Update: Nvidia Says Fermi Not Delayed
Hold on to this Fermi until March, will ya?
Fermi is Nvidia's next big thing. Nvidia bills Fermi as an entirely new ground-up design that will finally realize the potential of GPU computing – using the graphics card for more than just pushing pixels and driving them to your display.
"It is completely clear that GPUs are now general purpose parallel computing processors with amazing graphics, and not just graphics chips anymore," said Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia. "The Fermi architecture, the integrated tools, libraries and engines are the direct results of the insights we have gained from working with thousands of CUDA developers around the world. We will look back in the coming years and see that Fermi started the new GPU industry."
The Fermi GPU will pack 3 billion transistors, making it one mammoth chip - bigger than anything from ATI - but with that ambition comes challenges.
If this Digitimes report is to be believed, Nvidia has hit a snag or two in its plans to launch Fermi and has now pushed back the date to March 2010.
Digitimes' sources also noted that ATI is expected to launch the 40nm Radeon HD 5670/5570 (Redwood) and HD 5450 (Cedar) GPUs at the end of January or in February 2010.
Update: Nvidia responded to this report saying that it announced in a previous conference call that Fermi would ship sometime in the first quarter of 2010, meaning that there hasn't been any real delay in release time frame.
“We are excited about the attention surrounding GF100 as it forms the foundation for the fastest and most feature rich graphics cards ever designed," said Nvidia's Bryan Del Rizzo. "Great things come to those that wait, and the wait will be over in Q1 as we have said previously. The release date has not changed since our initial comments last November."
hmmm thats my birth day! maybe ill get a graphics card
hmm, wouldn't it have been better not to build such a HUGE chip for once. I know they think it will work, but it just means they will have more 340-379 cards (whatever number they will give it) and less of the performance cards of 380+.
I hope they made a smart choice while designing the chip, that even if parts fails, they still can make a good chip from it. But more smaller chips would have been better if you ask me.
Have they taken to much hay on their pitchfork? Every statement they release boasts about the sheer scale of Fermi, yet it's always accompanied by another delay. It's windy at the top...
Sigh, i think Nvidia is falling behind
Will Fermi ever deliver a comparable price/performance ratio?
nVidia's new cards will be very fast and a bit overpriced.
ATI will fight back against nVidia's flagship by releasing the 5890.
Depending on the performance of the nVidia cards ATI may pull ahead or they may still be behind which will for ATI to release thier new flagship at a lower price. ATI may still try to attain the top spot thus causing them to release a higher performing card. 5900 series maybe? Only time will tell but I like to see that nVidia is trying to innovate and I am excited to see the benchmarks for these new "Fermi" cards.
yeah , the first point of improvement would be to increase the memory width by a bit in spite of gddr5 ... 256 bits gddr5 is quite good , but look at how the 5770 underperforms compared to 4890 having all the same theoretical specs for everything else except the memory width .