Monday, August 9th 2010
GF100 512 Core Graphics Card Tested Against GeForce GTX 480
NVIDIA seems to have overcome initial hiccups with the GF100 graphics processor, and could release a new graphics card that makes use of all 512 CUDA cores, and 64 TMUs on the GPU. The GeForce GTX 480 was initially released as a top SKU based on the GF100, with 480 out of the 512 CUDA cores enabled. What NVIDIA calls the new SKU is subject to some speculation. While GPU-Z screenshots show that the 512 core model has the same device ID (hence the same name, GeForce GTX 480), leading us to believe that this is a specifications update for the same SKU à la GeForce GTX 260 (216 SP), it seems possible that the release-grade models could carry a different device ID and name.
Expreview carried out a couple of tests on the 512 core "GTX 480" graphics card, and compared it to the 480 core model that's out in the market. NVIDIA GeForce 258.96 drivers were used. The 512 core card got a GPU Score of 10,072 points compared to 9,521 points of the 480 core card, in 3DMark Vantage Extreme preset. The additional TMUs showed an evident impact on the texture fillrate, 41.55 GTexel/s for the 512 core card against 38.82 GTexel/s for the 480 core card.
In the second test, Crysis Warhead, with Enthusiast preset, 1920 x 1080 px, and 8x AA, the 512 core card churned out a framerate of 34.72 fps, while the 480 core card trailed at 32.96 fps. In this short bench, the 512 core laden GF100 card is 5~6% faster than the GeForce GTX 480. If NVIDIA manages to release the SKU at the same price-point as the GTX 480 as it did with the GTX 260-216, it will increase NVIDIA's competitiveness further against AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5970, which is still the fastest graphics SKU in the market. Below are screenshot comparing scores of both cards.
Source:
Expreview
Expreview carried out a couple of tests on the 512 core "GTX 480" graphics card, and compared it to the 480 core model that's out in the market. NVIDIA GeForce 258.96 drivers were used. The 512 core card got a GPU Score of 10,072 points compared to 9,521 points of the 480 core card, in 3DMark Vantage Extreme preset. The additional TMUs showed an evident impact on the texture fillrate, 41.55 GTexel/s for the 512 core card against 38.82 GTexel/s for the 480 core card.
90 Comments on GF100 512 Core Graphics Card Tested Against GeForce GTX 480
that or they got a rare 512sp sample.
but expreview did have a wei hang GTX480 and said it was 512sp when the one wei hang had has actually 480sp, not trusting them.
CryEngine may be doing alot but it's still not a great engine.
Anyhow, looks like NVIDIA lineup will be GTX 460 (gf104), GTX 475 (gf104), GTX 485 (gf100 revA/B), GTX 49x (2xgf104 full).
GTX 465 is EOL, GTX 470 will be EOL as soon as they sell out and GTX 480 will be EOL and of year, but will most likely be around for a while for nice discounts, like GTX 280 was after GTX 285 release.
What I don't know is what to do with all the GF100 512 shader cards that don't cut it, as there won't be a SKU for them?
If anything the power draw may even stay the same or be lower than the 480 core version of the fermi.
Or something like the Galaxy vapour chamber cooling ?
For example, the GTX465 consumes almost as much as the GTX470 (~20w difference, which is a 10%) despite having 25% of the core disabled, but the GTX470 on the other hand consumes almost 100w less (50% difference) than GTX480 although it only has 7% of shader cores and 20% ROPs disabled. That discrepancy comes from clock difference and anyone who has ever OCed a GTX470 knows that. Conclusion: the power draw difference on the 512 part would be negligible.