So, what's next?

S

Serpico

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 8, 2000
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The GTX 460 has blown me away with its combination of price, performance, lack of noise, and low temperatures. The last two things were big issues I had with the GTX 480 and 470, and they seem to be solved with the 460, even when running them in SLI. The fact that GTX 460 in SLI is faster, cooler, and draws less power than a single GTX 480, is pretty great.

The question now is when are we going to see the next nVidia refresh that brings that same balance of performance and efficiency to their $400+ cards. I'm almost tempted to sell my GTX 285 and get a pair of GTX 460 in SLI, but I also know that a single card solution that is at least as fast and as energy efficient is coming. It has to, I just haven't heard a peep about nVidia's roadmap on any of the major tech sites.

Any links I might have missed? Thanks in advance.
 
Yea, I'm with you. I'm willing to bet we'll see a 475 and a 485 based on the 104 chip.
 
I'm going to guess a 384 cuda core GF104 card (call it 475 or whatever) and the same 480. Maybe a 512 core GF100 part but nothing based off this GF104.
 
rtd said:
Yea, I'm with you. I'm willing to bet we'll see a 475 and a 485 based on the 104 chip.
Click to expand...

A GTX 485 comparable in price to two GTX 460 cards in SLI, which is both cheaper and faster than a GTX 480, would be frigging incredible.

So many hypotheticals though, I wish we had something more concrete plus a timeframe. Unfortunately I haven't even read rumors on this sort of thing yet.

EDIT: Searched GTX 485 on Google and sure enough, rumors rumors and nothing too terribly specific beyond the expected refinements now that the bugs have been shaken out. I'm not holding my breath for anything to happen until Fall, but we'll see.
 
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Then again, how many people really need a GTX 480 or 460 SLI power? I switched to a 47" 1080 HDTV as a monitor and less pixels make a single OC'd 460 or stock 470 more than enough. Then again, if you play "blockbuster" games like MW2 or WoW, a single OC'd 460 or stock 470 would be way more than enough for 1920x1080.
 
The people who need SLI are the people running higher resolutions than 1080p, such as very high resolution flat panels or multiple monitors for surround/Eyefinity gaming -- for those, a single card is usually inadequate. I agree that 460/470 is more than adequate for 1080p, check my sig. ;)
 
Well, there is a rumored GTX460x2 coming soon.

I don't think there will be a "full GF100", its too big, expensive, hot and power hungry to handle all the 512 cores.

But I bet a successor to the GF100 based on the GF104 is coming out soon for the high end.
 
What's really coming next is GF106 and GF108. Nvidia has nothing in that price segment yet so they will be filling in those brackets with those cards. These will likely have the same efficiency savings as GF104 but cheaper, lower performance, smaller die size so that nvidia can turn more profits. More cards flipped = more revenue. Because most people actually don't want to spend a lot for a new video card GF106 and GF108 will be Nvidia's bread and butter mainstream cards for the masses.
 
Stoly said:
I don't think there will be a "full GF100", its too big, expensive, hot and power hungry to handle all the 512 cores.

But I bet a successor to the GF100 based on the GF104 is coming out soon for the high end.
Click to expand...

This is what I'm hoping for. We'll see.
 
Shouldn't the next big update come this time next year? It is hard to believe the can roll out something big sooner than that.
 
I guess I'm curious as to what will be the basis of the next high-end card, GF100, 104, 106, or whatever. A fully enabled GF100 I thought had been taped out but required two 8 PCIE plugs. While the 480 is hot I do think people went overboard with the issue as high end cards are often hot and power hungry and while not efficient, put 480s in multiples and the performance really more than makes up for the power and heat but sure, who's going to argue against a cooler part.

Probably will have to pick up a 460 for my HTPC, that'll do decent 1080P gaming and Blu Ray. Then there's the Radeon 6000s, should be a solid part, guess we'll see if AMD fixes is CF and EF scaling.

But what a difference a year makes. From one to 3 monitors with 3D to boot. A lot to digest still for the vast majority of gamers.
 
I think Nvidia is going to milk gf104 until they can die shrink to 28nm. Then you will start seeing either 475/85. When they respin for the lower die size, it will be interesting to see if they expand the gf104 layout to a high end product, or stick with the original Fermi layout from gf100.

@heatless

I think one of the problems with cf/ef is the lack of bandwidth because the second/third card have to send entire frames back to the main card for output, which forced ATI onto the PCI-e bus I believe. I hope they add an extra bridge connector to expand bandwidth between cards.
 
I wish we knew what was coming next. I'm so tempted to pick up a pair of GTX 460 cards with this discount code I got with Starcraft 2.
 
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