It would be pretty accurate to go on and say that the reception of Nvidia’s GTX 4xx series cards has been pretty mild so far. You have your standard allotment of die hard fanboys and loyalists who will buy up any and all hardware Nvidia puts out. And then you have more cautious consumers who really scrutinize the cost-to-benefit ratio of their potential purchases.
So let’s get to the point, with all the hubub about price and heat output aside, can (4) of the top end GTX 480′s conquer the planet?
I don’t know about you, but when new computer parts come out, I’m constantly re-evaluating my set up, comparing specs, and crunching god knows what kind of numbers in my head. With the lead up to Fermi and the GTX 4xx series cards, I was pretty stoked — being a long time Nvidia fan myself. And then the early reviews came out and it all got shot to hell. Not only to they run really hot, the price to performance benefit over the ATI 5870 (or for the sake of this post, CrossfireX 5850′s) isn’t worth it. We’ve already seen plenty of 5870 to GTX 480 comparisons so we’ve got that down hook line and sinker. But what about the value set up that often gets left out? The value I’m talking about is two cheaper cards — the 5850 — set up in pairs and put to the test. How would they fair against Nvidia’s best?
Pretty damn well actually. The fine folks over at Nexus put together just such a test and ended up seeing the CrossfireX 5850′s beating out Nvidia’s top of the line GTX 480 over 90% of the time. Now, the big story isn’t the actual raw frame rates. It’s pretty much a given that two high end cards against one super high end card are probably going to come away victorious. Likewise, two GTX 480′s would come away with the win easily. And lest we not forget price. Considering frame rates alone, the power of the GTX 480 would be the real story if it weren’t for it’s high premium.
But the real eye opener is power usage. Would you believe two ATI 5850 cards whether idling or at load consume less power than one GTX 480?! It’s pretty wild to think about. It leaves me wondering exactly what Nvidia has been doing these last few months.
There’s plenty of specs for you geeks to look over, so be sure to stop by the review over at Hexus.net. At the very least, it’s entertaining.
Anyone in the same boat as I was considering if they wanted top of the line Nvidia or mid-high end ATI CrossfireX?
Gamers searching for the fastest single GPU don’t really have too much to choose between. Nvidia’s new GTX 480 top-o-the-line card is a beast both in performance and heat output. Once card by itself is priced north of $500 and as well all know, shortages and demand will drive that price up dramatically. But what if 1 apocalyptic card isn’t enough? What if you need four?
First of all, if you need 4 GTX 480′s, what the hell do you do? Second, what mobo are you going to use? The latter is a serious concern seeing as the GTX 470/480 cards are brand spankin’ new. Thankfully, for those with lofty goals and even loftier wallets, EVGA has got you covered with their new Quad-SLI certified mother boards for extreme enthusiasts.
Benchmarks and scaling performance of quad-sli with the aforementioned cards isn’t yet quite available. So any $2k+ sacrifice you make to get a quad setup yourself early on is more or less a gamble. But to some, money is no object and gambling is just part of the game. After you figure out how your going to afford all this, the next dilemma is how to keep it all from melting…
Anyone out there have the need (or monetary sources) to run such a rig?
Disappointing to some, the next gen HD6000 series cards — which were to be the first cards based on ATI’s new 32nm process — will stay at the current 40nm size because of manufacturing woes. As any computer hardware nerd will know, smaller sizes bring about more efficiency and cooler running parts which in turn means higher performance for those who seek it. Staying at the current 40nm size isn’t all bad. While the next gen 6000 series cards won’t benefit from smaller sizes initially, the “Northern Islands” architecture will be a considerable redesign of ATI’s chips, meaning increased performance, lower power consumption, and *hopefully* cooler running. And if there are this many problems with 32nm hardware, you can imagine that the even more tantalizing 28nm dies are even more of a headache.
So what does it mean for gamers? Well, a completely redesigned 40nm die for next gen cards would still be better than nothing, though it just won’t be the same as a complete shrink down to 32nm like all was planned. Needless to say, next gen cards will be faster and overall better than the current crop of cards. THe real question left unanswered for now however is: Will it be worth the price to upgrade?
By now you’re probably wondering why exactly there is any problem at all. It can all be traced to ATI (Nvidia does it as well) relying on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) for the bulk of their chip orders. A single manufacturing issue can have devastating consequences on supply if they essentially control most of the supply. A perfect example of this little problem can be seen in recent months as 5xxx series ATI cards were in short supply, and even now aren’t exactly flowing freely. I’m hopeful however that these manufacturing issues will get cleared up as the year moves on and that Northern Islands brings that “wow” factor so many seek.
Anyone think that a redesign of the 40nm chips will be sufficient or is the delay of the 32nm and further out 28nm dies a monster in the making?
Ever since we saw early specs and hands on previews (and now reviews) of the latest Nvidia cards — the GTX 470 and 480 — many were passing off hand comments that an egg could be fried on these new cards due their high operating temperature. In many circumstances, idling between 70-80 C isn’t uncommon. For a reference, my ATI CrossFire 5850 set up never goes above 50 C idling. Two different cards, two different architectures though.
Seeing as how the new Fermi cards run so hot, I really was curious if it could really fry an egg. Thankfully LegitReviews had a review sample (and carefully placed egg) to put the rumor to the test.
Does it actually cook? **Spoiler** — No. Unfortunately not. Think of how humorous/cool it would be to have a piece of computer equipment actually heat up enough to fry an egg. Looks like we’ll have to keep around those antiquated frying pans and stove a little longer…
For those who fly with team Red (ATI), the arrival of XFX in recent times was seen as a god send. More competition is always good and really, XFX makes some mean ass cards. They’ve already shown their penchant for performance with Nvidia, so adopting ATI cards as well seems like the only logical next step, right? Well, for consumers it’s a partial yes. I say partial because in their move to support and put out ATI cards, someone on the other side of the fence looks a tad jealous — Nvidia.
Within the last week, Nvidia officially launched their Fermi-based GTX 470 and 480 graphics cards. Debate all you want about price, specs, and performance. I personally found all the build up to be a little misleading as the cards themselves are merely “meh” for me. With the launch of these next gen high end cards, many suspected XFX would be right back at it with some decimating Nvidia cards kicked up a notch or two — and then XFX announced that they weren’t planning on launching any Fermi-based cards.
The speculation is already flying. Some claim that because XFX broke a long-standing Nvidia only partnership and pursued the ATI 58xx series cards, Nvidia is in turn “punishing” them by refusing XFX to release any Nvidia branded cards with Fermi architecture. The other side of the coin has XFX holding the baton of power and passing on Fermi because they feel the 58xx series from ATI “is better suited for the enthusiast marketplace”. So which is it? To be clear, XFX isn’t dropping all Nvidia support, they’re simply passing on by the Fermi-based cards in the near term.
I’ve reached out to both Nvidia and XFX for any clarification on the matter. We’ll see how that little venture goes. In the meantime, questions around why their is a lack of XFX Nvidia cards won’t go away, leaving many questioning their “loyalty”. Are you pro-Nvidia or pro-XFX? I can certainly understand having a favorite and being loyal to one brand over the other. I generally buy whomever is performing the best at that given point in time. And at this stage in the game, I feel ATi’s performance vs. power consumption vs. price is one to two steps ahead of Nvidia.
What do you think: Jealousy on Nvidia’s part or “You’re stuff is whack” by XFX?
I’ve always wondered exactly how much my custom rig pulls down in heavy sessions. With a dual 5850 setup and oc’d Core i7, it certainly has a reputation for a rampant appetite. But is it really as bad as people claim? The general consensus is that a high end dual graphics card set up will pull in at least 400w by themselves, not including the processor, which itself is a power thirsty piece. Then of course you have hard drives, fans, lights, memory, etc., etc. Today you can consider a large chunk of that “is my power supply big enough” unknown hysteria finally answered thanks to the fine folks at XbitLabs. Xbit’s feature article today went on to test 23 of the most popular graphics cards. The power consumption numbers they came away with may surprise you.
For example, a pair of stock clocked ATI 5850′s running Crysis only pull roughly 244w together (so that’s 122w per card) and 163w in a balls-to-the-wall all out GPU stress test. Not bad at all! Give the 5850 some extra juice in the form of 1000/1000MHz core/memory clocks and you end up with a little more aggressive 276w per card. Nvidia doesn’t fair so well if energy consumption is one of your pet peeves, with the ATI 5850′s cousin — the Nvidia GTX 275 — consuming almost 220w during peak Crysis sessions to the 5850′s 122w. And that balls-to-the-wall GPU test? The Nvidia GTX 275 again comes in higher at 218w.
For those curious about the top of the line cards such as the ATI 5970 and Nvidia GTX 295, just know that both cards consumer a lot of power. The 5970 manages to stay well below 400w with a 355.9 showing in the GPU stress test with Nvidia toping the charts with a nice round 400w power draw during the same GPU test. Clearly, if you’re running these top of the line cards, you’ll need a beefy power supply. Going the dual/tri/quad setup? Then a 1k+ PSU should definitely be considered.
For some, energy consumption isn’t anywhere near the forefront of their mind. And that’s ok. But for those who were curious or really wanted to know, XbitLab’s little study is an awesome piece of information for gamers, pc builders, and geeks alike. I know for myself at least, I feel a lot better about my 750w Corsair HX purchase. It is now obviously more than enough for my setup. XbitLabs did all the hard work, now we geeks need to take it, learn it, and spread it. Go ahead and give it a read.
Count your blessing if you’ve got the cash to drop on Saphire’s latest project being shown off at CeBIT in Germany, the Radeon 5970. Better yet, count your megahertz. This beast of card is physically immense. With the large heat sink and triple fans adorning the card, consider 3 of your PCI slots accounted for. But don’t let the size turn you off. There’s plenty of DirectX11 bragging rights to be had. The stock 700MHz and 4000MHz GPU and clock speeds have received a substantial kick in the pants to the tune of 825MHz/4800MHz respectively. Obviously, nothing was held back as this will easily decimate pretty much any other card on the market. Oh yeah, did we mention it has 4GB of VRAM! I want one, and I want one now.
If you have to ask — yes, it will run Crysis without breaking so much as a single drop of sweat.
GSM or CDMA? It isn’t a hard decision to make, though it’s one that can often lead to heated debates (at least in the states where consumers aren’t very privy to the huge GSM market around the world). For myself, even though I’m on Verizon at the moment, I much prefer GSM and the freedom that popping SIM cards back and forth allowed. That SIM swapping may come into my life once again with me actually having to switch carriers at all as Verizon has officially announced that they’ve joined the GSMA.
What’s the big deal? Well, only that Verizon is again, a CDMA carrier and the GSMA is a GSM focused organization. In case you were wondering, the chosen “4G” technology for CDMA2000 networks was UMB backed by Qualcomm. However, after Qualcomm made the switch to LTE, others followed eventually killing off any hopes of UMB making it into the real world.
With Verizon voicing support for LTE (GSM technology) well back into last year, it was only a matter of time before they became friends with the cool kids and joined the GSMA club. One thing that’s interesting to mention is that with Verizon’s acceptance into the GSMA, has CDMA finally been dealt a final blow? I mean, well over 80% of the world uses GSM technology with the rest making up CDMA. Of that small global CDMA figure, the US makes up one of the largest shares.
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how Verizon adopts and adapts the rules of the GSM realm. What I’m most curious about is if and how they will incorporate SIM cards. Common sense says they’d just start moving services over to SIM cards so that the transition to 4G and beyond would be that much easier. Though I can already see the nightmare of moving an entire network from a SIM-less nature to one that is the exact opposite. Above all else, there’s always the fact that Verizon hasn’t ever really been the most customer friendly or “open” network. With the move to GSM comes a much more open philosophy and way of thinking. Is Verizon ready? Are you ready?
In the grander scheme of things, Verizon isn’t the only major CDMA carrier promising LTE adoption as China Telecom and KDDI have also voiced intentions of moving to LTE as well as joining the GSMA. With that said: Will three of the biggest CDMA networks making the move to LTE for 4G (and most likely beyond) be more fallen dominoes in the path to CDMA’s death?
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It would be pretty accurate to go on and say that the reception of Nvidia’s GTX 4xx series cards has been pretty mild so far. You have your standard allotment of die hard fanboys and loyalists who will buy up any and all hardware Nvidia puts out. And then you have more cautious consumers who really scrutinize the cost-to-benefit ratio of their potential purchases.
