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NVIDIA'S FERMI: cooking eggs and bacon on your graphics card.
psychoticdream
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
maybe its me, I love PAX and i respect the founders but i think its kind of an insult that nvidia prefers to hype their products here rather than the usual tech convention
face it its much easier to gloss over details when your audience is mainly gamers enjoying a fun event instead of composed primarily of hardcore tech press that are bound to ask hardcore questions like what happened with tsmc, what was the deal with the low chip yield, why is the die bigger than originally claimed etc.etc.
following the tech industry you begin to worry that their new cards (gtx470/gtx480) arent really up to par
so much delay and low yields at first and now claims of very low % performance upgrades put their competitor in a far better light
but like i said maybe its just me but nvidia is up to something shady........
has anyone been able to find anything concrete on the gtx470/480????
face it its much easier to gloss over details when your audience is mainly gamers enjoying a fun event instead of composed primarily of hardcore tech press that are bound to ask hardcore questions like what happened with tsmc, what was the deal with the low chip yield, why is the die bigger than originally claimed etc.etc.
following the tech industry you begin to worry that their new cards (gtx470/gtx480) arent really up to par
so much delay and low yields at first and now claims of very low % performance upgrades put their competitor in a far better light
but like i said maybe its just me but nvidia is up to something shady........
has anyone been able to find anything concrete on the gtx470/480????
psychoticdream on
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lol that sucks what cards did you have trouble with?
4870, 5770, and a 5850. the 5770 and 5850 only crash when doing 2D stuff, though, so there is a hotfix out that might solve it. It could also be a motherboard issue. I dunno, but it pisses me off after I got four years of rock solid operation from my old 6600GT and 8800GTS
My PC has a similar problem; I would look toward the Mobo as the issue. I built my rig with a 5850, and it gave me tons of "Driver stopped responding" errors, sometimes forcing a hard reset with the case button. Replaced that with a GTX285, and now it freezes at random intervals. 3D has always been fine, only 2d is a problem.
Thought it might have been a software/driver issue, but a reformat and reinstall didn't fix the issue. I'm using a gigabyte P55M-UD2. Haven't had time to troubleshoot yet, but that's the direction I would look. If it does wind up being my mobo all along, I'll be upset. The 5850 gave me better performance, and was cheaper...
true but using the gamer comunnity this way is kind of underhanded
exactly
but there's no benchmarks out cuz of NDAs only speculation based on the florid language nvidia has been throwing at pro-nvidia sites but when most neutral sites ask questions they suddenly go mum
there's no proof except what they want to tell us or show us
i can quote you hundreds of meaningless snippets none of which prove how much better the card is than others and if the card really was that much better, so close to release time don't you think we'd see a ton of benchmarks and comparisons before launch like you did before
Besides, nVidia has had a pretty large presence at all the PAXes so far.
I think that could because AMD decided that you don't need a dedicated 2D accelerator anymore, and just route it all through the 3D drivers, which is bound to have some troubles
How is this underhanded? Gamers are some of the most fickle customers ever, if they don't see big gains on the new cards, they're going to laugh nVidia out of the building.
In a few months, nvidia will probably be on top again
no kidding
i'd like a time machine pick up a future system and live the rest of my life with it :winky:
That would be pretty surprising since I doubt there will be anything but Fermi released "in a few months". Maybe a year from now they will have something nice unless they want to keep chasing he scientific computing customers.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
cook's right
fermi was nvidia's ace for the year
on a side note TSMC is starting 22nm manufacturing tests hope they have better luck than they did during these past years
actually the first fermi cards are coming out march and 2 of them the gtx480 and gtx470 will be "unveiled" at PAX
http://www.htlounge.net/art/11407/nvidia-geforce-gtx470-and-gtx480-to-be-launched-in-march.html
and btw the specs were already leaked on some sites
I've been following the Fermi and already looked at the leaked specs. I didn't know about the release date.
ATI has a solid line up that's really going to give Nvidia a run this year. Sapphire already has a 5830 on sale at Newegg in addition to their Vapor-X series of cards already released.
I've had some "discussions" on this earlier this year with family & friends who are devout Nvidia fanboys.
From everything I've read so far I'm neither hyped nor impressed about this series. So I'm staying in the ATI camp for now partially because it doesn't look like Nvidia will be able to match the 5970 for some time.
I will of course be looking forward to seeing actual performance comparisons.
I don't care if Nvidia has the fastest if I can't afford it.
I never finish anyth
Just because you had a run of bad luck with a particular brand doesn't mean every part ever released by that brand is a timebomb. There's no constant other than "buy whatever product offers the best value for your money"
This sounds like motherboard. I've used a lot of ATI cards in various builds, and, while the brand annoys me in many ways (mainly due to the catalyst control center being beyond lame), they have always worked reasonably well for me. Define "2D stuff" though.
I got the hotfix installed and the problem seems to fixed. 2D stuff is the windows desktop, movies that aren't hardware decoded, and YouTube especially was a great way to hard lock my computer in less than a minute
yeahhh
nvidia and ati make the reference boards the manufacturers (xfx, asus etc) they take the reference board using their new chip, and set it up following base specs we know that
but who designs the chips? ati/nvidia's enginners do, then they send the "blueprint" so to speak to TSMC or a particular foundry to make the chips and they work with TSMC to find flaws and correct them and make additions changes to the basic wafers and try to perfect the yields
we know all that, and despite all of that the problems usually lie within the GPU chips themselves and is the responsibility of their designers (creators, in this case ati/nvidia)
Everything that has come out has suggested the following things:
This card is going to be big. BIG.
This card is going to be difficult to manufacture in yield.
This card is going to be expensive as fuck.
This card is going to be fast as fuck.
But here's the problem...the 5970 was ALREADY an exercise in overkill for anyone not running multiple monitors. The only way I could see the Fermi finding a home in the current graphics offering is if its price is competitive...but given the probable difficulty in manufacturing it that seems far fetched. At the very least there might be some potential here to depress ATI prices though now that I've built my system that does me no good, personally
PSN: TheScrublet
Apparently in addition to low yields Fermi isn't hitting the clock rate that they wanted. So it will probably be faster than a 5850 but seems unlikely to blow it away.
But, yeah, given the diminishing returns on GPU power for PC gaming, it's hard to believe that NVidia isn't banking on selling their chips to those doing high performance computing.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Um...video cards are primarily designed with gaming and gamers in mind.
I understand that you seem to think the "appropriate" way to go about this is to have the hardcore tech community vet the products before introducing them to the average gamer, but I don't agree that that is necessarily the only appropriate route, nor do I think it is underhanded to market directly to their intended audience.
Whether or not this FERMI stuff is total crap or not is a separate matter.
I'm not going to disagree with this as a principle. However, how NVidia is defining itself and its "cards" is changing. lowly's comment about the high performance computing thing is becoming more and more relevant as Nvidia continues to define it's primary competition along the lines of Intel rather than ATI. Which is probably a good strategy given the undeniable push towards consoles away from PC games over the past 5 years (which DRM is only making worse). Make no mistake if the status quo continues for 5-10 more years the consumer graphic card industry is going to become a very small and lonely place. ESPECIALLY if that cloud shit takes off where our screens our rendered offsite and sent over the internet to us.
So we have Nvidia and it's monster Fermi architecture. What's really interesting to me is how I'm seeing this sort of thing professionally. I'm a software engineer at a major company. Now believe it or not most software engineers (particularly those over the age of 30-35) don't bother to pay attention to the details of consumer hardware. If I was to ask someone what parts they would use to build a computer a lot of them (people who have published papers, led respected projects, and are well established) would be unable to do much more than name the logical parts (GPU, CPU, etc).
And you would be surprised how many of those people are barely aware of ATI as a video card company at all. But mention Nvidia and they immediately know what you're talking about, particularly when talking about crunching numbers in a high-speed manner.
PSN: TheScrublet
This right here scares the shit out of me.
I mean, it's not like I'm averse to using consoles, it's just that loosing PC gaming to glorified graphical terminals doesn't sit well with me.
PC continues to grow as a gaming platform. The rate of growth is not accelerating as quickly as the market for Nintendo's gadgetry but it's absurd to say they're selling less video cards today than they were 10 years ago.
And the added bonus of continually evolving DRM. PC gaming isn't dead and won't be for a good while, but it is declining rather rapidly. Most big budget PC games these days are console ports. Some may be good ports, some may be bad ports, but the PC isn't the lead platform for development anymore, because the sales aren't there. Some stalwart developers stick to it, which are mainly RTS and MMO developers. RTS games play like shit on consoles and MMO's haven't seen a successful venture towards the console front (have any actually been released?). Even FPS's have gone over to primarily developed for consoles (the 360 in particular).
The PC does, however, have the advantage of easier to make indie games and no licensing. But it's still losing the war to consoles.
This is pretty much what I was getting at. Unfortunately it's impossible to truly debate this in an intelligent fashion because the advent of digital distribution has made figures on PC sales obsolete (though I CAN go find you links to stats that PC retail sales have dropped 50% since 2001, and Steam didn't come into existence until 2005 and didn't start selling big third-party games till 2007). However, how many non-MMO and non-RTS exclusives have there been recently? How many have done well? What cross-platform game posted sales figures on the PC even remotely close to the consoles?
Now granted, this situation has been the case since the NES, but it's gotten worse in recent years. And in the last couple of years we're starting to see some really dark trends. MW2 is only the beginning on the ditching of dedicated servers...id has already indicated they're watching the results. I'm not sure if Epic will drop them given their history but if iD put out a game without it anything's possible. And then take the DRM Loki mentioned, which is not going to get better. I feel the developer's pain too. Look at what game budgets are becoming. You've gotta seriously weigh whether the cost of developing a PC version of a game is worth it considering the ease of piracy and smaller market share versus a console system.
Not to get far off topic, I'm not saying that the Fermi signals the end of PC gaming and historians will date it at 2010. But I think the Fermi is signaling Nvidia's continued dedication to using the GPU as a powerhouse data cruncher (which has plenty of future) versus what is essentially a toy (which I suggest has less of a future in the consumer desktop level).
PSN: TheScrublet
PSN: TheScrublet
The death of PC gaming -- whether it is happening or not -- is not really relevant to the GPU as a "toy." All current consoles and likely all next-gen consoles use nVidia or ATI GPUs. So long as games continue pushing for better graphics, the market for GPUs for real-time graphics purposes will still exist.
Apologies for the double post, but I just noticed this. I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. If you're trying to say that the evolving DRM is justified because of piracy, that isn't particularly relevant to the paying customers (who actually put up with DRM). On the other hand, if you're trying to say that evolving DRM is not a problem because anyone who wants to can download a crack, I think you are ignoring the quite inconvenient reality that many people do not want to deal with the potential pitfalls (both legal and viral) of cracks.
Because the average gamer does not actually understand how to do this. Myself & others here have mentioned things about DRM. But you have to watch what/how you say because of the forum rules.
For people who have actually bought the game there is a legal grey issue with DRM. Which is why it's a touchy topic around here.