News - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 benchmarked

[Terbinator]

It will also be good to see how much more computability they crammed into the TDP compared to the GTX 295, what was the 295's TDP BTW ?

[vian_siu]

these benchmarks seem very different from the ones rumoured on the internet some time ago...i guess the only way to find out which one is wrong is when the card is finally released.

[Terbinator]

Another thing that could be interesting is if Nvidia can get the full 512 core chips out - lower prices on the GTX 470/80 and a faster top end part overall.

it is all bubbling up nicely ^_^

[TooNice]

And assuming AMD don't react - they are manufacturing these cards at a much cheaper price, so have more room to cut prices.

That's a fair point and I do expect that the nVidia card will end up being more expensive per frame rate. It's a bigger chip, and it does come with exclusive features (whether one may want to pay for, or not). But for the reason you stated, even those favouring AMD should hope the GTX480 won't be a total fail.

[GaryRW]

I can't help thinking (selfishly) that Nvidia are doing nothing for me this time round. It'll be ages before they release the more sensibly priced cards and even the cheaper estimates for the 470 are more than what I would want to pay.

Having said that, maybe AMD will decide that they can apply the thumb screws with the 58xx, as it should be so much cheaper to produce. But the realist in me can't help but think AMD will just decide to keep prices where they are unless Nvidia's pricing forces AMD's hand. And with the size of fermi vs 58xx, I just can't see Nvidia doing that.

In any event, both ATI and Nvidia need to seriously put some effort into getting PC games out there that really need these new cards. & games that need new cards for good reasons, not just because it's a bad console port.

[kalniel]

That's a fair point and I do expect that the nVidia card will end up being more expensive per frame rate. It's a bigger chip, and it does come with exclusive features (whether one may want to pay for, or not). But for the reason you stated, even those favouring AMD should hope the GTX480 won't be a total fail.

I don't know why anyone would hope that a product is a failure - unless you're working for the competition I guess.

In any event, both ATI and Nvidia need to seriously put some effort into getting PC games out there that really need these new cards. & games that need new cards for good reasons, not just because it's a bad console port.

That's a good point - there's not really any incentive for devs to create games using these new features - the people paying for their wages at the end of the day are more likely to be console gamers. But on the otherhand individual vendors will usually only through resources around where it benefits them at the expense of direct competitors, ie creating vendor specific lock ins which are bad for the gaming market in general.

PCGA what are you up to these days?

[borandi]

It will also be good to see how much more computability they crammed into the TDP compared to the GTX 295, what was the 295's TDP BTW ?

289W I believe, which is the same as quoted by nVidia for the 480.

295 has 2x 240 Cuda cores, so does the 480.

So performance wise, 1 GPU to do the work of 2, with same power. As long as the performance/clock is good. I'm looking into buying 2x295 for CUDA work for the price of a 480, which seems an ever better prospect. The only thing which may dissuade me is some 295 vs 480 benchmarks.

[Terbinator]

Does CUDA scale well across GPU's ?

[kalniel]

Does CUDA scale well across GPU's ?

What application of CUDA did you have in mind? CUDA's just a way of asking a question - the problem you're answering has to be scalable in the first place.

[borandi]

Depending on the code, usually very well. The less that GPUs have to talk to each other (and the CPU), the better the scalability. Though I've seen with heavy 3D finite difference a 3.99x speedup with 4x GPUs when using decent code.

Same goes for ATi, too.

[GaryRW]

But on the otherhand individual vendors will usually only through resources around where it benefits them at the expense of direct competitors, ie creating vendor specific lock ins which are bad for the gaming market in general.

PCGA what are you up to these days?

Is it just too silly to suggest that Nvidia and AMD might look at the long term picture and realise that the future of the discrete pc card market might be reliant on such support, and, deep breath, that they could jointly fund such development work? Sorry, probably about 10 days early for that sort of talk

Maybe this next comment will just show my ignorance of the work involved, but surely including at least a few extra bells and whistles for the pc market would not be too much hard work? My presumption is that recent PC gpu's would have a fair bit of extra power over the consoles and aside from higher resolution, I'm not convinced it's being put to good use.

Actually, that would be an interesting (albeit very difficult) comparison to make - how does a 58xx/fermi compare to a 360/ps3?

[borandi]

Actually, that would be an interesting (albeit very difficult) comparison to make - how does a 58xx/fermi compare to a 360/ps3?

360: 500 MHz ATI Xenos (The Xenos is a custom graphics processing unit (GPU) designed by ATI, used in the Xbox 360 video game console. Developed under the codename "C1,"[1] it is in many ways the precursor to the R600 desktop PC graphics card series. The R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series. The package contains two separate silicon dies: the GPU and an eDRAM; 240 GFLOPS)

PS3: 550 MHz NVIDIA/SCEI RSX 'Reality Synthesizer' (Based on NV47 Chip (Nvidia GeForce 7800 Architecture); NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated during Sony's pre-show press conference at E3 2005 that the RSX is twice as powerful as the GeForce 6800 Ultra.)

Courtesy of Wikipedia. Basically, Now 58xx is out (and Fermi soon), at least 2 gens behind. But software for them is super optimised and efficient.

[kalniel]

Is it just too silly to suggest that Nvidia and AMD might look at the long term picture and realise that the future of the discrete pc card market might be reliant on such support, and, deep breath, that they could jointly fund such development work? Sorry, probably about 10 days early for that sort of talk

Well they jointly fund the PCGA which I alluded to. But when you've got other members of the alliance that are trying to sell games consoles you have to wonder how successful it will ever be.

Maybe this next comment will just show my ignorance of the work involved, but surely including at least a few extra bells and whistles for the pc market would not be too much hard work? My presumption is that recent PC gpu's would have a fair bit of extra power over the consoles and aside from higher resolution, I'm not convinced it's being put to good use.

It is a lot of work - for each change you have a whole extra bunch of testing, which is already much more expensive on the PC compared to consoles. Both ATI and nVidia provide engineering resources to try and encourage this for the PC market, but as stated it tends to be focused towards vendor specific optimisations (ATI are slightly more generous in this respect, but I wouldn't say they're definitely angels).

Actually, that would be an interesting (albeit very difficult) comparison to make - how does a 58xx/fermi compare to a 360/ps3?

Probably about 6-8x more powerful. PS3 is roughly a geforce 7900, and 360 is roughly a x1900xt.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Looking good. Might be a little bit too hot to handle especially with summer coming along.

Toss in the fact that the current yields are very low so expect this card to be hard to find and purchase

[kalniel]

Looking good. Might be a little bit too hot to handle especially with summer coming along.

Toss in the fact that the current yields are very low so expect this card to be hard to find and purchase

I think they've addressed that by disabling 1/8th of the units in the chip - just like the PS3 cell chip in fact. Allows for a fair amount of manufacturing errors before the chip is unusable.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

sweet. i know the ati ones had rubbish yields too. i am correct in knowing that yields means the amount of good gpu's made as a posed to the bad ones that are made?