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HisDivineShadow
Weaksauce
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2003
- Messages
- 83
The future iteration of the 480 (ie., the 5900 to the FX5800, the 36xx to the 26xx series, etc.) will probably do what you're looking for. Like others, I suspect the delay of six months to the introduction of this card means the other team that was working on the refresh will have that done relatively quickly, perhaps even around the time of the "mainstream" launch of Fermi-variants or a time afterward.
Actually, 470/480 didn't release yesterday, the reviews were launched. He said the driver would come within 30 days, Anandtech (I believe) said the driver was coming in April, so doing the math, it would appear nVidia postponed the release to get driver and quantity issues up to snuff.
Imo, the 470/480 are not as big a disappointment as I expected since nVidia did claim the higher performance crown with the 480 and especially with SLI, but obviously the power/heat/noise are going to be an issue and not one easily cast aside. With a few choice sales, rebates, or pricecuts, AMD will not be threatened by these cards. Especially given how few of them apparently are to be released. First generation cards that are power hogs with a small release is even more evidence to me that nVidia knows the next refresh is just around the corner, but they need to release something(/anything!?) to keep the Board from rebelling.
I'm disappointed we didn't get to see how the nVidia Surround compared to Eyefinity as that was really the more interesting battle to me. Not because I want such a setup (as I dislike bezels), but because nVidia would do with drivers what ATI did with hardware and I'm always eager to see if nVidia's driver team will work magic (again?) or if the feature will fall short. Perhaps another day!
One other thing, from the review:
"The only game that clearly favors the GeForce GTX 480 is Metro 2033. (And we know that AMD still has its driver team looking over the final code release of the game and has not yet tweaked for it.) Even in BC2, 8X CSAA isnt a huge improvement over 4X AA which the HD 5870 allowed at 2560x1600. What is the value to the gamer of being able to use 8XAA instead of 4XAA in Bad Company 2?"
I was really encouraged to see such a balanced review until I read this. I don't know, but essentially saying, "We know AMD hasn't tweaked for this game yet, SO YOU JUST WAIT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS" is... odd when the competitor to AMD just released a brand new architecture with obviously early drivers? Couldn't you lament that nVidia's drivers are early and their team is "looking over the final code and have not yet tweaked" for all the games in question?
It seems odd to me that you're making a driver excuse for a new game with AMD hardware that's been out for over six months? One would think that nVidia 470/480 drivers would have a lot more room for improvement than AMD drivers, not because of the driver team per se but because the AMD driver team has had a whole hell of a lot longer to tweak for final hardware.
IF you want to bring driver team improving game performance into the mix, then I'd say there's an equal chance that the nVidia driver team will over the next six months find their footing with the finalized/released hardware and offer at least as many performance improvements to all the games in this review as there is ATI will.
Imo, I'd leave the "They'll fix it with drivers" out of it, as I don't see how that argument can't be made back for nVidia in spades, given this is a soft launch with drivers that will almost certainly be different by the time of shipping cards.
