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Fermi
I had guessed that the GTX 480 was going to be about 20% faster than the Radeon 5870, and it looks like I wasn't far off. I do think it'll take a little while yet before we see some things that take advantage of the Fermi architecture.
I'm not really surprised about the higher power consumption and heat either. At least the Guru3D review said it didn't make too much noise (I just quickly browsed the article).
My thoughts: It's nothing mind blowing, but was pretty much what was to be expected. Now if only they'd produce a smaller, cheaper, more power friendly version I might be persuaded to get it instead of a 5770...
I'm not really surprised about the higher power consumption and heat either. At least the Guru3D review said it didn't make too much noise (I just quickly browsed the article).
My thoughts: It's nothing mind blowing, but was pretty much what was to be expected. Now if only they'd produce a smaller, cheaper, more power friendly version I might be persuaded to get it instead of a 5770...
I got a 5870 at launch, it has served me well for 6months or so and cost me ~£300. Since then the price has also gone up.
Rumor has it these cards are going to hit at around £450 for the top end that combined with the fact that it isn't that much faster, draws significantly more power underload and is a bit more noisey means I'm seeing nothing here which has made me think 'oh god, I wish I had waited...'
While NV do, atm, have the fastest single card its certainly not by much and it's certainly not at a price:performance or perfomance:watt level which is good for the consumer.
Speed wise NV take the crown, but AMD will on customer value for money AND the fact that you still won't be able to get one for another 14 days from NV; paper launch = fail in my book.
Now, Fermi 2, once they get the kinks out and adapt to TMSC's issues, should rock as the archiecture looks great and will give them a good platform to work on.
At the same time AMD have their Northern Islands arch coming at the end of this year; will it be a refresh or another new arch?
If the latter then I feel that they will need to do two things;
1) sort the scheduler to be like NV's
2) split the arch from a 4+1 setup to a 2+2+1 where the 2+2 can still be used as a fused 4. As compute evolves trying to shove everything into a single 4 component system isn't going to help them I feel.
Rumor has it these cards are going to hit at around £450 for the top end that combined with the fact that it isn't that much faster, draws significantly more power underload and is a bit more noisey means I'm seeing nothing here which has made me think 'oh god, I wish I had waited...'
While NV do, atm, have the fastest single card its certainly not by much and it's certainly not at a price:performance or perfomance:watt level which is good for the consumer.
Speed wise NV take the crown, but AMD will on customer value for money AND the fact that you still won't be able to get one for another 14 days from NV; paper launch = fail in my book.
Now, Fermi 2, once they get the kinks out and adapt to TMSC's issues, should rock as the archiecture looks great and will give them a good platform to work on.
At the same time AMD have their Northern Islands arch coming at the end of this year; will it be a refresh or another new arch?
If the latter then I feel that they will need to do two things;
1) sort the scheduler to be like NV's
2) split the arch from a 4+1 setup to a 2+2+1 where the 2+2 can still be used as a fused 4. As compute evolves trying to shove everything into a single 4 component system isn't going to help them I feel.
Author
I think the significant point is that the market leader now supports DirectX 11 rather than the performance to be had. Performance today is largely about ever more excessive frame rates in most games. The PC gaming market, to me, largely stalled on Windows XP and DirectX 9. DirectX 11 adoption offers the potential to restart the market. ATI versus NVidia is largely a matter of brand loyality. As long as nVidia doesn't support DirectX 11 people continue cards that don't support DirectX 11. These two cards are a start, but presumably they'll be fleshing out the line in the coming months. I think it protends well for PC gaming.
The GPU market has certainly been interesting as of late.
Its interesting to see the divergence of each company's approach. In a lot of ways, nVidia reminds me of a Pentium 4-era intel (a comparison they'd surely be miffed about) pushing harder towards the highest-end (towards more power consumption and higher heat output) rather than smarter -- while the former ATI, under AMD, has adopted a strategy of building smarter and making a part that hits the mainstream performance market like a sledgehammer, and building out from there.
nVidia's hardware certainly has the edge in stream computing right now, and I think that's definately going to be a valuable niche for them. nVidia also has an iron in the mobile market with Tegra, and is rumored to be supplying the 3D grunt for the next Nintendo portable. Their name alone brings a lot of weight to that entry, which is good for them since PowerVR's stuff is a much better architecture for the mobile market (and they own a lot of patents regarding their tricks). ATI got out of that market -- I'd hope they get back in the game, but they probably sold off their interesting patents with regard to mobile when they sold their mobile division.
Its interesting to see the divergence of each company's approach. In a lot of ways, nVidia reminds me of a Pentium 4-era intel (a comparison they'd surely be miffed about) pushing harder towards the highest-end (towards more power consumption and higher heat output) rather than smarter -- while the former ATI, under AMD, has adopted a strategy of building smarter and making a part that hits the mainstream performance market like a sledgehammer, and building out from there.
nVidia's hardware certainly has the edge in stream computing right now, and I think that's definately going to be a valuable niche for them. nVidia also has an iron in the mobile market with Tegra, and is rumored to be supplying the 3D grunt for the next Nintendo portable. Their name alone brings a lot of weight to that entry, which is good for them since PowerVR's stuff is a much better architecture for the mobile market (and they own a lot of patents regarding their tricks). ATI got out of that market -- I'd hope they get back in the game, but they probably sold off their interesting patents with regard to mobile when they sold their mobile division.
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