Opinions - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480: the way it was meant to be played?

[HEXUS]

The fastest GPU on the planet is here, but will its potential ever be realised?

Read more.

[jim]

it isn't without its well publicised drawbacks - including an average pre-order price of around £466, a substantial maximum power draw of around 450 watts

Little bit misleading that - shouldn't you state that you mean a system power draw? Implies that it's just the card itself at the moment.

Regarding the article... I'm not sure I completely agree. I mean, DX11 is for the 5*** range as well as the GTX 480, so I don't think it would've been a deal-maker for nVidia. But on the general idea of DX11, yes - definitely. It's like the whole Physx conundrum... the only reason to buy Physx-capable cards is to play a Physx-capable game. And the only reason to develop Physx-capable games is to sell them to owners of Physx-capable cards.

Having said that, it only takes one forward thinking developer to come along - like with Crysis a while back, and produce something really spectacular. Looking at that demo image right now, just imagine if a game like Oblivion was released looking like that tomorrow - people would be raving about the graphics (and too right), and it would sell extremely well... assuming the gameplay is of a good calibre. Obviously though, the developers make a hard decision... they either start off with DX9 and fully redevelop for DX11, and pay a fortune, or start off with DX11 and leave XP and consoles out of the picture. Not to mention that people will need a recent graphics card to even get those visuals, of which ownership is low. I still think there's a lot of money in it for a company who takes one of those risks, but especially given the times I'd say it's fairly unlikely to happen for a while.

[borandi]

If you've ever wondered about the state of the enthusiast PC gaming marketplace; consider this, NVIDIA has launched the fastest single GPU ever known to man, but we're struggling to think of compelling reasons to buy one.

That's because you're limiting your viewpoint to the gaming market? I've CUDA simulations that'd love a few of these.

[kalniel]

That's because you're limiting your viewpoint to the gaming market? I've CUDA simulations that'd love a few of these.

I'd want the full fat fermi that doesn't have so much of the compute performance disabled, not the 480.

Great article Hexus. We can quibble at the details, but the bottom line is a very important and accurate one.

[w1ntergr33n]

Great article Hexus. We can quibble at the details, but the bottom line is a very important and accurate one.

Interesting indeed but curiously similar to an article on 'Australian PC Authority' that was referenced over on \. 3 days ago...? Surely not...

Anyway can this be blamed squarely on the console market? New GPUs are always right on the bleeding edge and while 'enthusiasts' may be running a couple of these in SLI a week after launch, the majority of PC gamers are using hardware a year or two old as well.

If one looks at something like the Steam hardware survey, which even of itself could be considered to be slightly more weighted to the enthusiast end of the market, there's still only 3.3% using DX11 GPUs

[kalniel]

Interesting indeed but curiously similar to an article on 'Australian PC Authority' that was referenced over on \. 3 days ago...? Surely not...

Curiously similar to the discussions that many of us have been having on Hexus over the last year or so, are you saying slashdot plagiarised us?

[Perfectionist]

The magic of google:

pcauthority.com.au/News/170605,nvidias-fermi-so-much-potential-so-little-software-support.aspx, Mar 26, 2010
Hexus Published: Monday 29th March, 2010 | Author: Parm Mann

Oooh, it's like we saw one of those little bastards that copypaste uni paper texts in action...

[Tarinder]

We spent a good hour talking about this on Friday and this morning, discussing how Fermi fitted into the current graphics ecosystem.

Because the GPU's worth isn't shown by present-day gaming applications and we lament the lack of truly must-have games, a decision was made to write the article, expressing our feelings on why GTX 480 perhaps won't do as well as it should.

I've read the other article and it's very similar, granted, but I can assure you that no plagiarising took place.

We credit the source of all the stories we reference and expect others to do the same.

It's kind of like saying most GeForce GTX 480 reviews are a rip-off because the benchmarks are so similar, but just as in that review, we arrived at our conclusions independently.

[Parm]

w1ntergr33n, thanks for the heads up.

Echoing Tarinder's comments, I've just had a look at the PC Authority article, and they are both similar in that they carry a common message. The opinion piece on HEXUS.net came about as the result of a lengthy phone call between Tarinder and I, in which we discussed the merits of the Fermi architecture.

The theme of the article isn't itself entirely new, and it doesn't surprise us to find that it has previously been covered elsewhere.

[Terbinator]

Doesn't the Xenos have some sort of extra Tessellation capabilities that 9.0c doesn't directly deliver ? IIRC anyway...

[kalniel]

Doesn't the Xenos have some sort of extra Tessellation capabilities that 9.0c doesn't directly deliver ? IIRC anyway...

AMD have been doing tessellation for years, but as you say, it wasn't covered in directX.

[TooNice]

The case of DX11 is surely yet another one of those chicken and egg issue we get every time a new DX is released. Going by this page, Vista and Windows 7 only have 25% of the overall market share. Two third are still on XP. So forget DX11 for the moment, even DX10 exclusives are far and between.

AMD may have introduced DX11 capable hardware 6 months ago, but given that AMD only has only 1/3rd of the market share for discrete graphic card, it's again, not surprising that developers have not rushed to support it (and I don't think it would've been much different had nVidia been first).

I'd say that the real problem with Fermi is not the lack of awesome DX11, PhysX etc. games. Yes, they are issues, not deal breakers. The 9700 Pro was an awesome card even though there weren't many DX9 games then, the 8800 GTX was highly regarded too without much DX10 title. People were quite happy to pay for them, and I would say those who bought them on release got a fairly good deal even if there weren't many DX9/DX10 games respectively. The difference? They really brought some serious performance improvement to previous gen. And while Fermi is undoubtedly faster compared to the last gen, AMD already wow-ed people with the 58xx, and the Fermi brought too much negatives to despite the positive.

[miniyazz]

Just because Vista and 7 only have 25% market share, that doesn't mean they only have 25% of gamers. Disregarding corporate XP usage for starters, which must number significantly, the only people I know on XP are those with netbooks or who've had their computer for some time - like the older population who don't enjoy change ()and don't play games anyway. Yes, there will undoubtedly be some gamers on XP for various reasons - but I would wager that most gamers upgrade to more recent hardware at least once every three years, and a fair proportion of those would have upgraded their operating system at the same time (i.e. they bought a new system and it came with Vista). What I'm trying to say is that there will be a far higher concentration of gamers amongst Vista/7 users than amongst XP users, so usage stats for XP vs Vista/7 will be misleading.

Also, I know you've amended the 'system-wide power draw' thing already, but I still read it as that's how much power the graphics card draws - simply because it makes no sense to say it causes a "maximum system-wide power draw of 450W" when it's patently untrue, depending on what system you have! It would seem to make much more sense to stick to TDPs - i.e. a maximum power draw of 300W, based on one 8-pin and one 6-pin connector, or maximum power draw of two hundred and whatever watts, based on the figures provided by NVIDIA.

[jim]

Just because Vista and 7 only have 25% market share, that doesn't mean they only have 25% of gamers.

Sort of true. From Steam hardware survey.

Windows XP 32 bit      38.61%
Windows 7 64 bit       24.42%
Windows Vista 32 bit   16.69%
Windows 7              11.25%
Windows Vista 64 bit    7.75%

It's more like 55% Vista/7, but that's still a notable limitation.

Also, only 3% of gamers had a DX11 capable graphics card on Vista/7, and only 50% had a DX10 capable card on Vista/7. So all in all, around 50% of gamers are using DX9, whether that's due to the graphics card or the OS.

[Jimbo75]

The reason you are struggling for a reason to buy one is your brain is telling you that it's a bad idea.

10-15% faster while being 50% more power hungry and 25% hotter/pricier is an abuse of common sense.

You can make up all the excuses you want about games consoles etc, but the real issue is this card is very unattractive compared to the 5870.

[nexus123]

Add on top, temperature, noise, and power consumption, and the HD5850 is obviously the only option right now.