New Dual Nvidia 5X0 card coming THIS year! GTX580 15-20% faster than GTX480! GTX560 possible release

[Mr Krugga]

More like $275-300.

 

[Skyrocket]

560gtx could be a game changer if it fits in between 6870 and 6950.

 

[Freddie1980]

Nvidia better pull there finger out if this so called Dual Nvidia 5X0 is to come out this year.

 

[JediFragger]

Nvidia better pull there finger out if this so called Dual Nvidia 5X0 is to come out this year.

Apparantly nVidia are 'waiting' for Antilies to be released so they know what they're dealing with. No power issues at all to iron out, no Siree Bob!!

 

[Skyrocket]

"5W" difference between 6970 and 570GTX!!!
Theres nothing in it anymore.


If Nvidia will struggle with power so will AMD.

I even expect Nvidia to take the lead because they got experience already with making hot power sapping george forman grills. ( ie 480GTX )

 

[hibbet]

Apparantly nVidia are 'waiting' for Antilies to be released so they know what they're dealing with. No power issues at all to iron out, no Siree Bob!!

maybe there following AMDs example and preparing to take a dremel to there cards

 

[Freddie1980]

Something just doesn't add up with the 6970 - compare the power rating to the 5870 and the 6970 uses 28% more juice yet it delivers less then that in on average in performance and this is on the back of an architecture that's supposed to be more efficient yet it works out in practice to less efficient.

 

[Skyrocket]

Something just doesn't add up with the 6970 - compare the power rating to the 5870 and the 6970 uses 28% more juice yet it delivers less then that in on average in performance and this is on the back of an architecture that's supposed to be more efficient yet it works out in practice to less efficient.

your right.
It doesn't add up.
Although it has an extra 1gb of ram it cant account for that much of a difference. I think the stick on tessellation units really bumped the size and the power of these cards more than AMD first thought.

 

[The Asgard]

your right.
It doesn't add up.
Although it has an extra 1gb of ram it cant account for that much of a difference. I think the stick on tessellation units really bumped the size and the power of these cards more than AMD first thought.

Or have AMD run into problems with leakage?
The card seems hotter and louder compared to the 5870 even though they have moved to vapour. Add the power throttling into the mix..... Makes you wonder.

 

[Duff-Man]

Something just doesn't add up with the 6970 - compare the power rating to the 5870 and the 6970 uses 28% more juice yet it delivers less then that in on average in performance and this is on the back of an architecture that's supposed to be more efficient yet it works out in practice to less efficient.

Not necessarily. I said well before the release of Cayman that I wouldn't necessarily expect it to offer better "performance per Watt" than Cypress (example link). The architecture has been reworked, and the ratio of transistors used for compute to those used in control logic has been adjusted. These are the kinds of developments that will allow an architecture to scale-up more efficiently to larger die sizes in the future, but they always come with a price with regards to power efficiency.

Usually we don't see these efficiency drops, because the move to a smaller manufacturing process brings with it massive improvements in per-transistor power efficiency. But in this case, you're seeing what is essentially a new architecture made on the same manufacturing process, so these inefficiencies "have nowhere to hide". If you like, you can consider this to be a consequence of AMD releasing the architecture at 40nm instead of the 32nm that they had planned / expected. You could also view it as AMD making more gradual architectural changes, so they are not forced into a massive "Fermi-style" architectural rewrite in a single generation. Either way, it's a consequence of looking to future GPU designs rather than "here and now" power efficiency.


Edit: As pointed out above, it also has an extra 1Gb of memory, which also requires power. I don't have figures to hand, but I would expect the power required for the extra memory to be only a small percentage of that required to power the GPU.

 

[D.P.]

Considering the GTX570 and 6970 have very similar power consumption and performance there could be a very good battle for the dual GPU crown.

Luckilly for ATI there xfire scaling has improved, otherwise I think it would be a clear win for Nvidia. No both camps are on an equal footing