Tuesday, March 30th 2010
XFX Abandons GeForce GTX 400 Series
XFX is getting cozier with AMD by the day, which is an eyesore for NVIDIA. Amidst the launch of GeForce GTX 400 series, XFX did what could have been unimaginable a few months ago: abandon NVIDIA's high-end GPU launch. That's right, XFX has decided against making and selling GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 graphics cards, saying that it favours high-end GPUs from AMD, instead. This comes even as XFX seemed to have been ready with its own product art. Apart from making new non-reference design SKUs for pretty-much every Radeon HD 5000 series GPU, the company is working on even more premium graphics cards targeted at NVIDIA's high-end GPUs.
The rift between XFX and NVIDIA became quite apparent when XFX outright bashed NVIDIA's high-end lineup in a recent press communication about a new high-end Radeon-based graphics card it's designing. "XFX have always developed the most powerful, versatile Gaming weapons in the world - and have just stepped up to the gaming plate and launched something spectacular that may well literally blow the current NVIDIA offerings clean away," adding "GTX480 and GTX470 are upon us, but perhaps the time has come to Ferm up who really has the big Guns." The move may come to the disappointment of some potential buyers of GTX 400 series, as XFX's popular Double Lifetime Warranty scheme would be missed. XFX however, maintains that it may choose to work on lower-end Fermi-derivatives.
Source:
HardwareCanucks
The rift between XFX and NVIDIA became quite apparent when XFX outright bashed NVIDIA's high-end lineup in a recent press communication about a new high-end Radeon-based graphics card it's designing. "XFX have always developed the most powerful, versatile Gaming weapons in the world - and have just stepped up to the gaming plate and launched something spectacular that may well literally blow the current NVIDIA offerings clean away," adding "GTX480 and GTX470 are upon us, but perhaps the time has come to Ferm up who really has the big Guns." The move may come to the disappointment of some potential buyers of GTX 400 series, as XFX's popular Double Lifetime Warranty scheme would be missed. XFX however, maintains that it may choose to work on lower-end Fermi-derivatives.
199 Comments on XFX Abandons GeForce GTX 400 Series
Xfx jumping ship should represent the air falling out of nv for this series. Imo g100 is a place holder and 6 months from now they will release a good powerful card think of it like a 2900 hot powerful and sucks power like crazy. Another nv card to compare it to would be the 5800 ultra. It was out performed by the cheaper ati card and thanks to it we had high vga card prices.
Now view on all this mess nv needs a good card so we can have competition who liked 4850 for 250 almost immediatly after release? Who liked 9800gtx for cheap? Cause all of that is gone if fermi continues to flop the 5850 is way overpriced right now and will stay there until nv releases a card worth 2 shits.
Oh and 1st to call me an ati lover may as well skip it I have owned nv cards and still use nv cards I just walked into my current cards for cheap.
ASUS' certainly doesn't have the warranty to back up their cards, they only have a 3 year, VisionTek does, I wasn't aware of this as they used to have a 3 year also. I'm guess Visiontek moving to a lifetime warranty is reaction to XFX entering the ATi market, which is certainly a good thing. XFX, IMO, really is showing the other ATi partners how to do things.
As for competition, I'm not worried about it, as I've already pointed out. GTX480 being competitive doesn't worry me, because it is out ahead and won't be competitive at all. What worries me is the GTX470 being competitive. As long as GTX470 managed to at least be competitive with the HD5870, I'll be happy, and nVidia can release a lower card to compete with the HD5850.
And they way the asus warranty works is you have 3 years for the original card to die and the replacement recieves another 3 yr contract to it as they are issued by serial number and warranty works off manuf date not sales date.
Also what competition the 480 doesn't outperform the 5970 hell there are benchmarks the gtx295 275 and 4870x2 beat it in. The card is a flop just like the fx series was yes nv had a 5950 ultra but it sure as hell got beat ny the 9800pro same goes here 480<5970
Every ASUS warranty I've done, the replacement part continues the original warranty from the part it replace, the warranty period does not extend when the part is replaced. A lot of companies go by manufacture day, however brand new replacement parts do not apply, they all have systems set up to adjust for this.
The GTX480 isn't $750 either... What I find on is that people are saying that like just because the GTX480 doesn't outperform the HD5970, it is a flop. You know where it does outperform the HD5970? Price vs. Performance. Yep, the GTX480 is actually better than the HD5970 in Price vs. Performance! Why does the GTX480 have to outperform the HD5970 anyway? Did the GTX285 outperform the HD4870x2? No. Was the GTX285 a damn good card? Yes. The GTX480 isn't a great card, I certainly wouldn't buy it. However, the reviews still put it out front of the HD5870 by a decent amount, and of course that comes at a price. However, I'm more interested in the GTX470, which the reviews seem to put at just about even with the HD5870. That is the competition that I'm concerned about. Because right now, if I had to pick between a $400 HD5870 and a $349 GTX470, I'd go with the equally performing GTX470 for less money. Hopefully we'll see something like a GTX460 that compete with the HD5850 and drives those prices down also.
In all honesty I think you are a wee bit of an nv fanboi and clouded to the ati side of things I have run both sets of cards and moved where performance was. I had a ti4200 7800 g92 all those nv cards as well as a 3850 and 4800x2's
The ati card makes more logical sense right now the gtx already has reports of high returns and killing high end psu's its not worth it you save your $50 and why don't you instead buy $100 more expensive psu so your gtx runs and while your at it move your cpu to water cause the vga puts out more heat than the case can handle. G92 was a milestone for nv these cards they are a turd.
I can still hear the screaching sound in my head.
Did they ever have problems like this on AMD ati cards???
I never did any follow up on this issue.
One thing in common of these cards are they run really warm.
The thing about XFX is that they aren't know for having the best coolers on their cards,
so I guess it is good for them to stay away from the GF100.
For the GF100, knowing what XFX did with the 4890s will you still want to buy their non-reference cards?
Most importantly, XFX offers life-time warranties in the USA, so I guess it isn't smart for them to produce cards with potentially high failure rates.
be interesting to see what temps the cards get under water.
Their cards aren't anything overly "special" or "blingy," but they're solid as hell (never had one fail on me).
Did you happen to look at what card is currently in my main rig? An HD4890. Guess what card was in Rig4 before the 8800GTS...and x800xl(bought here from Xazax), and before that was an x1950Pro(sold to Crashnburnxp). I've also had an x1900GT(bought from Blacktruckryder), which was replaced with an HD3850(bought from Xazax), which was replaced by an HD4670(sold to 3dsage), which was now replaced by the HD4890. I just purchased an HD4870x2 off miahallen. About the only series I haven't personally owned a card from was the HD2000 series, which I skipped, and to be fair, I skipped the G80 series also, I wasn't interested in either as both didn't offer enough gains over the cards I currently had to justify the price. The only reason I have a G80 card now is because I got a good deal on it, and I wanted it to replace the x800xl so I could use the machine to fold.No, the GTX480 doesn't make sense. However, as I already said, the GTX470 is actually looking promising. Granted, I won't totally believe that until we see a W1z review on it, but from the other reviews it is looking promising. It doesn't use an extreme amount of power like the GTX480(so no worry about killing power supplies), it does still get hot but it uses a much weaker heatsink and fan than the GTX480 also. The heat output is only about 60w more than the HD5870, which actually does an amazing job in heat and power usage. However, the interesting thing is that the GTX470's heat output and power usage is very much inline with my current HD4890 and GTX285, and it is actually very similar to the GTX280. I don't need to worry about water-cooling my CPU with those cards, so I'm not worried about it with the GTX470. I think most, including you, seem to be caught up on the GTX480 and applying the problems it has with GTX470. However, it is pretty obvious that nVidia really pushed that card to make it one hell of a beast so it would beat the HD5870 hands down, while the scaled back GTX470 is actually a reasonable card. The HD5870 is better in heat and power, but the GTX470 certainly isn't unreasonable, it compares rather nicely to the high end cards of the last generation actually, the HD5870 has just sets an extremly high bar.
anybody who thinks nVidia didnt loose this round is either an insain fanboi or mentally defective