We're only
a week away from their grand unveiling, but already we've got word of the specs for NVIDIA's high end
GTX 480 and GTX 470 cards. Priced at $499, the 480 will offer 480 shader processors, a 384-bit interface to 1.5GB of onboard GDDR5 RAM, and clock speeds of 700MHz, 1,401MHz, and 1,848MHz for the core, shaders and memory, respectively. The 470 makes do with 446 SPs, slower clocks, and a 320-bit memory interface, but it's also priced at a more sensible $349. The TDPs of these cards are pretty spectacular too, with 225W for the junior model and 295W for the full-fat card. Sourced by
VR Zone, these numbers are still unofficial, but they do look to mesh well with what we already know of the hardware, including a purported 5-10 percent benchmarking advantage for the GTX 480 over
ATI's HD 5870. Whether the price and power premium is worth it will be up to you and the inevitable slew of reviews to decide.
[Thanks, Sean]
posted March 19th 2010 4:31AM
Event horizon.
NVIDIA comeback?
@liquidmonkey
Nope!
Even though it's the best single GPU card as of now, I bet the price for the 5970 will drop in response to Nvidia's card and ATI will be ahead once again price and performance alike.
@liquidmonkey: No. It's rather "nVidia, please come back!!"
@air0804
I'll second that
@liquidmonkey
'Comeback' isn't really appropriate. nVidia was not suffering from a performance gap. Quite the opposite...the GTX 285 is ~15-20% more powerful than the HD 4890...those are the most powerful single GPU cards from the prior generation.
Where nVidia fell behind was simply in timing, and by 6 months, which isn't too bad. They have nothing to come back from, they were always the dominant player, apples-to-apples. The problem was ATI just has had some new oranges sitting around for a few months before nVidia could get their oranges to market.
Really, this card is a sign of exactly the opposite of a comeback...it's the beginning of a fall. While we don't have definitive benches yet*, and the rumored and few actual initial performance results in games without tesselation (currently ALL games) is a meager 5% increase over the 5870. Once the numbers come down from comprehensive benching, that gap could easily close to 0%. And it's going to be $100 more expensive. THAT is what nVidia will have to make a comeback from, if they do.
I have a GTX 280 that I am looking to upgrade, and from the looks of things I will be getting my first ATI card since the 9800 8 years ago. Unless there is some miracle in the benches, the 5870 is going to be a MUCH better buy.
*-That alone is troublesome enough, nVidia usually gives out reference cards to hardware sites for benches a month or more before launch to drive hype...so either there is nothing to hype, or the card was too unfinished to bench by 3rd parties.
@liquidmonkey, not so much a come back as much as a come down.. they need to bring down their prices. There's a recession going on or aren't Nvidia folks aware?
@liquidmonkey Meh. I still likez ATi moar.
@Kamokazi "Where nVidia fell behind was simply in timing, and by 6 months, which isn't too bad."
Tell that to NVDA investors...
Have to admit, seems like a waste. I mean, this much time working on these products, and there is only a mere 5-10% boost? Come on...what happened to the 50% estimates from a couple months ago nvidia? Glad i bought a 5870 and didn't wait for one of these...
@air0804 Agreed. The 5870 has been out for a good while now, and on top of that cost me roughly $100 less.
@air0804 The 5-10% figures miss the point.
The 5870 was released as a DX11 part, and everyone swooned over how well it ran the Heaven benchmark because a) there was nothing to compare it with and b) it wasn't clear what the limiting factor was in those framerates.
Now the GTX480 comes along. In terms of raw shader performance it's neck and neck - truthfully the sort of margin of win we would expect between competing top-of-the-range cards - only here the 6 month delay and power consumption figures overshadow that small margin.
However, what the 480 shows is that when you actually try to use the headline features of DX11, up to half your 5870's performance could end up wasted. Any way you slice it, that's bad news. DX11 is here now, and tessellation happens to be one of the easiest features for developers to bolt onto their (all too often) console-focused games because it leverages the high-res assets they already use to make bump-maps. It's certainly far easier to employ than the rather obscure features specific to DX10.
I fully expect DX10 gaming benchmarks to show little or no advantage to owning a GTX480. But I'll still buy one because that way in a year or so when DX11 is mainstream I'll be playing at 40fps instead of 20.
How far along are the mobile versions of these cards? I would like my (yet to be released) MBP to sport one of these..
@thatbsdguy
I wish you all the luck and also recommend if you want a mobile version of these (current gen) on a MPB then wait for the next generation to come out first.
@thatbsdguy Hahaha good one. You really expect Nvidia to make a 295W monster into something that can fit in a laptop without draining it after 15 minutes of gaming? Come again. They'll gimp it just like any other mobile GPU, that's what they've been doing forever.
The fastest mobile GPU right now from Nvidia is the GTX 285M, a G92, if even that.
GTX 285 (GT200b):
~185W, 648/1476/1242 core/shader/mem, 512bit memory interface, 240 shader procs, memory bandwidth of 158GB/s, 58 billion texels, officially 1GB GDDR3.
GTX 285M (G92):
~100W, ???/1500/1020 core/shader/mem, 256bit memory interface, 128 shader procs, memory bandwidth of 61GB/s, 38 billion texels, officially 1GB GDDR3.
The nomenclature for the mobile GPUs makes it look like their desktop counterparts but they have nothing in common otherwise. G92 is what powered the 8800GT, 9800GT, 9800GTX. Then the G92b powered the 9800GTX+ and the GTS 250.
This makes the most powerful Nvidia notebook GPU essentially a hybrid between the desktop 9800GT and 9800GTX.
@thatbsdguy the mobile versions always suck by comparison, and shouldn't share the same model numbers.
@thatbsdguy Of course the mobile varients can't be as powerful. It would be stupid to think otherwise.
The whole Geforce 8,9,gt200 were near enough the same mobile chips which is why there was never any huge difference but I'm sure this will provide a bigger generation- generation boost than we've seen recently.
So, will this require a nuclear power plant, or maybe just the local county power grid?
@pika2000 A regular 300W PSU. Dedicated.
@DaSpider
nope, it sucks up over 300w of power all by itself, and running any PSU at 100% load will fry it. i'd suggest a dedicated 500w PSU...
@willyolio
If ithe PSU's 300W is RMS it will do. the board peaks at 295W
@pika2000
Indeed. It's quite the heatsink they have installed, too.
Couple things to bring to your attention :)
1. A video card consuming a whopping 300Watts... Jesus!!! Holly quakamolly!!!
2. Last time video cards starting getting that big, a company went out of business (ahem, Voodoo 6000, ahem)
3. What happened to the GT3xx series? Just couple crappy videocards in laptops, and that's it? Are they THAT sure in their performance gain over 2xx series that they just jumped to 4xx series? I'm expecting a performance increase of exponential proportions now... Have fun not letting me down, Nvidia...
If anything they should have skipped 4... 4 is a boring number (Plus Chinese hate it for some superstitious reason)... But what do I know, I'm not in marketing (thank god, and save their souls while you're at it)..
@pretol
They don't like the number 4 because in chinese "4" and "death" is pronounced the same way.
@kitsune I'm pretty sure that's Japanese, not Chinese.
@pretol Isn't the current GT2xx series getting bumped to GT3xx? Serious question, I thought I read it a few months ago.
@Amnesiasoft No, its chinese. At least in Cantonese, the word "sei" for 4 rhymes with the word "sei" (different tone) which is death.
@Amnesiasoft It is both chinese and japanese and both in mandarin and cantonese.
1. what happened to gtx3xx series?
2. almost 300W... holly shit...
3. that sucker is HUGE...
@pretol
oops, I thought I lost it... posted another (shorter), but then the original post, apparently, went through... i apologize for overpost.
Nvidia! Welcome to 2009!
Jesus that power draw is insane. I plan on building a new PC at the end of the year and I want it to consume alot less power than my current one, and be much faster natch :)
Processors have come along way in improving performance while dropping TDP, especially in idle states but this...this thing...thats madness. I bet anyone that bought one of ATI's cards wont be feeling like they should have waited. Glad to see ATI back on top
So my 290 is last gen now? This seems to have a slight performance upgrade, and less physical ram...
in b4 fanboy
3xSLi on them = 900 watt raw power... nice ! 1k Watt PSU only for the cards...
@mpampir
This thing hogs to much juice. Just got with the ATI 5970. Or stick with the 5870 since it's not much of a gain.
@mpampir 1KW is the consumption of my entire house, with all the lights on!
@mpampir don't think we need more than one of these. HA! In my dreams to even get my hands on one....I got a Proprietary case.....
Critical mass.
Forgive me if other cards have featured this but am I the only person who is amazed that this card has header pipes? Is there a muffler that is hidden somewhere?
@CBingo I believe they started using heat-pipes on video cards with the NVIDIA Geforce 7900 GTX, maybe a little earlier. Just FYI, the 7900 GTX was launched a little more than 4 years ago.
"including a purported 5-10 percent benchmarking advantage for the GTX 480 over ATI's HD 5870."
Thanks @ nVidia for lower the price of the ATI HD5870 & HD5850 but i do not think anyone is interested into the GTX 480 if they can grab a much less expensive (The chip of this card has very low production costs and ATI can lower the price without any problems) HD5850/70 (or 90?) or if they need REAL power they will buy a HD5970...
@bluefisch200 This.
ATI win on price to performance alone at this end of the market. They're in full production of a proven part at prices considerably less than the competition at retail. It's been stated that for Nvidia to win this generation they needed a card that showed up the ATI offerings, and a 5-10% increase is statistically irrelevant, especially for what you would anticipate is a low-yield part at high prices.
What this is really about is the legs of the competing chipsets. If ATI need a proper core revision before Nvidia, then the boys in green can expect to do well. If ATI's core has more to give, then Nvidia is playing catch up. Reviews on overclocking potential are going to be very interesting.
TDP != power draw
Also, wood screws.
Nvidia's late to the party AGAIN and overpriced to boot. Oh how the mighty has fallen!
Like the heat pipes on that bad ass mambajamba..
Maybe it comes with it's own mini external Bloom Box to power it?
Seriously disappointed that it doesn't have 2GB of video memory.
You take up 2 slots, hell of a lot of space and (most likely) two power connectors.. the least you could do is provide 2GB of memory.
Wow, it doesn't seem to be too much better than the current-gen Nvidia cards.