Nvidia's next GPU (Fermi)

metalliandy

Wow...i gotta say this is looking good.
It supports C++ and ECC and apparently can speed up some applications by 8X, which could be great for baking AO and rendering.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/fermi_architecture.html

Im guessing it will cost as much as a small car though...better start saving :P

CrazyButcher

will be interesting to see if all this effort pays off for nvidia. The current generation of cards with all the CUDA stuff are also overpowered compared to what is really used (and compared to the underpowered consoles in comparison). Making this complex yet very powerful architecture is costing them quite something, compared to ATI sticking to more classic graphics and just making that fast.
From a developers point of view its nice to see how much nvidia invests into the tools eco system. And the future of computing will definitely lie in tech like that, but if the time is there yet... from what I read they only made 10 mio per quarter with Tesla products so far ( which is like 1-5% of their sales), and only their Tesla users would make best use of all this power.
Then again its clever to have so many tools and a working chip out there, to get a working user base and create some pressure for the new round of console hardware.

one a sidenote, nice webcasts to be seen here
http://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu_technology_conference.html#webcast

3DLee

There is a great breakdown of the tech behind this card over at SLI Zone: http://forums.slizone.com/index.php?showtopic=39522

Ninjas

All Nvidia needs to do to beat ATI is to let ATI continue to sell graphics cards. I bought an ATI last time, and it is the last time I will buy anything from ATI.

Joshua Stubbles

Ninjas wrote: »

All Nvidia need to do to beat ATI is to let ATI continue to sell graphics cards. I bought an ATI last time, and it is the last time I will buy anything from ATI.

Yep, I've owned ATi twice, never again. Nothing but problems.

Nvidia is doing some amazing stuff though. For those of you who have a PS3, check out the Folding@Home CPU statistics sometime. The Nvidia GPU is the top processor for virus/protein folding worldwide. Even compared against the PS3 Cell, or the 200,000+ Windows CPU's out there. With this new generation of Nvidia cars (512 cores, omg!), it can help out even more.

mLichy

Yeah, I hope Nvidia ups ATI's new card. I used ATI multiple times, but after getting an Nvidia for the first time (my current gtx260), I won't go back.

00Zero

pretty colors!

Junkie_XL

I'm hoping I can stick with my Q6600, 8GB ram, and GTX 280 for a long time. Sometimes I wish I had 16GB ram but even Zbrush isn't caught up yet with their fakey "we are 64-bit" junk.

oXYnary

Guess Im glad Im waiting for tax refunds next year before updating this ancient Athlon XP system. Though I have to say, the newer ATI cards, are actually damn good. And priced and perform better than similar priced Nvidias.

Before getting ecstatic though. Nvidia did loose out on the next next gen of consoles. Annnd Intel is supposedly working on a whole new architecture that will put Nvidia and ATI to shame. (I will believe it when I see it based on their embedded budget ones).

Larrabee, which supposedly has a fully programmable pipeline versus only partially like ATI and Nvidias.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1555726/intel-demos-larrabee

http://www.intel.com/technology/visual/microarch.htm

CrazyButcher

Nvidia did loose out on the next next gen of consoles

says who? There were rumors Intel would get to the PS4, but it was quickly pulled back.

Intel has yet to deliver anything, whilst they have more money than the others, nvidia has quite a track record on its own and lots of expertise + shipped products + shipped tools + many users already.

Larrabee, which supposedly has a fully programmable pipeline versus only partially like ATI and Nvidias

nvidias fermi is a also much more programmable than traditional architectures. Be aware a lot of Intels marketing slogans were based on when Larrabee was first announced, its not like the other parties don't evolve. So imo nvidia and larrabee will get much closer, only ATI will probably stay out of the more "genera computing" and focus on traditional graphics... but they also have less to loose I think (whilst for nvidia the future depends greatly how they can position themselves, between AMD and Intel)

Intel also hopes a lot that people will come up with fast software equivalents for everything, which is also yet to be seen, atm at least people can gather most experience with CUDA and NV hardware, when it comes to massive parallel systems.