Tuesday, March 30th 2010
XFX Abandons GeForce GTX 400 Series
XFX is getting cozier with AMD by the day, which is an eyesore for NVIDIA. Amidst the launch of GeForce GTX 400 series, XFX did what could have been unimaginable a few months ago: abandon NVIDIA's high-end GPU launch. That's right, XFX has decided against making and selling GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 graphics cards, saying that it favours high-end GPUs from AMD, instead. This comes even as XFX seemed to have been ready with its own product art. Apart from making new non-reference design SKUs for pretty-much every Radeon HD 5000 series GPU, the company is working on even more premium graphics cards targeted at NVIDIA's high-end GPUs.
The rift between XFX and NVIDIA became quite apparent when XFX outright bashed NVIDIA's high-end lineup in a recent press communication about a new high-end Radeon-based graphics card it's designing. "XFX have always developed the most powerful, versatile Gaming weapons in the world - and have just stepped up to the gaming plate and launched something spectacular that may well literally blow the current NVIDIA offerings clean away," adding "GTX480 and GTX470 are upon us, but perhaps the time has come to Ferm up who really has the big Guns." The move may come to the disappointment of some potential buyers of GTX 400 series, as XFX's popular Double Lifetime Warranty scheme would be missed. XFX however, maintains that it may choose to work on lower-end Fermi-derivatives.
Source:
HardwareCanucks
The rift between XFX and NVIDIA became quite apparent when XFX outright bashed NVIDIA's high-end lineup in a recent press communication about a new high-end Radeon-based graphics card it's designing. "XFX have always developed the most powerful, versatile Gaming weapons in the world - and have just stepped up to the gaming plate and launched something spectacular that may well literally blow the current NVIDIA offerings clean away," adding "GTX480 and GTX470 are upon us, but perhaps the time has come to Ferm up who really has the big Guns." The move may come to the disappointment of some potential buyers of GTX 400 series, as XFX's popular Double Lifetime Warranty scheme would be missed. XFX however, maintains that it may choose to work on lower-end Fermi-derivatives.
199 Comments on XFX Abandons GeForce GTX 400 Series
FX 5800 / GTX 480
- Reduce availability.
- Not quite a performance star.
- Heat and noise problems.
- Late.
The difference is that now nVidia buyers have pieces of paper moving around in games (Physx), 3D glasses (if you can afford the whole kit), can work with some serious C programming and video encoding (CUDA). Nice features though. Ah, I was forgetting "The Way It's Meant to Be Played" extra value.
We both know that "The Way It's Meant to Be Payed" won't save the GF100 from the Hemlock. :p
ATI just hit a homerun with the 5k series. That doesn't make Fermi a bad card. Not a great card, but not a bad card.
2, 55nm, 1.3v, 4870 gpus run a little warmer and draw a little more power than
1, 40nm, .99v, GTX 480 gpu
Somehow, I don't see anything there that makes the GTX 480 a decent card. Let alone a good card. Not to mention that in performance a 4870x2 is close to or equal a 5870. That just makes the GTX 480 look worse imo.
I guess you don't have to worry about SLI profiles with one gpu. I guess that's a plus for Fermi.........right?
I don't see anything that makes Fermi a terrible card. I likewise don't really see anything that makes it a great card.
Also, a card that "might" only last 2 or 3 years is not worth buying anyways.
Maybe it does a lot more in benches, but since I play games I didn't really look at the "Vantage" parts of all the reviews I read.
BTW, I read somewhere that a couple reviewers got bum GTX 480s. Still trying to find them though.
Fermi isn't terrible.....but it came close.
TBH, I can't say it's a bad card, either . . . but I don't really see where it's a better deal over a 5870.
Theyre definitely pushing the line on the manufacturing process. For sure they sent cherry picked samples to reviewers. Not all cards draw the same amount of juice am i right? Some chips might be leakier/run hotter/ burn more watts than others.
Sounds like it might be a QC issue. Was it all the same brand of card?
Here is an interesting little tidbit of information: Not once has ATi been able to release a single GPU card that actually outperformed every card from the previous generation. This includes the HD5870. However, nVidia has with Fermi.
You know, it kind of makes me wonder what the power and heat of RV870 would be like if they did push it to that level of performance...