FERMI 480 GTX is released and Initial reviews...

[Dimwit]

MARCH 26, 8pm Eastern
Fermi has officially been released although actual supplies and availability remain limited. NVidia has announced that supply is being shipped and will be available in greater quantity the week of April 12th.

I will list reviews and availability as I see them come up, or add your own!

Here is the initial release review from Benchmark Reviews .com .

Linked to Hardware Secrets...and posted around 8pm today (3/26) eastern:http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...=480&Itemid=72 A Nifty add on to this review is in game benching with BFBC-2 !!

Here is the initial benchmark and review from Tom's Hardware from right after release today: http://www.tomshardware.com/us/#redir (click on the link and choose which articles to read...)

This is a direct link just to the review: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-480,2585.html

[Sandman]

And the results of the "soft-launch" are....

1) The GTX480 can't do anything to touch the 5970.
2) The GTX480 can beat a 5870 at low resolution, and is a toss up at high resolution.
3) The 480 will cost over $100 more than the 5870. The 470 will cost $50 more than the 5850. That's if they can keep it in stock which no one is calling likely with sub 50% yields.

Toms Hardware calls it underwhelming.
Anandtech: Worth it? No, probably not.
HardOCP: We see no reason to purchase a GeForce GTX 470. The GeForce GTX 480 is more relevant in the market but it hasn’t exactly come out of the gate wowing us with performance either.

It's not available for purchase until April 12th. Anandtech and THG both hint at either a 5870 2GB or a 900Mhz-1Ghz (5890?) being rolled out at the same time to squash the hype. Although the benchmarks didn't really bring much hype to most of the reviewers out there.

[Dimwit]

It is not unanimous acceptance by far, however, there are areas where it does do quite well, though at a cost that may or may not be worth it, depending on one's interest. I suspect that getting near or superior scores to a dual gpu card is helpful but not neccessary to lowering the cost to consumers in general for whatever card they will or have been buying... so relax. The release is a good thing. The price will come down, new tech will arise, and if we end up paying the same amount, it will be for more than we have been getting! Don't be angry, be happy!


LOL

DIM

[Sandman]

I've been listening to fanboi Fermi crap for 6 months now. I'm just rubbing it in for all its worth.

[Dimwit]

You have misdirected your infelicity and are preaching to the choir in the person of this poster! I do not buy hype, and I do not push it except for the benefit to the consumer pricing present and future, however, it is both incorrect and counterfactual to represent the 480 as universally reviled or incompetent. I have made no claims (nor would I) for or against any ATI or NVidia product that is not a result of personally direct and repetitive experience over the last ten years of building sytems for fun, favor and profit (in that order! lol) . Dimwitland purchsed NO 9xxx series green cards except for clients who insisted (and may not purchase any 4xx's either -- jury is still out) because we could see no real gain, and we DID suggest ATI 5xxx cards if DX11 was a want/need. Personally, I do not believe DX11 is enough of a factor these last 6 months, or indeed these next 6 months, to make much of a difference. 2011 is a different matter, and perhaps I will feel differently about tessellation by then too, who knows.

In any event, the 480 may have its uses and for the consumer its release is an absolute good in that it will at least eventually recommence competition in the marketplace regardless of whether you view that as a fair or unfair fight. Rather than anecdotal reference, I have looked at all the reviews (I could reasonably find) and where the findings were quantifiable. I have concentrated on results related to single GPUs since that is the type of unit this new release is. Despite the spread on test platforms used, and it was narrower than I had thought it would be, the following seem to generally be applicable based solely on the 'stock' engineering samples released by the Green guys...

Pros:
*Exceeds performance of the previous NVidia single gpu TOL (top of the line) between 30% and 50% for most titles.
*Exceeds performance of the 5870 in DX10 titles that favor NVidia releases and drivers from 5% to 10%
*Roughly matches performance of 5870 in DX11 titles doing better in those that favor NVidia releases and drivers and worse with those that favor ATI releases and drivers
*DX11 Performance gains in the bottom of the FPS range against all other products are more significant (where this data is available) and is the largest contributor to performance gain, this is more marked (not less) in higher resolutions (e.g. more so in 1920x1200 than 1680x1050 and more so on multiple monitors than on single monitor platforms)
*Outperforms all previous releases on 3-d vision titles (although this is not much of a surprise given the proprietary nature of this technology and slavishness of the titles)
*Tessellation hardware support is about 4 times that currently supported in the market prior to release - these would be ATI products as NVidia has not heretofor supported hardware acceleration of tessellation. Tessellation is certainly impressive close-up...but benching this separately is largely ignored or experimental and inconsistent in method

Cons
---Heat - idles in the 50's for most samples (that is WAAAY too hot and probably requires any serious bleeding-edge build that wants to use it to employ liquid cooling), operates under load in the 70 to 90 range (Holy [literally] Shmokes!). This is a serious issue for this card and does not point to longevity without LC blocks which adds to cost
---Speaking of cost, stock-version release cost is about $500 which, as someone (can't think of who it is) has pointed out, is considerably more than its single gpu competitor the 5870 in most of its variations.
---Power Consumption - 480 uses about the same amount of wattage and 12v at idle as competing designs, but at peak climbs to the eye-popping level of 350 to 380 watts!! TDP is about 275 - LC with a huge rad or bust
---May require significant upgrading to PSU although if you are building a machine with one of these you probably already have built in enough safety margin in wattage and 12v (Wing!), and overclocking may be a serious issue for anything below 1000w and 70a 12v+ for a single card
---Tessellation does not appear to be a large enough factor for many mainline games currently on the market or in the pipeline - the 480 clearly outperforms in these upclose mesh areas, but the data is largely based on impression of appearance, hard to quantify and it does not appear to me at least to have a large enough impact on objects from anything more than a close- medium distance even if titles ARE taking advantage of the tech.

Dimwitland has NOT tested the card and does not benchmark any items for anything other than fun and giggles.

[Dimwit]

April 2nd 10A Pacific
AS of the writing of this post (April 2nd) there were no real supplies of the 400 gtx series available on the net. A few dubious units were available through auction sites for the adventurous, but no major outlets indicated actual Stock. While most major e-tailers would only issue notifications when they receive stock, if you requestd it, Amzon.com was willing to let you preorder and ship on arrival.

Newegg has 16 listings as of today including 470 and 480 offereings , although the BFG offerings have been taken down during the week probably at the request of BFG which complained about snarls in communication. Their stripped-down support units were swamped with inquiries when I happened to talk to one of their techies on a separate matter. BFG still sports a 480 page on their site, but their own store has been offline for months... BFG and EVGA were the only two vendors on Newegg to offer OC'd units, and now only EVGA has one on the page.

Zipzoomfly has 4 entries in the series including EVGA and like Newegg will only offer a notification of stock arrival. They are also charging $100 above suggested retail and the rest of the market and still have no stock... Silly.

Tigerdirect had no offerings or useful information.

NexTag found few locations indeed when searching for offerings and this is unlikely to change for at least another week to ten days.

Dim

[Sandman]

The official sales date is April 12th not 2nd.

[Dimwit]

In fact the date of availability was left quite vague probably on purpose. Release was specified for the specific date of 3/26 whereas the NVidia Twitter site said "significant supply would be available on or about the week of April 12th"

[Dimwit]

Here are some pics and narration by one of the Danger Den guys on a water block conversion of a 480. Said he had it under full load in the 50s and 40s compared to operating temps reportedly in the high 80s to low 90s! He was playing some BFBC2 with it... must be rough. http://www.dangerden.com/New-Product...-update-2.html

They have all copper blocks for $134. You can get water blocks for the 5870 for about $30 less. I use DD blocks for my i7 and GTX 285 an they have been excellent with similar gains on thermals.

[Dimwit]

470s and 480s have been available on Newegg since April 8th. Some 480s were on that evening and were gone in about an hour. Since that time there has been a numbe rof sellouts of either the 480 or the 470, with that number of available makers fluctuating as I write this post. Right this second there are three models of the 470 available and the one remaining 480 model sold out before I coulud finish this sentence. Newegg has said they are receiving large numbers of shipments from the various vendors, but the numbers of units are small for each shipment. Current price of the least expensive 470 in stock is $364.