NVIDIA unleashes GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 'tessellation monsters'

Let's get the hard data out of the way first: 480 CUDA cores, 700 MHz graphics and 1,401MHz processor clock speeds, plus 1.5GB of onboard GDDR5 memory running at 1,848MHz (for a 3.7GHz effective data rate). Those are the specs upon which Fermi is built, and those are the numbers that will seek to justify a $499 price tag and a spectacular 250W TDP. We attended a presentation by NVIDIA this afternoon, where the above GTX 480 and its lite version, the GTX 470, were detailed. The latter card will come with a humbler 1.2GB of memory plus 607MHz, 1,215MHz and 1,674MHz clocks, while dinging your wallet for $349 and straining your case's cooling with 215W of hotness.

NVIDIA's first DirectX 11 parts are betting big on tessellation becoming the way games are rendered in the future, with the entire architecture being geared toward taking duties off the CPU and freeing up its cycles to deliver performance improvements elsewhere. This is perhaps no better evidenced than by the fact that both GTX models scored fewer 3DMarks than the Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 that they're competing against, but managed to deliver higher frame rates than their respective competitors in in-game benchmarks from NVIDIA. The final bit of major news here relates to SLI scaling, which is frankly remarkable. NVIDIA claims a consistent 90 percent performance improvement (over a single card) when running GTX 480s in tandem, which is as efficient as any multi-GPU setup we've yet seen. After the break you'll find a pair of tech demos and a roundup of the most cogent reviews.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 official pictures

Read - AnandTech: "Fermi's compute-heavy and tessellation-heavy design continues to interest us but home users won't find an advantage to that design today."
Read - HardOCP: "The only thing that "blew us away" was the heat coming out of the video card and the sound of the fan."
Read - PC Perspective: "If you want the fastest single-GPU graphics card then the GTX 480 is the best there is."
Read - HotHardware: "Versus the single-GPU powered Radeon HD 5870, the GeForce GTX 480 is on average roughly 5% - 10% faster."
Read - Hexus: "A lot of juice means a lot of heat and load on the coolers. This is why the GeForce GTX 480's excellent heatsink has to work overtime in keeping the GPU under 100°C."
Read - Legit Reviews: "The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 was known to be hot and fast before it came out and that is exactly what it turned out as being."

[srikar115 Posted Mar 27th 2010 8:49AM]

lol i kew nvidia wil be fucked up ,ati FTW
www.techdrag.com

[srikar115 Posted Mar 27th 2010 8:51AM]

lol i kew nvidia wil be fucked up ,ati FTW
http:/www.techdrag.com

[SSD Posted Mar 27th 2010 11:07AM]

Nvida took the engineering of this new GPU too far. In theory everything looks great. But unfortunately the outcome is less than stellar. Instead of trying to leap 2 generations ahead they should have approached it step-by-step and introduce just some of the new technologies. This would have made it possible for Nvidia to introduce the card last year together with ATI's 5000 series. Intel did the same after the Pentium 4 disaster and came up with the tick-tock model for the core series. It will take years before Nvidia can catch up to ATI. While Nvidia is working out all the kinks and bugs ATI will be on its way to the next generation GPU. And for the short term ATI is going to introduce a 5890 with a faster clock or more memory which again will put them ahead of Nvidia's single GPU card. Bottom line is that Nvidia is now in a situation to play catch up with ATI for years to come.

[Euclid Posted Mar 27th 2010 11:52AM]

Me wants, and a 1080p 120hz projector.

[Otakuon Posted Mar 27th 2010 11:59AM]

These top tier cards are really just for show. Most gamers these days are really interested in the mid-range cards as they offer the best price for performance and don't have major power and heating requirements. This is plainly evident just by looking at the Steam Hardware Survey. The top two GPUs are the HD 4800 Series and the 8800GT (for along time the 8800GT was on top, but is now being narrowly edged out by the ATI card...which shows just how much nVidia was begining to slip). The top GTX card is the 260 series, with the GTX 285 being utilized by only 1.5% of Steam users. So, we aren't going to see any serious movement with nVidia cards untill the GTX 460 series hits the shelves, which will probably be by this summer.

[egloskerry Posted Mar 27th 2010 2:53PM]

I think I will wait until a bit lower-end cards come out, seeing as I have a 275 right now. So I guess a 460?

[Philip Han Posted Mar 27th 2010 3:11PM]

Real Time Ray-Tracing Demo is enough to make me buy it...

I remember how cool I was with my 8800m GTS in a laptop 2 years ago...
I will know how cool I will be with my GTX580 in a laptop in 2 years...

[Yangorang Posted Mar 27th 2010 5:44PM]

I think the GTX470 and 480 cards are pretty solid in terms of performance....but for their ridiculous heat output and power consumption ([url]http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783&p=19[/url]) combined with potential price drops that AMD/ATI can and hopefully will do and the fact that NVIDIA was terribly late with these, I don't think they're all that great. (they are beasts at folding though...)

The NVIDIA cards are likely going to be in extremely low supply as well, so a bit of price dropping and potentially a refresh card from AMD/ATI should be more than enough to keep them in the game for this generation.
So overall not really epic fail....but was a pretty anti-climactic ending to 6 months of waiting...

[Nathen Posted Mar 29th 2010 5:42PM]

@Yangorang

ah, I think they scewd the pooch on this one.
Lets see now ATi's Next refresh of which Id be surprised if its out any week now.
Fermi is too late, HOT and way too much $$.
IMHO.

[pavs Posted Mar 27th 2010 6:42PM]

that hair rendering is crazy. I remember watching a pixar video and they were saying that hair is one of the hardest things for their computer to handel. Grats Nvidia, 'tis why I've been your fanboy for so long.

[goaliesaves Posted Mar 27th 2010 7:16PM]

that looks bad ass.

[Nathen Posted Mar 29th 2010 5:45PM]

Take a look at [H]ardOCP review of Fermi and listen and watch the videos they made. I almost fell off my chair when I saw how HOT the cars got and the Sound was waaay too loud.
Check it out.


http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/03/26/nvidia_fermi_gtx_470_480_sli_review/7

[balanarahul Posted Apr 17th 2010 3:11PM]

ATI will be very happy that NVIDIA is not pushing CUDA to what its really capable of. Really NVIDIA prove the mettle of CUDA! I think the only thing left is - ............. Operating Systems and Applications that run entirely on the Extremely Powerful Graphics Card to probably make a Gaming Console.

[Smurf Posted May 2nd 2010 1:00PM]

Ha, all this bickering about power draw. Who but the most cash strapped of us really care about the difference in power? Switch one or two light bulbs to CFL... and you've made up for the difference.

No one buying a $400+ GPU is going to care about that. It's like refusing to buy a better performing car solely because it requires premium gasoline. Pfft.

[Chorltonwheelie Posted May 19th 2010 4:03AM]

Ahhh, a proper bun fight. Like the old days on here. Good.

I suspect, for the none fanboi, reality will favour the best bang per buck and that's the ATI 5850 for mere financial mortals like meself.