One more such victory and we are lost - Pyrrhus
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Nvidia's line of Fermi GPUs is hanging fire
GRAPHICS CHIP OUTFIT Nvidia has had a real devil of a time getting its next generation of GPUs codenamed Fermi out of the fab and shipping in graphics cards.
Envisioned by the Green Goblin's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang as the realisation of his soaring ambition to take over high performance number crunching in GPGPUs, as well as deliver a knockout blow to Nvidia's graphics rival AMD-ATI, the Fermi chip was designed to be both massive at more than 500mm2 and internally agile to do both HPC and GPU work.
The cost of Huang's ambition became obvious as soon as the prototype wafers were produced, as initial chip yields were reportedly abysmal, in the low single-digit percentages.
Wafer yields are said to have improved after a time-consuming re-spin, but they're still rumoured to be less than fully satisfactory.
The chip was also reported to be very power-hungry and extremely hot, pushing or even exceeding the PCI power limit of 300W.
Graphics cards based on Nvidia's upcoming line of Fermi GPUs are expected to hit the shelves some time in the next few months, certainly within the first half of the year.
While some of the company's critics are predicting that Nvidia's line of Fermi GPU based cards will fail to overwhelm the competition, run too hot for sane deployment and be outrageously expensive, we're keeping an open mind.
But what do you think? We've got an INQUIRER readers' poll up about Nvidia's Fermi GPU prospects, and that's here. µ
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Look again. The center of the Sample is completely grey meaning that the AF is corrupting the sample.
Also, There are no differences between 8x and 16x on Radeon 5K hardware,
look here
http://www.technewshw.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2863
This dead zone was reported by AlienBabel back in november, and is still a problem in the drivers now, so either its not fixable, or the dev team deems it unworthy of fixing.
Its not noticed on many games, however games with smaller geometry textures will hit a sudden Blur when looking out into the distance.
Whats worse, is THAT THE REVIEW DIDN'T EVEN QUESTION THE MISSING DETAIL AROUND THE CENTER!!!!
I owned :
ati fury maxx
tnt2
geforce 4200
ati 9800
ati x1950pro
geforce 8800gt
All cards were best buy's at time (most gaming fps and eyecandy for money)
I have had bad exp. with NV and ATI so it is equaly bad on that side.
Best thing is to compare capabilities of cards and buy cheapest from cards that satisfy your needs.
I'd like to see Nvidia add meta display support at the driver level for their current generation of cards. The process could run on the back burner, the fourth CPU core.
AMD is dead. Long live AMD.
Buy AMD, for yourself. Buy Nvidia, for AMD.
Be real, be sober.
Nvidia knows how to cripple things, like the performance of CPU-Physx.
"Even with PhysX enabled on the CPU, utilization only increased by a couple percentage points. This is something of a sore point for us at HardOCP."
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/02/02/dark_void_physx_gameplay_performance_iq/10
Seeing the performance of ATI-cards with Physx turned on you would except the CPU to be chocking on the load, but it isn't.
Found that report about the artificially crippled double precision on fermi:-
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/18332/5
I've been using various video cards for doing gpgpu work for quite a while, and imho the ATI cards already have a clear advantage. using the distributed.net client, both CUDA & Stream versions are available.
A stock 4870 does about 570 Mkeys/sec.
An modestly over clocked 275GTX does about 280 Mkeys/sec.
This sort of trend continues, cheaper ATI cards consistently do more work than more expensive Nvidia models. If nvidia really is artificially hampering their speeds, they need to stop because ATI cards that cost significantly less are doing 2x the work. $150 for the 4870, and $230 for the 275GTX (that's what i paid for mine).
When you throw in the 219W TDP of the 275GTX vs. the 150W TDP of the 4870 it's even more one sided.
Couldn't give a rats arse about eyefinity, 160 fps, dx11... I want 3d gaming. ATI where are you there?
Whoever said this will probably cost 400-500£ is way off. This will end up costing upwards of 800£ minimum, and it will not BEAT 5970.
The massive die is ridiculous, the huge power draw is enormous, this is another 5800 Ultra (which I sadly bought). Well guess what, no more ! I love my 5970 and I am very happy with it. I have been a very long time nvidia fan starting from Riva TNT2.
This is a shame.
You said you intend to use your card for gpgpu work....don't forget that Nvidia is going to artificially reduce its double prescision performance on its Fermi graphics card models to prevent people using them instead of there tesla models....forget where I read that now but if I recall corrctly they were reducing its performance to about one quarter of the original. :/
Not a fanboi and use cards from both ATI and nVidia.
GF
GF 2
GF 3
GF 4
Radeon 9 (GF 5 is crap!)
Radeon X
GF 7
GF 8
GF 9 (most are re-spin)
Radeon X4 (some GT series cards are still re-spins)
Radeon X5
nVidia needs to do a better job to keep the balance. Or else ATI may come up with a crap X6 series later and just make loads of money over poor consumers due to lack of competition (as nVidia did when they had the lead during GF 7-8, and not counting 9 as they're most re-spins) See what I mean?
Nvidia's served me well over the years. In all that time I've only purchased a GF2, GF4, 5700, 6800gt, second 6800gt for sli, and my current gtx260.. that's not bad considering the rest of my system has been rebuilt around those cards twice as often. I buy for stability and longevity, and even though I DO beat the hell out of them in games, working tomorrow means much more than bragging rights and few more fps. Bumpgate was a wakeup call, and fermi scares me.. if for nothing more than the die size and power requirements alone. I'll reserve judgement on it until more is known, but it's looking very much like my upgrade schedule completely favors what ATI will be offering at the time, and pretty darn risky for what nVidia will have out at that time. I have no use for a GPGPU really, and certainly no desire to pay a mint for one.
ATI is nice for gaming *only*, but their drivers are still second rate for those of us who dual boot linux and windows - not to mention I use make use of CUDA for a variety of purposes - ATI just doesn't provide the GPGPU capabilities nVidia does.
I won't pass judgement on Fermi until it's out of course, but for now nvidia offers the best price point for cards that can be used for both graphics and GPGPU usage. Not all of us can afford dedicated GPGPU systems like Tesla.
HardOCP thinks differently: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/22/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5870_video_card_review/6
"In the second screenshot we have enabled 16X AF. Once again we find the Radeon HD 5870 produces the best 16X AF out of the bunch. It is a perfect circle, with no dependencies on angles like the Radeon HD 4890. I would say ATI has succeeded in providing the absolute best filtering quality in a gaming graphics card."
There is nothing wrong with the 5000-Series. These are very very good cards and if Nvidia hadn't made something as brilliant as the 9600 GT, I would probably own one by now.
I think the RV870 is so good, they might as well have called it the R300^2.
I mean, doesn't this situation remind anyone of 2002?
- Radeon 8000 was good, but Geforce 3 is better
- ATI unveils 9700 Pro; gamers blown away by performance, features and quality
- Nvidia's answer is late because of manufacturing problems
- Nvidia unveils Geforce 'Dustbuster' FX
Let's see if history does repeat itself.
I think the lack of any real news from Nvidia on Fermi this late in the day is ominous...afraid it is going to be a big fail.
All kudos to them for trying a revolutionary new architecture though.
But I think I may skip both Nvidias Fermi and Ati's 5000 series (which is meant to have poor AF quality for some reason)....ATi's 6000 series isn't far off with a new compute architecture and not sure a smaller process size?
No rush for DX11 which is in very early stages and probably wont progress to far until adopted by the next console generation, also gpgpu applications are still few and far between.
Not going to rush to buy a pup...will just let things mature a bit.
Nvidia has been a mess lately. Everybody I game with has had to revert back to the September drivers due to crippling bugs in the current ones.
Fermi is going to cost a fortune and won't be cost competitive unless Nvidia sells it at a loss. And meanwhile, ATI has been alone in the DX11 market for a while.
Bad time to be Nvidia.
Nvidia has pretty much handed ATI this round, albeit ATI took their sweet time getting the 5970 out.
Will Fermi outperform the 58xx series a little? Will it come down like the hammer of the 6x00 series? Will it be a noisy loser like the 5900? Time will tell.
ATI drivers have improved, but still fall short.
Nvidia is still pretty darn arrogant for a second-rate performer.
Hmm, I'll not jump to conclusions, but Nvidia has a pretty big mountain to climb. Still, I'd rather AMD "won" for two more generations, but no longer. About 2 gens for each side, to keep the prices from skyrocketing...
If nV had contracted with Intel, you can be sure it would have been working by now.
I doubt nVidia is in any rush to market with Fermi-based products. They just released the 300-series rehash mobile GPUs, and they're barely in a few models right now.
Intel's own HD graphics still only supports DX 10.1, and only ATi's top end 5000 series cards support DX 11, and they are only in the top end gaming lappies.
I'd say we're looking at summer or fall before Fermi is out, and that's a conservative estimate. It'll probably be Q4 if not 2011 by the time mobile Fermi-based GPU's are even close to ready, too.
All in all it's just a total mess. Too bad AMD doesn't have a mobile GPU to spank Intel's i7's, otherwise I'd just get an AMD/ATi gaming notebook and leave this waiting for the next best GPU to the dogs.
Reading the comments made by supposedly objective, non-fan, "technical" jockeys that end up bashing one company or another is always fun.
Latest target Nvidia, for all the hate, the 8800's, 9800's and 280/285's have been as fast or faster and use about the same power as equivalent ATI cards.
Both ATI and Nvidia trade places every other years. One company goes to the top, talks BS, grows complacent and rebrand graphics cards until the competitor catches up and passes them.
I don't see anything wrong here, we always win.
So forget about the hate, forget about making up assumptions on power or performance on products that are not out and please let Charlie "I've got a chip on my shoulder" die in peace.
I used to be a fan of NV, but obviously, this time they have gambled the company and lost. They shouldn't even try to come out with this THING. No one should buy it. Your just going to pay a fortune for something that should not have been released. I can see nothing but problems with this thing. It runs way too hot, tries to draw more power than the PCI can possibly give it, and blows fire out of its ass. That's after you have given NV your life savings and know that they are never going to honor any waranties on it.
Plus, you have to remember, software developers are going to program for the masses. As I see it now, the masses are going to have AMD.
I havn't personally had a serious problem with my rig, but after reading all the user reviews of the newer NV cards and the speculation about the Fermi.
For me its comming to the time to upgrade my system and I think I will be going AMD/ATI. for CPU and GPU / Price and performance.
My Build - Asus Intell 775, Q6600, 4GB, 1.7TB of HDD and a SLI rig of 2x 8800-GTS-512MB System - with a Dell 2407 (1920x1200)
Not given me any problems on laptops for the past 5 years or on my current desktop whatsoever.
Some folks cant build PCs properly I reckon.
nVidia drivers and stablity are still ahead of ATI. For gaming, ATI cards are great. For everything else, I have to hold my breath and hope it works.
...just what we need, an overpriced, hot, power hungry card thats late to market and will give me 160fps in my games compared to my current card that gives me 130fps and cost a third as much (probably). Wow...how useless really.
Sorry folks, just dont need it. Better smoke effects arent that important to me. But after seeing my last electric bill...I really do want to cut the power.
The only thnig that has impressed me about Nvidia for the past three years is how long they managed to re-mangle the old 8800 series with re-brands. Thats real innovation.
Always bought Nvidia since TNT days buy now have moved to ATI as I didnt want to pay Nvidia for lazy rehashed products.
Good point. I know I'm a minority when I say that I do both HPC & Gaming.... So I'm happy with the 5 ton Hybrid Ferrari catdog.
The big issue is why the hell would I want anything like that in a system? A cheapass Radeon from the 5k line is under £100, and runs every game out there currently max settings and at much less power.
Why the hell would I blow whats probably going to be £400-£500 on a GPU which will probably draw so much power it frys my motherboard, or cooks me due to the heat it'll shovel out...and no doubt blow up in my face due to the crap quality like the last bloody POS nVidia's I spent a fortune on.
I used to be a huge nVidia fan, but in the recent generations they are an utter laughing stock of over priced, over heating, over complex, over powered and seriously unreliable. Wouldn't touch another with a 50ft barge pole no matter these days.
title
Charlie lately of the TheInq, and now of SemiAccurate has been quite on top of nVidia for years, and Fermi of late.
As the above poster alluded to, he has the sources, and considering his successful prediction rate, nVidia must have pissed off a lot of its own staff.
Fermi was the Hail Mary pass to bring the GPGPU to the HPC primarily, and the Masses secondarily. It is primarily a GPU Compute engine, and a graphics processor second.
Lets use a slashdot car analogy.
You're a gamer, and you want a faastt GPU.
You're a High Performance Compute user, and you need a super heavy duty 18-wheeler compute engine.
The obvious solution is to make a 5-ton Ferrari...... not.
Fermi will be comparable or slightly faster in some situations due to its mammoth size, ~470+mm. At 50% larger in size, due partly to the dual-precision floating-point that is required for HPC and not gaming, a considerable amount of silicon is going to sit idle. But you will have payed for it.
To date, nVidia has still not released any numbers for actual comparison against ATI, which is telling.
If it was a winner and trouncing ATI, its clear they'd be blowing that horn.
As they aren't, its quite likely that it is merely 'competitive' with the 58xx series from ATI.
Oh yes, lets not forget that they have already had to chop off 10% of the compute units from 512 to 448 because they are having yield problems still, and too much power draw for the PCIe spec. One reason the DOE's Oakridge supercomputer design has dropped the Fermi.
If you want a cat, get a cat.
If you want a dog, get a dog.
Getting a cat-dog is only going to lead to tears and unmet expectations. And expensive ones at that.
BTW, I experienced driver problems with an ATI All-In-Wonder card maybe 7 years ago. However I've been on ATI cards since the xt18xx series through my current 4850 with no driver issues of note. Both vendors have decent driver development for years now, but it seems like the only cannard nVidia fanbois can come up with as they know ATI beats them in speed, features, and that little performance/$$ area.
Personally, I think ppl have had enough of faster, yet hotter and more power draw. Sure faster is better, but there comes a time when enough is enough. AMD, and later Intel finally saw the light and went down the "More efficient, more work less cycles, less power" route and sooner or later ATI and Nvidia will have to face the same decision.
As for drivers, I have heard the ATI driver issue statement for years but haven't run into one in at least 2-3 years. I work in a repair shop and out of the last three rigs I worked on that the customer complained of ATI driver issues, 2 were heat, not driver problems. Poor cable management and improper thermal paste application were the actual culprits. The third was a cheap underpowered PSU and not the drivers. Before that there were 2 that the customers upgraded from older NV cards and didn't properly uninstall the old NV drivers before installing the ATI drivers. When all of these other issues were addressed, the problems went away. Am I saying ATI drivers are perfect? No, but I do know that they are good and a lot of ppl just parrot what they hear on the internet or on forums. And last, I am NOT saying anyone who replied here is doing this, again, just my 2 cents....
It is so late to market that AMD has a commanding lead. Fermi will be good, but facing a market headwind that will take some doing to overcome.
The mobile market looks likely to transition entirely to AMD's hands in the next few months. In the mobile market the cards you buy are for the life of the machine, and if AMD has a 6-9 month lead on DX11 compatibility at high, mid and low price points, they will sweep the mobile market like a red storm.
And sadly, from the heat generated by Fermi, I think AMD could have AT LEAST a 9 month if not a 12-15 month lead on Nvidia to the mobile DX11 crown.
Nvidia to me has always carried the market and performance, & quality! ATI has always had driver issues, and target the gamer market only. Nvidia will soar above all ATI in both Super Computing and Gaming... I believe in what you pay for is what you get. Way to go Nvidia, I am a CUDA hardcore user and can't wait for the new Fermi line to hit the market... Hook me UP!
JD
I've personally dealt with 3 laptops that have failed due to bumpgate. Of those 3 failed laptops, even though they otherwise qualified under the extended warrantee, the responsible manufacturers weaseled out of fixing 2 of them claiming failure due to user abuse.
The last was repaired ... after the owner wrote a nicely phrased but very pointed letter to the CEO of HP.
I make all my purchases under the assumption that warrantees are worthless. I therefore make it a point to purchase only stuff I can see a history on.
Nvidia's history with me is now a record of lies, poor engineering, more lies and lost productivity and lost time.
I will not buy anything with nvidia in it. I emphatically recommend to people who ask and even people who don't ask that they not purchase anything with nvidia in it.
As far as the poll goes, fanbois will see the over priced and hard to get cards and go ga-ga over them and happily feel privileged for the opportunity.
Even at inflated prices boastfully paid by fanbois, I doubt nvidia will break even with their production costs.
Yield {or lack of therof} and any attempt to remain within price shouting distance with AMD/ATI will mean nvidia will be eating a loss.
nvidia is on life support this falure of a chip will put them in the coffin
they owe me $ 5.000 thousand for 2 dell notebook computers that thir faliure of chips that are failing after 3 years in a notebook i will never buy anything from them again stay away from these people they are a year late and a dollar short
Read this article in the hope of new information...but none was to be found...do you people get paid to keep chuntering out the same old stuff just to Nvidia's paper dragon in the press?
Oh yes Fermi is meant to be due in Q1 so they have 6 - 7 weeks to deliver not the graciously extended time period you indicate;-
"Fermi GPUs are expected to hit the shelves some time in the next few months, certainly within the first half of the year."?????
More information can be found
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/01/17/nvidia-gf100-takes-280w-and-unmanufacturable/
You may not believe him but so far he's gotten everything right on the timing. It's worth a read to understand the business problem they have.
I'm not really a fanboy of either company. I currently use an ATI based card. My feeling are simple. I hope Nvidia is successful for the simple reason that competition is good for us the consumer. With Intel sticking with low-end integrated chips, we need Nvidia to stay healthy and solvent. I hope they can overcome their issues so that we won'r be stuck at the mercy of just one vendor.
Nvidia 3d vision has given my gaming a new lease of life over the last six months - I welcome anything that pushes the boundaries of tech.
I expect the cards will outperform ATI's 5000 series in the majority of cases, but the heat and cost issues will leave ATI as the financial winner. Until a die shrink, perhaps.
Another innovative ground breaking GPU from NV.
Market leader in innovative designs for the last 15 years.
Thank you NV.