NVIDIA GeForce 4XX Series Discussion

[kid41212003]

Why do all people want new cards anyway? To play Dirt 2 in DX11 mode that looks 5% better than in DX10 mode?

Oh and 3DMark DX11 benchmark still haven't out yet!

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

3dmark there so last year now its all about Unigine Heaven Bench screw 3dmark

 

[Steevo]

For a guy with a i7 at 3.8Ghz, and waiting on new GPU's you sure seem staunch in your love for the green F you in the A team. Perhaps people like me have been waiting for a card that can run GTA4 and the whole next series of games at good resolutions?


I have been buying either top of the line cards, or close to and modding them for a few years now so I can get good performance for my dollar. And without some strong competition from NV ATI will not have to do anything about pricing, or releasing newer models. We all need that. So for NV to fail now is actually bad for me as a ATI customer.


I really do want these cards out, and to perform well. But the length to which so many people here will go to try and polish this turd is amazing.

 

[kid41212003]

I don't have GTA4 for PC, so I have no idea how terrible it is on PC , I got that for my PS3 though. The last ATI card that I bought was HD2600, and that wasn't for me, lmao.

Anyway, I'm quite a loyal customer for Nvidia's products, because most of my games are TWIMTBP titles (Battlefield, COD, Company of Heroes, Warhammer series, ect..) And I'm not going to AMD/ATI's threads and bashing on unreleased products, I simple have no interests in AMD VGA cards (except their integrated GPUs).

I do have interest in AMD cpu, but AMD failed me with their Phenom 1 which I bought years ago. Suck for them that when Phenom II is out I already got i7, but I did not regret buying i7, totally glad I made that move.

AMD released their HD5000 series too early imo, it was barely 6 months for HD4000. I think that's abusing customers, if consoles were making this way it will be hell for all of us .

I will hold my breath for Fermi, I'm looking forward to Bad Company 2 (with DX11 support) this March, and $500 that I put aside since Christmas for Fermi. AMD will need to do more with AMD games and their driver optimization/custom profiles before they can make me move camp.

I don't expect the single GPU Fermi will be faster than Dual-GPUs DX11 card from AMD, I'm expecting it to be at least equal or faster than GTX295. It should puts the card under AMD Flagship card's price, and I will be happy to get one.

Fermi will be hot? Who care!? As long as it run! My 8800GT idle at 70C with stock cooler last summer, and it didn't die, and so was my GTX280.

Fermi will be 40nm, what's the next node after 40nm? Probably 32nm half-node which is 28nm, and AMD probably will go ahead with its 28nm before NVIDIA. It's the pattern. 90nm vs 65nm, 65nm vs 55nm, 40nm vs 28nm, NVIDIA vs AMD.

For now, I will hold my judgement, once it's out and if it turn out to be bad, then I always have AMD to turn to, and that's when the price will be better than now anyway.

 

[shevanel]

u need to take that $500 and buy an air conditioner LOL

j/k. there is nothing wrong with sticking to brands you like.

 

[bobzilla2009]

If i'm not mistaken, the next battlefields (bfbc2 and bf3) will not be twimtbp, but will be AMD products. The disadvantage for nvidia is that most of the developers who have started using dx11 (i.e. the ones likely to end up being good at using it) are all amd supporters now. Although i'm sure they could try a microsoft and buy them all back ^^ (although i would presume the nvidia coffers aren't quite as full at the moment due to the delayed fermi and the relative lack of sales in their other cards (steam hardware survey has been showing a month upon month decrease in nvidia compared to ATi for example).

Also i do agree that fermi reaching gtx295 levels would be just fine, we've only started bitching about the hd5870 because we're bored now ^^. It would also lead to some nice pricing warfare!

 

[Black Panther]

Fermi will go into production starting in the 3rd week of February, and be available in "low quantities" starting mid-march.

According to our source, Fermi's yield will be low but not any worst than what AMD/ATI is experiencing. TSMC, the company producing Radeon HD 5800 series at 40nm, is "happy at 4-percent yield," said our source.

Tom's Hardware.

 

[bobzilla2009]

happy at 4%!!!! surely a typo of 40% at least. Also that means when fermis do get here, no-one will be able to find any in stores for a few months. But if the statements are true, i'm assuming TSMC are going to be ditch for the next generation. Aren't AMD working with GlobalFoundries anyway?

EDIT: AMD have owned GF since march last year, lol, so i'm assuming that's where the radeon hd6xxx series is coming from.

 

[TheMailMan78]

AMD released their HD5000 series too early imo, it was barely 6 months for HD4000. I think that's abusing customers, if consoles were making this way it will be hell for all of us

The 4800 series were out for over a year before the 5800 series my friend. You are thinking of an Nivida re-brand.

 

[bobzilla2009]

the last hd4xxx came out only 6 months before though, but i don't think that should really count as the generation lifespan. Personally i take the lifespan as being 4870 to 5870, and i also see the performance improvements as such. People seem iffy with the hd5870 because they are comparing it to the 4890. In the end they have different architectures, so comparing a card higher up in the last generation relative to the hd5870's position in the new series is a bit off (even if the specs seem that way).

It's like people will be comparing the gtx380 to the gtx285 instead of the 280 (although there isn't much in the way of difference). Or more likely the hd5870, so the impact of fermi will be lessened, even if it is good. Still, fermi should beat the hd5870, and even if it doesn't beat hemlock, it's a good improvement considering the scaling problems of dx9 games (the primary source of all our complaints about lack of improvement in this generation, is the fact the games aren't good enough).

 

[yogurt_21]

AMD released their HD5000 series too early imo, it was barely 6 months for HD4000. I think that's abusing customers, if consoles were making this way it will be hell for all of us .

fail 15 months, in fact the 5000 series was overdue.
4800's launched in June of 2008
5800's launched in september of 2009.

the GTX 260 and GTX 280 also launched in June of 2008 nvidia will not have relased new tech for 2 years by the time fermi launches. This from the company that used to have 6 month product cycles.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

why have 6 month cycles when u can just rename and accomplish the same thing

 

[bobzilla2009]

indeed, you still get the same amount of sales from idiots

 

[Bo_Fox]

If i'm not mistaken, the next battlefields (bfbc2 and bf3) will not be twimtbp, but will be AMD products. The disadvantage for nvidia is that most of the developers who have started using dx11 (i.e. the ones likely the end up being good at using it) are all amd supporters now. Although i'm sure they could try a microsoft and buy them all back ^^ (although i would presume the nvidia coffers aren't quite as full at the moment due to the delayed fermi and the relative lack of sales in their other cards (steam hardware survey has been showing a month upon month decrease in nvidia compared to ATi for example).

Also i do agree that fermi reaching gtx295 levels would be just fine, we've only started bitching about the hd5870 because we're bored now ^^. It would also lead to some nice pricing warfare!

That's music to my ears!

I have to disagree. The 295 first and 2nd gen were both shorter than the 4870x2. NV has a way with design.

Hmm, I would have a hard time agreeing with that. It took NV forever to figure out how to make a single-PCB revision of a dual-GPU card, after the 7900GX2, 7950GX2, 9800GX2.

Please, don't even start with that sort of a debate where the debate isn't necessary. There are tests and benchmarks that use the whole lot of resources the card can offer and both cards match each other +/- 1%.

This is not to say ATI is evil or NV is smarter... it's just how it is. The 5870 looked better in my case. It doesn't rattle like a 5850 can with higher fan speeds, but honestly the 5850 is the only card they released. There are 2 "higher performance" cards that are the same thing with different clock speeds, or a whole other GPU to back it up.

The point is that there happens to be one awesome card ATI has made (5850) and the rest are ROP starved. I doubt the NV solution will be ROP starved with 48 ROPs, and just about every other spec the card carries is more than the 5XXX series cards. This, to me, means that it may very well double performance of the 285. I highly HIGHLY count on it even. ATI's 4XXX series was a huge improvement, but there were scaling issues that were shown to be ROP related. NV's cards scaled just fine with how many shaders they had activated. The 295 scaled in relation to 280s in SLI. The headroom in spec gives them the ability to make cards that are actually higher performance than their own, more mainstream, cards.

A 4890 still managed to show large performance improvements over a 4870, even though it still had only 16 ROP's. I have yet to see a game that really suffered from the ROP bottleneck on the 4890!

At least the ROP's are doubled on the 5870 over a 4890, unlike the Fermi which looks like it will have more than 2x the shaders, but with only 50% more ROP's than a GTX 285.

The 5870 was bottlenecked by the memory much more than the ROP's. At least the Fermi will probably have 50% more bandwidth than the 285-- a nice balance in the increase of both ROP's and bandwidth.

 

[Bo_Fox]

Those in the know are claiming that Fermi despite the yield and thermal issues is only about 20% faster than Cypress, while Hemlock smokes it.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17205/1/

 

[bobzilla2009]

but 20% faster than cypress is still around 7% faster than the gtx295, people should be happy with that. If they're not, it's just because nvidia screwed up the release dates badly.

In the end, we aren't going to be looking at a card that should of come out 6 months after the hd5870, we'll be looking at a card that should of directly competed with the hd5870. They won't have sprinkled magic dust on it over the last few months to gain extra performance, they have just been trying to get the buggers working in a decent quantity. As it stands, ATi will likely have a nice hd5890 or even a hd5990 ready either in march or not long after, which will almost certainly retake the performance crown back until nvidia release a gtx285.

And none of that even takes into account that nvidia have no longer got a claim to any segment of the market at the moment.
Cheap ass cards = hd46xx > gt 210/220
still cheap but getting better = HD5670/50 > GT 240
Mid range = Hd5770 (around about equal to but cheaper than) GTX260 << this segment is nvidias only real hope, but no-one is goign to buy a dx10 card now, considering dx11 cards are around the same price.
High end = HD5870/5850 > gtx 285
Ridiculous end Hd5990 > gtx295

Of course all, it could be said that it's not fair that ati examples are pretty much all the 5xxx series, but that's the state of things. By march i reckon that the nv/ati ratio will be more like 60/40 than the previous 70/30. Plus, it's not like the idiots who only ever see nvidia adverts will be swayed anyway by real performance gains by ATi, right?

On a side note: AMD need to start calling their cards AMD properley now, otherwise the impact of their ads at the beginning of games will be tiny. Since people will think the processors are being advertised.

 

[wolf]

I'd like to believe it's so awesome it's worth the wait and will be blazingly fast, hopefully leaving a 5870 in the dust and potentially beating the 5970 too.

Decisions are being made and lines drawn in the sand before we even have any solid numbers here people, lets remember that, no HARD performance evidence, or pricing evidence.

 

[Bo_Fox]

Oh yeah, NV *will* have to compete with ATI's improved card after the 5870 (either 2GB version of 5870 or a steroids-fed version, named the 5890)!

 

[mR Yellow]

I'd like to believe it's so awesome it's worth the wait and will be blazingly fast, hopefully leaving a 5870 in the dust and potentially beating the 5970 too.

Decisions are being made and lines drawn in the sand before we even have any solid numbers here people, lets remember that, no HARD performance evidence, or pricing evidence.

lol, u are very hopeful. I had the same hopes waiting for the ATi x1800...err, what a let down that was. Rather expect less and be happily surprised.

 

[phanbuey]

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17205/1/

I believe that. I really do... They have been acting so strange with the release of the card - it just has been reeking of 2900XTness.

 

[mastrdrver]

For anyone with time to kill here are two threads over on B3D that will probably make your head spin from all the tech talk and rumors.

NVIDIA GF100 pre-release speculation
NVIDIA Fermi: Architecture discussion

 

[a_ump]

have u read anything on those that we haven't mentioned in our GTX3XX/Fermi threads? lol 101 pages is a lot of find the posts that are interesting or different from ours. 2500 some posts actually

 

[mastrdrver]

nVidia won't be in a price war with Fermi, if they are getting such few chips as suggested. They will probably keep supply tight to keep prices high.

have u read anything on those that we haven't mentioned in our GTX3XX/Fermi threads? lol 101 pages is a lot of find the posts that are interesting or different from ours. 2500 some posts actually

That's why I said if you have time to kill.


There are some things that they talk about in there that has been speculation is most places. There are a lot of people on there that understand about programming and designing chips. There are also a few that know more than what they can say because of NDA. There has been talk recently about slides coming out on Monday because that's when the NDA is up on them. Though, apparently, while they clear up some things, they won't show clocks or even be able to give us a valid idea of how it will compare to the ATI or previous nVidia cards.

Consensus: Fermi will probably hot, loud, and short lived

There is concern that the core clocks of Fermi will be lower than ATI's which will hurt DX11 tessellation since, apparently, it relies on core clocks and not shader clocks. The reason they will be lower is because of the thermal/power envelope given. IF true, this might explain why most rumors are saying Fermi will under perform, what most think it should, by only being 20% faster than 5870.

 

[KainXS]

If nvidia is really getting about 20%(I don't think they are) yields from wafers then I really wonder whats the bin ratio on those wafers is most are low binned then prices could be insane and that could be the reason why theres a delay, thats a very bad scenario but then again, . . . . the fud is saying it so. . . . . . me don't really know.

 

[erocker]

If nvidia is really getting about 20%(I don't think they are) yields from wafers then I really wonder whats the bin ratio on those wafers is most are low binned then prices could be insane and that could be the reason why theres a delay, thats a very bad scenario but then again, . . . . the fud is saying it so. . . . . . makes me feel FUD.

Remember though, the "bad" chips aren't necesarilly bad. That's how the lower variants of G92 came to be.