IT'S FINALLY HERE. Yes, that means that there won't be any more leaks or board shots or box shots… well, until the next rumored GPU variant comes along. But today let's enjoy what Nvidia has to share with us, officially.
Today at PAX East, Nvidia officially debuted its much delayed, long awaited and highly anticipated GPUs built off of its Fermi architecture. We've had our own private time with the newest from Nvidia, and we're ready to tell you all about it.
When it comes to pushing pixels, the Fermi-based GF100 chips have a special advantage over the competition with hardware tessellation – something that Nvidia frequently boasts about. Check out the video below to see tessellation in action.
As you've probably already heard if you happen to hang around the rumor mill much, retail versions of the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 cards won't be hitting stores until the week of April 12th (in two and a half weeks). These first round of cards, numbering in the tens of thousands, are all manufactured 'in-house' by Nvidia, so there will be little variation between products offered by different OEMs.
With all new GPUs, they're not going to be cheap. The GeForce GTX 480 will come in at $500 and the GTX 470 at $350.
Check out the full details, complete with exhaustive benchmarks in our Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 review.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZXhR1ibj8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZXhR1ibj8
At the top end of single GPU nVidia has had a 6 month wait to produce a card that is $100 more expensive and only a few % better performance.
We expected more.
Point of order, the HD5970 is around $600, which is $100 more than the GTX480, has a bigger lead in performance than the GTX480 has over the HD5870, which it is $100 more expensive than.
On a price vs performance comparison I would have expected to see the GTX480 one of two things, either slighty cheaper to account for its position between the HD5870 and the HD5970 ... or ... same price but slightly better performance to put it close to the HD5970.
Yes I kinow you think I am comparing Apples with Oranges as the HD5970 is a dual GPU but as it stands until a dual-GPU GTX480 comes out (GTX480-X2?) ATI still holds the performance crown at a price which isn't prohibitive, because face it, if the prospect of paying $500 doesn't bother you then $600 shouldn't either.
nVidia, you should have released this 6 months ago, by the time this actually hits the shops you wont sell enough before the hype for the HD6000 starts. Christmas is the big market and you know it, if people sit on their hands and wait for the early new year to grab a HD6000 you will be in serious trouble.