I'm looking forward to the possibility of consolidating several systems into one with either a GTX470 or a GTX480, but Only If the more recent prices and performances are close to correct. £300 to £400 is reasonable for such a card. However I would like to see a real review first!

I don't think that is so clear as you depict it right now. It is likely that Fermi will be a factor two faster compared to a GTX 285 for what it matters GPUGRID. For gaming, I would think that the 480 will be the fastest single GPU card out there. Let's wait another week and see.

As a single GPU - it will be the fastest, for now. Its the real world incarnation of that compared to ATI's top card that will decide the day for 2010, and it will be significantly slower than a 5970, by an order of magnitude. The 5970 is of course - essentially - two 5870's, but the "average" consumer could care less, a card is a card etc etc, and a Fermi2 will not be upon us until 2011. Lets hope Fermi2 continues to play catchup because ATI will not stand still, I have no doubt ATI will release a "Fermi2 Killer" single GPU card this year.

I hope NVidia sort their engineering and production troubles by 2011, they need to, because at present ATI have a huge lead in a real world commercial sense. I have my fingers crossed NVidia price Fermi1 to alleviate the huge power draw, and can sustain production - we all need competition out there - else ATI will do a re-run of 15 years ago when they got complacent and let NVidia in the back door to wipe their face. ATI will not make that mistake again, its just a case of whether or not NVidia can keep up. Its a funny 'ol world, this time its NVidia thats made the big strategic mistake (2007).

Probably going to be a couple of weeks before we really know as the first reviews will be "selected" reviewers friendly to NVidia marketing. If it is significantly better than a 295, I'm in, and will try to get one - its likely the last one I will get from NVidia for a long time, and even then its only because I want to support the new GPUGrid Project, I would not even be considering it otherwise - and that is painful to me as I have been an NVidia fan since they hit the consumer graphics market.

Regards
Zy

ATI cards have no use here. Leave it alone. This is a Fermi thread. There are ATI threads elsewhere.

In my world an order of magnitude is a factor of 10 ;)

And if ATI tried to build a Fermi-1-killer (i.e. be significantly faster, not "just" more economic at a comparable performance level) they'd run into the same problems Fermi faces. They'd have more experience with the 40 nm process, but they couldn't avoid the cost / heat / clock speed problems. The trick is not to try to build the biggest chip.

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

ATI will issue new cards Q3 this year. Basically it's same 58xx and 59xx series, but on 28nm process available with Global Foundaries later this summer. I'm considering to buy 5990 or 5970 (if i will not be patient enough :-) ) this summer for milkyway@home project. Q3 2011 will be new generation of ATI cards.

if GTX470 will be better enough against GTX275 - i'll take ($350 is OK for me), but if not... I was nvidia fan for years, but may be it's time to say "good luck, guys"

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I dare say the GTX470 will be twice as fast as a GTX275!
The GTX480 will be twice as fast as a GTX285, and thats before any consideration of architecture over and above the counts. You will know for sure next week ;)

I'll not be the first, I hope others are willing. I'm going to wait until they work out the drivers, which usually aren't the best at launch, I'll wait until the stocks refill, the prices drop, they come with a revision 2, & fermi's are sold at a discount. So that all said, I'll expect to get my first fermi in 2011 ;-)

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I dare say the GTX470 will be twice as fast as a GTX275!

Hm... Hope u r right :-) If it will twice faster my GTX275, pricewise will be $350 and will be good in OCing, allowing to rich stock GTX480 at least - I'll take it :-) OR - i'll wait for 495 till early summer.

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It seems that the final specs and prices of both Fermi cards got public - and it seems that most (negative) rumours are true. The cards are slower that many hoped and their price indicates that the performance isn't great.
Source:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Preise-und-Spezifikationen-der-Fermi-Grafikkarten-959845.html (in German)
Linked to:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/nvidia-geforce-gtx-480-final-specs--pricing-revealed/8635.html

If they say that the performance of the GTX480 is en par with the HD5870 & the GTX470 is like the HD5850. If looking at the Sum of FPS Benchmarks 1920x1200 on Toms Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-cards-charts-2009-high-quality-update-3/Sum-of-FPS-Benchmarks-1920x1200,1702.html that "could" mean that the GTX480 gains rougly 40% against the GTX285 & the GTX470 gained 25%. If that chart can be converted to the compute capability, that "could" mean that there is a 25-40% gain in performance. That's before they make improvements to their drivers...

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Just a couple more days :)

I suppose the performance in games will be approximately what they're currently showing.. but the architecture itself should be capable of much more. Just consider GT200: initially it was just as fast as the compute capability 1.1 cards at GPU-Grid (at similar theoretical FLOPS). After some time we got an improvement of 40%, at the beginning of the year we got 30 - 40% more and now it's another 30 - 40% faster.
I'd expect something approximately similar with Fermi (the initial performance could be higher).

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

I "guess", that it won't just be Workstation & Mainstream GPU's, Compute deserves it's own line. Not now, but soon...

And if ATI tried to build a Fermi-1-killer (i.e. be significantly faster, not "just" more economic at a comparable performance level) they'd run into the same problems Fermi faces. They'd have more experience with the 40 nm process, but they couldn't avoid the cost / heat / clock speed problems. The trick is not to try to build the biggest chip.

If Nvidia concentrate on Compute with Fermi & Redo Mainstream/Workstation. They're already ahead with Compute...

I'm also "curious" to when a GPU can do without the CPU. Is an Nvidia a RISC or a CISC? Would Linux be able to run a GPU only PC?

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February's increase was 60% for CC1.3 cards.
I expect Fermi to be CC1.4 (or some new Cuda Capable system to be started). My concern would be that by moving to CC1.4 people with CC1.3 and lesser cards will eventually start seeing task failures, as has recently happened following the application updates; several people report only being able to successfully crunch using the older application. Mind you, it will be a while before any new aps are written for Fermi. I think the Fermi driver is still Beta, and no doubt there will be a few revisions there!

I am also concerned that these new cards may not actually be especially good at crunching on GPUGrid. The first GTX 200 cards used 65nm cores and were much more error prone. The cores then shrunk to 55nm and the GT200 was revised to B1 and so on. Perhaps these Fermi cards will follow that same path - So there could be lots of task errors with these early cards, and not until there are several revisions will the cards really start to perform, perhaps not until some 28nm version makes it to the shops, and that is a long way off.

I finally found what I was looking for! http://www.lucidlogix.com/product-adventure2000.html One of these baby's can put that nasty Fermi outside the case & give me 2 PCIe x16 or 4 PCIe x8 for every one PCIe on my mobo. If a cheap Atom is enough, one of these on the mobo would make it possible to use 2-4 High End CUDA GPU's to play crunchbox: http://www.lucidlogix.com/products_hydra200.html But I don't make PC's, I buy them. So maybe if the price ain't bad, & I can find out where i can get an Adventure 2000, I'd be able to run an external multi Fermi GPU box...

Maybe if VIA supplies the CPU, Nvidia can do the rest, with or w/o Lucid.

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I "guess", that it won't just be Workstation & Mainstream GPU's, Compute deserves it's own line. Not now, but soon...

They do: more memory, stronger cooling, more testing and higher price. Otherwise the chip is just the same, anything else would be rediculously expensive now and in the coming couple of years.

Developing on GPU architecture is so expensive, you don't just redisgn it for more computer or texture power. What you can do is to create a modular design, where you can easily choose the number of shader cluster, memory controllers etc. And that's just what they've been doing for years and that's how the mainstream chips will be build: from the same fundamental blocks, just less of them. And since each shader cluster contains the shaders (compute, shaders in games) and the texture and other fixed function units (gaming only) there won't be any shifts in performance between "compute" and "gaming".

Would Linux be able to run a GPU only PC?

That would probably require starting from scratchand would end up being quite slow. Not impossible, though ;)

@SK: compatibility is going to be a problem for GPUs in the long run. Currently they're still changing so much so quickly that supporting old hardware is going to become a pain. Ideally the driver should take care of this - but just how long is nVidia (and ATI) going to support old cards which are not sold any more? Drivers are not perfect and need expensive debugging as well. Which, btw is the cause of the "current" problems with initial GT200 chips: a driver bug which nVidia can't or doesn't want to fix. This should calm your concerns regarding the first Fermis, though: all nVidia has to do is get the driver done properly..

MrS

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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

liveonc

I finally found what I was looking for!

http://www.colfax-intl.com/ms_tesla.asp?M=102 would involve less faffing about with sheet metal. Ain't cheap, though.

MJH

Too damn rich for me! Besides, it runs Workstation GPU's. I'm thinking about cost reduction. I bet that I could get an i7 mobo with 3 PCIe x16 running 3 Lucid Adventure 2000 boxes running 2-4 GTX295 each (depending on if you want 2 x16 PCIe or 4 x8 PCIe), costing less than a single Colfax CXT8000. That would be 1 CPU & 12-24 GPU's VS 2 CPU's & 8 GPU's.

It's all about "affordable" Supercomputing, for even the most unpopular, ill-funded, mad scientist out there (or helping one out)...

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bet that I could get an i7 mobo with 3 PCIe x16 running 3 Lucid Adventure 2000 boxes running 2-4 GTX295 each (depending on if you want 2 x16 PCIe or 4 x8 PCIe), costing less than a single Colfax CXT8000.

If you can, do let us know! I've not seen the Adventure board productised anywhere...

MJH

Haven't either yet, but for now there is this: http://eu.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=170&prod_no=1979 Isn't what I had in mind, but it's there...

Powered by Hydra Engine, Big Bang Fuzion can offer the most flexible upgradability on 3D performance, allowing users to install cross-vender GPUs in a single system. The technology can perform scalable rendering to deliver near-linear gaming performance by load-balancing graphics processing tasks.

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The above ships with 4 Teslas and costs as much as a new car.

You would be better off just buying a good PSU and getting a couple of Fermi cards (or a new sysetem, or two, or three...).
Two GTX480 cards will probably do as much work as 4 or 5 GTX295s, ie more than 4 Teslas!