The way things are at the moment I'd be VERY surprised if you could actually buy a Fermi this year...
the big time for sales is december. Nivida dont need to have a card out in the shops by then. If they can get a demo card in the hands of reviewers by the end of November and it blasts the 5870 then enough people will hold of to make it worth their while in recouped sales in January (or soon after). Folks won't hold off a chrimmy spend if they think Nivida has nothing for 6 months. So either Nvidia get a demo card out asap (6 weeks) or they are dead in the water until Easter when IT sales pickup after the xmas rush. If Nvidia want to shift kit it's either now or easter. I don't have a crystal ball, but nvidia have 2 options. get something out now (anything better than the 5870 will do) or loose 6 months of sales to ATI. People blow money next 2 months, enough to slam sales for the next 6 months. I think the GPU is done and they are fabbing the 1st units (various reports link to here about power and stuff) What Nvidia want more than anything else right now is to p!ss on ATI's parade, and the only way to do that is get a review fermi out asap. I'm not an Nvidia fanboy, I'll get ati again if thats the best, but I think Nvidia will have smoething good soon, they cant afford not to. I just get the feeling they're being smug.
ok sorry i did ramble on i spose, I was concerned as the first few pages seemed (to me at least) to have some rather Stretched fact's in them, and was motivated by a desire to help the dude who's thread it was,,,, Then I missed the page where common sense seamed to prevail (page4) so i was trying to addresse like loads of threads in one. Also I wasn't awair of any limits on post size, so i have a lot to say. it's a crime know? Edit* unknown gamer, respect due there goes a dude who know's his stuff, Nvidea have gotta be worried whilst I didn't put much faith in the hd4870 these new ati card's 5870's are sweet I almoast sold mi gtx280's to get one but then i figured why rush pc hardwaire rewards the patiant man!! nuff said.
As I've heard from some birds, Fermi is still spinning so even IF nVidia manages to get it into stores at December, it will be nothing less than a paperlaunch. It is big, it is heavy, it is going to cost. Availability will be up/good/well at the end of Q1 2010 if nothing goes wrong. I say: take a hit and run for the 5870, then you have at least a happy X-Mas
I'd rather wait 6 weeks. If they paper launch it thats cool. I'd be gutted to spend £300 on a hd5870 next month, only for fermi to be out January and trounce it for £350. A paper launch will give you aproximate performance and a vauge price. thats all I need. If they cant paper launch it to try and get some ATI chrimmy sales then they are 6 months away from getting it in the shops. 6 months is alot of uber high res gaming. PLus, if your canny. And you ditch the 5870 a month before availability you'll get 85% of you cash back. You can then make an informed decision if a 15% loss on a sale on your hd5870 and a £100 premium for a gtx380 is worth it. I'd expect a net cost of an upgrade from hd5870 to GTX380 to be £150~200. if it offers 50% more oommph as well as cuda and physix then a swap is worth it. the problem is we have no real idea of price/performance/availabilty, and thats hurtin Nvidia. they need some credible leaks in in the next few weeks to stall the 5870 hype machine. If they cant even sow a seed of doubt in the next 2, then they are gona lose millions. not only do they lose millions, the compotition gets their money.
I know and respect the Nvidia fans here but I'm surprised to see ATI with such a huge jump on Nvidia and no answer. I know there are no directx 11 games out and the first one will be some half ass 2 minute effect just to say first directx 11 game but i don't think directx11 will be a huge jump anyway. it's just directx 10.1 but faster and easier on the processor. there is no real graphical revolution going on here or we would have heard about it. I think Nvidia is perfecting the multiple monitor thing, i'm interested in six ultra slim or no bezel monitors placed together forming one huge screen instead of shelling out $3000 for a 63" tv. But Nvidia keeping quiet has me nervous.
Think "tessellation", for one. That could potentially have a huge impact on games. As far as I know nVidia has no prior expertise regarding tessellation, while ATi has had it in silicon for several generations. I'm all for competition, but it seems as if nVidia currently has nothing to put up against ATi. Yes, they will have a new high-end chip out some time, but not right now. As for perfecting multi-monitor setups ATi has them beat there too with EyeFinity.
Exactly. What is the hurry?? Sure ATI have a £300 card out to please their corner of the market, but there is nothing out there to test it, there isn't anything coming for a while and very few games are as demanding as Crysis which can be played on a current Nvidia card anyway. Nvidia has released its first 40nm low end parts, so I'm sure there will be high end parts around the corner. It's a bold move to EOL your current cards without something to follow it.
It's not really bold considering the GT200 range is very expensive to produce, yet have now been completely obsoleted (except perhaps the GT295) by ATi's Cypress (and Juniper). The only way to stay competetive is selling at a loss. It may be a question of what's cheaper: manufacturing and selling at a substantial loss or not manufacturing and thus not selling at all.
here are some pics of the gt390 quad sli on one card http://maxishine.com.au/index.php?o...on-single-card&catid=40:latest-news&Itemid=50
Lols, 4 GPUs on a single card? Even NVIDIA aren't stupid enough to do that. Aside from the problems involving poor support in games, driver optimisations, memory bandwidth limitations of the PCI-E 2.0 interface, power consumption, heat and associated cooling, there's still the issue of the absolutely astronomical price tag such a thing would come with (we'd probably be talking more than the ASUS Mars here, and we all know how well that performed).