News - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480: pricing and specifications leaked?

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The latest batch of Fermi leaks shed light on core, shader and memory frequencies, and we've speculative pricing, too.

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Read more.

How does the 5970 end up with 256GB/s memory bandwidth? It should be half that surely - it's just a 256bit bus after all (not x2 as each GPU only accesses it's own set of memory chips)

so its about 10% more in cost than its ATI counterpart according to those price estimations - which actually relates to the suggested performance increase. Seems optomistic as it is added to the fact ATI cards could easily be dropped in price.

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Originally Posted by kalniel

How does the 5970 end up with 256GB/s memory bandwidth? It should be half that surely - it's just a 256bit bus after all (not x2 as each GPU only accesses it's own set of memory chips)

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I suppose you could argue that *2 is valid, given they combine to render.

Interesting though, both top end cards are *2 what I have now :) choices.. Then again.. what I do like is the 480 is a single chip, which will always therefore scale.. Plus it's cheaper. Oh god.

Fudzilla (not a reliable source mind) have the UK price for the 480 as £429 and the 470 as £299:

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/18145/1/

Bargains!

Let's just run with those rumoured prices for a minute...

£329 + VAT = £387
£230 + VAT = £270

This being britain, that probably means £399 and £289, and you'll need to add on the early adopter tax for the first couple of weeks, as well. EDIT: that'd make the fudzilla claims about right, then?

At the minute, 5870s can be easily picked up for ~ £320. 5850s seem to be in much shorter supply, and will set you back ~ £250.

So based on that, the GTX470 will only be ~ 10% more expensive than a 5850, for a claimed "up to" 10% faster GPU. Pricing not too bad.

The GTX480, however, will be the best part of 25% more expensive, for a similar "up to" 10% faster. Pricing, not so hot... (shame we won't be able to say the same about the GPU ;) )

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Originally Posted by dangel

I suppose you could argue that *2 is valid, given they combine to render.

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The memory doesn't combine. Each rendered part-scene needs its own isolated buffer. So you should really consider it a 2x1gb card too ;) It's just one of those cases where 2x1gb doesn't equal 2gb. Like 4 times 3ghz in a quadcore doesn't equal 12ghz :p

plus the 480gtx max load is 300w as a posed to 188w for the 5870

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Originally Posted by kalniel

The memory doesn't combine. Each rendered part-scene needs its own isolated buffer. So you should really consider it a 1gb card too ;)

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But presumably both GPUs can access their own frame buffer simultaneously? Which should, externally, appear equivalent...

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

But presumably both GPUs can access their own frame buffer simultaneously? Which should, externally, appear equivalent...

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But they're buffering duplicate information - each GPU needs its own copy of the textures, maps, etc. for the whole scene. You can't fit anything more in there than you could if it was a single card.

Wait a second...

The 480 has 480 FPU units? But it has 512 cuda cores, thus 512 FPU units. It's always been known to have 512.

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Originally Posted by kalniel

But they're buffering duplicate information - each GPU needs its own copy of the textures, maps, etc. for the whole scene. You can't fit anything more in there than you could if it was a single card.

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But presumably each GPU can access the bits it needs for each part-scene it renders simultaneously, so the bandwidth (externally at least) should appear to be 2x? Although I confess I'm not an expert on GPUs ;) Presumably the good scaling on the 5970 means that actually most games, even at high resolutions, don't max out a 1GB frame buffer at the minute?

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Originally Posted by borandi

Wait a second...

The 480 has 480 FPU units? But it has 512 cuda cores, thus 512 FPU units. It's always been known to have 512.

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The original planned spec was for 512 cores, but manufacturing defects in TSMCs 40nm process meant they couldn't get them to run stably (at least, not at acceptable voltages / clock speeds), so they've pulled the specs in. ALLEDGEDLY.

Of course, if they can do a redesign that will negate the 40nm manufacturing defects (like ATI did after they released the 4770) the possibility exists that they might be able to put out a 512 core version later this year - maybe around Christmas? If they can, it should also have a lower power draw, because one of the (alledged) problems with this run is that the defects require extra voltage to improve stability. A proper redesign should allow them to reduce the voltage quite dramatically...

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

But presumably each GPU can access the bits it needs for each part-scene it renders simultaneously

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Nope, or rather: the 'bits it needs' is practically the whole scene anyway as far as things in memory go.

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Presumably the good scaling on the 5970 means that actually most games, even at high resolutions, don't max out a 1GB frame buffer at the minute?

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Correct.

For the power draws the 5970 is looking more and more the card I am going to buy come pay day :)

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Originally Posted by kalniel

The memory doesn't combine. Each rendered part-scene needs its own isolated buffer. So you should really consider it a 2x1gb card too ;) It's just one of those cases where 2x1gb doesn't equal 2gb. Like 4 times 3ghz in a quadcore doesn't equal 12ghz :p

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I didn't say the memory combined ;) Do the gpu's on the card have their own discreet memory interface and own discreet memory pool or not? If they do, then quad core analogies are chocolate teapot useful :) Fair dues if i'm wrong but i thought that dual gpu cards are effectively the same deal as buying cards seperately but with the SLI/crossfire bridge built in.

bah who cares about memory bandwidth, cuda this, cuda that, im interested in benchmarks on actual games, power consumptions and temps. the rest i do not care of :)