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1st Fermi review
- Thread starter Azza
- Start date
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
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- 31,179
Anandtech here, always a comprehensive review 
well i've just returned from the launch event at a rival North West retailer for the 470/480. prices for the 480 was exactly that if i remember correctly £480 or £504 (for the overvolt version i think the bloke said) i think the the 470 was in the ballpark of £399 but was more concerned about the price of the 480. it was a lot more than i expected.
the evening was presented by a couple of chaps from Nvidia who talked the crowd through a 30 min presentation showing of the cards features and comparing it to the ATI 5870 and gtx 285 in comparison charts (no benchmark results though) the audience was then invited to particpate in a competition where they try win a 480 by getting the fastest time in the railtrack demo where you blast the guy along the track and try and get him to stop at the end of the track without going off. yeah the graphics were impressive and the main focus of the card was the psyx and tessalation which again was impressive. i also tried the railtrack challenge in 3D and that was surprisingly good.
the card goes on sale on April 12th and they are taking pre orders so you get yours first. i may have been tempted to part with my money if there was a promotional price but no, you were just guaranteed of getting a card on release.
i'm not sure the card warrants the £500 price tag because for that price you won't be far off a 5970. it looked like the guys at the store were really trying to sell the features of the fermi to me but again i kept coming back to the price. the TPD of the card is actually 250w and i did not see a card in the flesh as all the cards were in computers in a darkened room.
the evening was presented by a couple of chaps from Nvidia who talked the crowd through a 30 min presentation showing of the cards features and comparing it to the ATI 5870 and gtx 285 in comparison charts (no benchmark results though) the audience was then invited to particpate in a competition where they try win a 480 by getting the fastest time in the railtrack demo where you blast the guy along the track and try and get him to stop at the end of the track without going off. yeah the graphics were impressive and the main focus of the card was the psyx and tessalation which again was impressive. i also tried the railtrack challenge in 3D and that was surprisingly good.
the card goes on sale on April 12th and they are taking pre orders so you get yours first. i may have been tempted to part with my money if there was a promotional price but no, you were just guaranteed of getting a card on release.
i'm not sure the card warrants the £500 price tag because for that price you won't be far off a 5970. it looked like the guys at the store were really trying to sell the features of the fermi to me but again i kept coming back to the price. the TPD of the card is actually 250w and i did not see a card in the flesh as all the cards were in computers in a darkened room.
People who do high-end 3D work???
No it's not, it's about about graphics card (the title of the thread does not say "only gaming discussion allowed"). All of your arguments seem to be based around gaming though so perhaps that tells us a little bit about you.
You're dead right sorry. I'll look back through the thread and check out all the 3d modelling benchmarks posted, oh it's none
It's a thread about the GTX480, we can can talk about anything relating to that... But you're right, discussing gaming benchmarks is the gift that keeps on giving...
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Before debating how much I know, could you quote where I say AMD are faster, where I said Nvidia were poor, or where I demonstrated the ability to only post bad things about Nvidia.
I simply said this, people say Nvidia are way ahead on GPGPU performance, the fact is they aren't. As you said some things will suit the architecture some won't, its actually more likely with AMD's recent architecture that its a GPGPU type area that can harness the 4+1 shader styles power more efficiently than gaming, which can't get 100% performance out of it at any time basically.
As you said, Nvidia were simply the first and most vocal about GPGPU/Cuda and the rest, that translates into sales, and a dominance, again I think you won't find me mentioning anything against that point. Its not because Nvidia are actually far faster or better, simply that AMD didn't go after that market, and thats two VERY different things. Likewise Ati simply never came close to having Nvidia's money or ability to spend money marketing, or waste the money advertising their "gpgpu like capabilities" because any money they spent on marketing or going after specific clients, would have been met by 10 fold higher spending and it would literally just be a waste.
Not going after a market hell for leather, doesn't make their cards worse in that market, less used, and less supported yes, less good, no.
But my point wasn't about market dominance, or actual speed, just the fact that in a 99.9% gaming oriented forum all we ever hear is how Nvidia are so much better as a GPGPU than AMD's architecture is, and thats simply false. THere aren't any benchmarks to show whose better, and thats my point, its never really been compared on any serious level, but its just banded around as "fact" that Nvidia, and specifically Fermi, is the best GPGPU ever.
Going to have better support, yes, are there more GPGPU users who use Nvidia, so far use Cuda and would prefer to stick with them, yes, a better gpgpu......... maybe, its not been quantified on any realistic level, that is my point.
We're all waiting for hundreds of benchmarks on dozen's of sites to prove which is the faster GPU, but GPGPU, no need its Nvidia because we all say it enough..........
Existing programs writen perfectly for Cuda and Nvidia's architecture probably won't be faster on any AMD hardware, but people can write new programs, most proper GPGPU stuff is for private software to do specific things, any company can write the software however they like. Just because someone choose to write it for Cuda and on Nvidia hardware quite obviously doesn't mean nvidia are faster. As shown by one of the few recent benchmarks showing how easily a "Cuda" app was ported to work on the 5870 and blew away Nvidia with ease.
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You've gotta be kidding?
Nah he's not kidding, knew they were going to be around that figure, thing is peps will pay it.
Hm, a short selection of whose articles I plan on reading would be Tech Report (IMO they tend to have the most in-depth look at the GPU architecture, not the least bit surprising given their ties with b3d), bit-tech, anandtech, guru3d and techpowerup. Any others I'll take as they come. 
hehe, Just Cause easily faster on AMD hardware, even though its got 3 separate Nvidia logo's splattered all across the game(and Havok
turn the exclusive nvidia settings off to see if ati is still faster...
The news just keeps getting worse and worse... The worst thing about it (for me anyway) is that I've waited 6 months for Fermi for my new build (hoping they'd be worth it), and I'll probably end up buying an ATI card that I could have bought 6 months ago.
The news just keeps getting worse and worse... The worst thing about it (for me anyway) is that I've waited 6 months for Fermi for my new build (hoping they'd be worth it), and I'll probably end up buying an ATI card that I could have bought 6 months ago.
That's exactly what I have done. I bought an ATI card today.