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
+1
@Slygathor It has double the cores so I don't know what you are talking about.
@Slygathor You sir, are an idiot.
Archon: 295W = Power overwhelming
i will take 2 480's please. This thing is beast!
Uhhh... Nobody actually knows any numbers yet. No benchmarks or prices have actually been released.
Oh man, is totally awesome. It's so much better than and it's definitely better than .
All of you fanboys from don't know what you're talking about, you're just jealous that doesn't have anything that can compete with the .
Copy and paste to any and all future video card release posts.
@boonkauc well that didn't work out well, engadget's comment system erased half of my comment. Not worth it to type again.
Engadget Fail!
The original article says the 480 only draws 250W.... It's the proposed GF100 that has a 295W power draw. Usually it's commentors that don't read the articles, but it appears that it was everyone this time. :P
The 480 is supposed to have 512 cores, just watch the video on their site, so WTF why less
@Ceverson70
Only 480 cores because of 40 nm fab problems. Vias are breaking, and transistor width is too variable. This leads to failed SM cores and increased voltage (power) to operate the weak transistors. ATI learned this early and designed around it. NVidia did not.
Another consequence is poor yields, which drives the cost per functional chip through the roof. The huge die means only ~100 dies per wafer. At 100% yield that would make a $50 part since a wafer costs $5000. At %20 yield (likely estimate given he die size, defect rate, design problems), each die is costing NVidia ~$250.
Add ~$75 in card, cooler, memory costs and the BOM for one of these is ~$325. There's no margin for NVidia or their AIB partners. They might even lose money on each one sold.
Bottom line is that the card is nearly unmanufacturable (at a profit), so don't expect NVidia to produce these in quantity until they redesign (i.e., do a B1 rev) which has taped out but won't be available until the fall at the earliest.
@ScienceIsCool
In this thread, peopple with 0 background in electrical engineering repeat what they've heard in random blogs.
I'm not saying you're not right, I'm just willing to reserve judgement.
For anyone who says it isn't better than the current gen learn how to read. It has gddr5 memory which is much faster than gddr3. It also has double the processing cores, and three times the amount of memory than the standard gtx 280, it can not be compared to the gtx 290 because the 290 is two 280s so wait for the gtx590 if they make one
@Ceverson70
First of all, I don't see anyone here saying that the GTX470/480 is not any better than the 200 series. People are comparing the new GTX400 cards to ATIs Radeon 5000 series, which is current generation... So, I think this means you should read comments before trying to assume what they all say.
Second of all, It's not better than current generation if you look at the high-end 5000 series Radeons. At best, it's on par with them for performance (between the 5870 and 5970)... Considering the 5970 will likely be the same price range as the GTX480, that will be it's true competition for the consumer, regardless of the fact it's a dual gpu. Now add in the fact that it's only slightly better than the 5870, which comes in at $100 cheaper (already) and may see a price drop, how can you honestly say that this is BETTER than the current generation?
If anything saves them, it'll be the fact that less tech-savvy users that think cards are defined by the amount of memory they have will see it sitting on the shelf next to the 5870 and may possibly justify a 50% memory increase (1.5GB vs. 1GB) for an extra hundred bones.
@hydrogenwv
Current games dont use tesselation which is what the GTX 480 excels at.
Critical Mass indeed.
"The TDPs of these cards are pretty spectacular too, with 225W for the junior model and 295W for the full-fat card."
At least now I know why the heatsink on that sucker looks to me like the back of a refrigerator...
Just wait until people see their first electric bill after using this in their rigs. :-P
I'm still here on my 9800GX2 and with no reason to upgrade yet. I think my next upgrade will be a totally new computer though, not just a new GPU. I've got a long wait....
and here I just bought a waterblock for my GTX 275. Guess we'll have to wait and see just how it benches in real-world scenarios
*Rubs hands in anticipation of Radeon 5k series price drop*
How many people still buy top-end GPUs these days when mid-range cards have such a better price-to-performance ratio? All mid-range cards when paired with a decent host system can run any current gen and near-future gen game at max settings on standard monitors/HDTVs with frame rates above 30fps. I have never understood the praticallity of these top end cards. Seems they are only for bragging rights and have little real-world use. For twice the price you only get maybe a 10-15% increase in performace for mid-range cards (not 100% which is what you should expect from a card that costs twice as much). I mean, they cost more than a complete netbook or any of the modern gaming consoles and they are useless until they are installed inside an actual PC. Plus, these cards require a top-tier PSU and can run up the electricity bills pretty quickly (some to the tune of almost $30/month if left on all the time). Guess all I am saying is wake me up when the REAL Fermi/nVidia DX 11 cards come out (I suppose it will be called the GTX 460 series). Always amazing how in just a few months than can figure out how to slim these suckers down into cooler, quieter, less-power hungry packages and only sacrifice a fraction of the performance.
They considered GPGPU too much. I think these products shows why Intel cancelled Larrabee. If NVIDIA revise cores by detaching GPGPU parts, I would consider to buy.
To people live in Alaska or Siberia, 470 & 480 cards would be a good choice to make their PCs as heaters although those would make electic bills little more expensive.
This also may be the last revision of graphics cards. With my 5870 and a 1920 by 1200 monitor, I do not expect to have to upgrade my graphics card again. Frame rates are over the top for most everything I use it for, and if I had to, there is always the 5970.
This REALLY will put pressure on NVidia as they will not have an years grace to manufacture a next gen Graphics card to overwhelm ATI like they have in the past.
As one site has already run a full benchmark suite on the GTX480 (with a shill distracting the booth runner), the card pretty much came up as a wash with the 5870, higher in some benchmarks and slightly lower in others. Do not expect a large leap with this card.