and overclock it as the price difference to performance difference isn't worth the money in my opinion.

Anyway question on my part, once you flash a 6950 to a 6970 can it be overclocked just as much as a regular 6970 or is that its limit?
 
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TBH, this is the only forum I've come across where the GTX 470 and 480 are so popular.

Most other tech forums still shun the cards and dont recommend them.
 
Not sure what forums you hang out on except for one of OcUK's competitor forums (which is very pro ATI/AMD) most of the main hardware tech ones like guru3d, xs, etc. are pretty similiar viewpoint wise to these.

EDIT: To be fair these forums are probably a little more pro 470 than is typical due to the deals they've done on them here and a good number picking them up at good prices.
 
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Good for you, you must visit a limited number of forums, I'll take a -£200 480 and overclocked to 580 performance all year long.
 
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RavenXXX2 said:
@#22

^^ logic fail, 580/570 run cooler or the same as the 6970/50 yet overclock way better and from reviews are quieter, an overclocked 570 will go to town on a clocked 6970, Nvidia are in the driving seat now.
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Same GPU temperature doesn't equal the same overall temperature, you should know this by now.

The main reason Fermi is a fail is because of how much it cost, compared to the performance it gave, as well as its high power draw, temperature and noise levels. In their own regards, they were good cards when you ignored all of the above and just looked at performance.

When it comes to GTX500s, I think people are getting a bit carried away with themselves because they seem to think it's some sort of massive performance increase over the 400s, and they somehow use a lot less power and are cooler.

Realistically they're very much the same, but it just goes to highlight how much nVidia skimped on the 400s, because the 500s simply use better heatsinks to keep the temperature under control, as well as the power draw limiter. Limiting the power draw is of course a good idea, but it's something that should have been done with the GTX480, and people that think the 580 and 480 are so wildly different need to stop kidding themselves.

I don't understand the big hype over them either, people will call the 6900s a fail compared to the HD 5000s, but then gush over the the GTX500s. As I've said before, if the 6900s are a fail, then the GTX500s are also fails, because they've pretty much had the same performance increase over the last lot of cards as the 6900s.

What I think makes it worse though is how the GTX500s are overall more expensive than the cards they replaced, whereas the 6900s are at a lower price point than the 5800s they replaced. This is an odd trait of this forum, the way so many people gush over nVidia, and are perfectly happy to hear people criticise AMD (for example, I think the 6900s are a failure compared to the 5000s), but the minute you do the same over nVidia, they get upset and go in to blind-love-for-nVidia mode.
 
Rroff said:
It wasn't up against the 5870 though product category wise - but it still gives the 5870 a hard run for its money.
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When the 470 was released, it was more expensive than the 5870, for less performance, its performance was actually more 5850 performance, for over £100 more. How can you say it wasn't up against the 5870 category wise, when it was close to its price bracket?
 
bhavv said:
TBH, this is the only forum I've come across where the GTX 470 and 480 are so popular.

Most other tech forums still shun the cards and dont recommend them.
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That will make it right then :), unless we can get sales figures it is quite hard to judge success or not.

I would describe the initial release as average but coming good with the newer generation.
 
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From a consumer point of view the only thing that really determines the success of a graphics card is price. To begin with the 470/480 based cards were way overpriced (IMO), however the price drops that took place after the first few months made them a lot more attractive.

Of course for nVidia themselves there is a completely different set of factors which determine a success or a failure. However without actually being employed there are knowing profit margins etc. speculation on that front is somewhat pointless.
 
kylew said:
When the 470 was released, it was more expensive than the 5870, for less performance, its performance was actually more 5850 performance, for over £100 more. How can you say it wasn't up against the 5870 category wise, when it was close to its price bracket?
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Fair enough, I don't really catagorise on price myself and a little bias towards the 470 due to its sheer OCing capabilities.
 
Let me guess you have a grammar plugin for your browser :D

Price just isn't as high on my list as is probably typical.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
Good for you, you must visit a limited number of forums, I'll take a -£200 480 and overclocked to 580 performance all year long.
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If you want the truth then this is the only PC gaming forum I go on, and like you mentioned its a relatively positive one toward Nvidia compared to most. If you'd take a 480 clocked to 580 over a 6950 flashed to 6970 then thats fine and I'm sure there are others that would too but that doesn't mean you be silly and try and discredit others people views just because you disagree with them. My argument was presented fairly, I believe the first set of fermi were too hot and power hungry for me (clearly not for everyone) but did mention the 560 and 580 etc. were good new ones by Nvidia and that I have a nvidia card myself. Clearly the amount of forums I go on has nothing to do with which card I'd go for (again, I own a nvidia card) so I'll ignore that snide remark and just say Nvidia won it when I bought my card and ATI are winning it for me at the moment.

Your after performance, hence Nvidia win. I'm after price to performance, hence either could win but I currently feel the 6950 is the card which has the right price and performance for me.
 
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Performance wise the GTX 480 was 6 months late and only a max of 10% faster (at the resolution I use) then the best single GPU at the time the Ati 5870 (which I own).. So to me was a let down at the time.. Well now the GTX 580 seems a great card but a little over priced compared to the offers floating about for the Ati 5870, 5850 and GTX 480... Next round if Nvidia can keep things cool and perform well like the GTX 580 I will be going Nvidia, unless ATI can do some magic with the 28nm process and offer good performance and a cool running card for a better price. If we are again only talking about a 10% performance gap between the Nvidia 28nm and AMD/ATI offering, plus typical ATI/AMD will be in the £280-£300 price range and Nvidia will be around £380-£400 mark I will go AMD/ATI again... The £100 difference for a small performance difference is what makes me decide in the end, things like PhysX are never going to intrest me in deciding what to buy, I just want to know the "raw" horse power of a GPU and not the bolted on gimmicks like PhysX.


Also to add AMD/ATI dropped the ball on the 69xx series this time round to me and offered not much of an upgrade option for people running 58xx series cards... So this is why this year I have not updated and the GTX 580 to me is as I said little over priced for the performance you get compared to say a AMD/ATI 6950 or 6970 or even their own GTX 570.


What I say above is all based on a Single GPU system, no crossfire/sli or single boards with dual GPU, plus a single screen system running at 1920x1200. So therefore as you see from what I say I have no reason to upgrade.. Unless I go 2560x1600 resolution single screen or use multi screens, or again some game comes out that I really want to play that requires a new monster card... Crysis and metro like games won't ever make me upgrade.. These games are designed in such a way to work better on Nvidia products from minute you install them and getting kind of tired seeing game makers behave in this manner where they favour one GPU maker over another and in some way make their cards perform better then the rivals. Silly programming tricks that's all it is or optimised in a way that favours a certain GPU maker or makes use of hardware on the GPU the other GPU maker does not have but ofcourse could have been coded to take advantage of other hardware on the rivals card.
 
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