The big daddy Fermi is stripped naked for all to see. Naughty bits are censored, though.
With CeBit underway in Germany, Nvidia is quietly showing off its GF100-based silicon ahead of its March 26 official unveil.
Earlier this week, we already caught a glimpse of the GeForce GTX 470 with its cutout vents that will work together with the cooler. Now Dutch site Tweakers.net (translated) has a few pictures of the GeForce GTX 480, which shows the GPU without a cooler in the way.
Tweakers.net notes that the package is stamped with an A2 revision, meaning that it may not be final silicon since an A3 is known to exist as well. The site notes that there are 12 chips of 128MB each, making up 1.5GB of RAM. There are also two SLI connectors for the possibility of three-way SLI.
Look at the size of that GPU!
And why is the PCIe connector censored? Nvidia's big secret that it's gone back to AGP or something?
Goo shout. Don't I feel the fool!
Maybe it's the endless delays, the rumours and reports about all the design and yield problems, or the fact that now we have something tangible the power requirements and heat issues are evident in 6+8 pin PCI-E plugs AND holes in the goddam PCB.
Maybe it's because Nvidia have talked more about workstation and supercomputing applications of Fermi more than PC gaming.
Maybe it's because this feels like a rushed, brute-force approach to get some flawed architecture out from a company who's losing the plot from serious mismanagement.
Unless these things are like the second coming of Christ I honestly thing the Fermi bug has passed me by and I'm sticking with the top-end Radeons.
If I ever get this goddam machine built lol
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/events/2010/03/05/cebit-2010-fermi-spider-cases-and-more/1
True, but it's a special edition stupid money card, and personally with such a thing standard convention goes out the window.
Even though the GTX480 is supposed to be the top-end Fermi gaming GPU, I'm just not convinced or comfortable that Nvidia hasn't been able to reduce power requirements and heat output, and as a result it seems now like a brute force "must beat ATI's numbers regardless of the cost" which doesn't inspire me with confidence.
Let's face it, ATI has matched or pummelled everything Nvidia has in the gaming sector with the 5000 series and have done it cooler and drawing less power - THAT is technological enhancement. Also, even though the Radeons have been hit by poor 40nm yields, their silicon hasn't had anywhere near as many problems as Fermi is reported to have had.
Maybe I'm just being a snob now - maybe I want a little finesse in my technology, not just nailing more powerful lumps to a system just to beat some numbers.
The size of that chip is frankly ridiculous and these cards look as though they could throttle with even the slightest dust buildup.
I was very impressed with the 5000 series on release, but seeing just how nvidia are struggling to compete it shows just how good a product and range of products AMD came up with.
There aren't many products in technology that look more impressive 6 months after release!
haha
it's certainly not looking like a promising product, and i don't think it'll be much, if any, quicker than the 58x0s. It's going to cost a fortune too i'd say looking at the die.