Graphics -- What's here, what's coming, etc.

[PreDominance]

So yay. Figured I'd post a short synopsis/guesstimate of the present/future.

nVidia:

GF100 (AKA Fermi (AKA GTX480, GTX470, GTX465) ) are out and about. The GTX480 takes a 10% average lead over the HD5870, with a higher lead taken in tessellation and heavy anti-aliasing. GTX470 is a little less, maybe around 7, with the same advantages as the GTX480.
GTX465 is the 'crap card' of the lot, and barely manages to beat the HD5830 while falling vastly inferior the the HD5850.

GF104 (AKA Fermi (AKA GTX460) ) was recently outed, and it brings a nice bank-for-your-buck. There are two versions, the 768Mb and 1024Mb. "It's only 256Mb difference of Ram," you say. The importance is the bus width, 192-bit vs 256-bit. The GTX460-768Mb competes with the HD5830, on average coming to a 3-5% victory. The GTX460-1024 comes out to be around a 10% victory or better. Its tessellation (I think) beats the HD5850, and is, in general, the only nVidia card to be worth the price currently. The sad part is, it's not making nVidia any money (http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/07/21/ ... -huge-die/)

nVidia, what we can expect:

GF100, as very few of you might know (no offense), is not a full chip. The full GF100 is 512Shaders. nVidia was unable to achieve this, and had to release the GTX480 as it is, with 480 'Cuda Cores' (nVidia's name for Shaders). What we can hope for is a full GF100. A Fermi chip that has 512 shaders. This would be the ideal GTX485.

GF104, too, has disabled shaders. It has 336 'Cuda Cores', when it was originally meant to have 384. A full GF104 would be the ideal GTX475. The next GF104 is, reportedly, GTX(S?)455.

GF106, and GF108, should be nVidia's mainstream and entry level GPUs, respectively. No numbers I can recall here.

GTX495? I don't think it's possible. For reasons explained in Sp.1. There's simply not enough candidates.
ATI:

ATI has had many advantages this season. For one, ATI was over 6 months early to the DX11 party. Where was nVidia during Christmas season? During easter? Spring break? Nowhere to be found. For two, ATI's technology is much more efficient. They have packed 2.1Billion transistors on a 334mm^2 die, while nVidia packs 1.9Billion on a 527mm^2(Or something like that..)die. A much bigger die size is never good. Lastly is their prices. MSRP, the HD5850 and HD5870 were $260 and $370, and they sold like hotcakes. ATI has so far sold 16Million DX11-class GPUs.

HD5970, also known as Hemlock, is ATI's flagship GPU. It is two HD5870s, with the clocks down to HD5850 levels. This was done to keep the card under the 300W PCI-E Specification, even though the card uses 244Watts, its TDP is 294. This means it has two times the shader power of an HD5870 (1600x2), but it still runs a bit slower than an HD5870 crossfire. Upping the clocks using ATI's CCC and VoltMod tool makes the HD5970 a fearsome opponent. It is currently the fastest board around.

HD58x0, also known as Cypress is ATI's flagship single-GPU. 183 TDP makes the HD5870 a very efficient monster, while the 153Watt TDP for the HD5850 makes it, too, an efficient one. Unknown to many, the HD5850 often overclocks to 1kcore and 1.2kmemory, thus over-taking and defeating the HD5870, while remaining cool and calm.

HD57x0, also known as Juniper, is nothing but new technology in terms of its price. It sells for the same as an HD4870 and HD4850 used to (with the HD5750 still a bit pricier). Both cards use exceptionally low power; the HD5750 using under 80W while the HD5770 uses under 95W. Both cards do require a 6pin, though. The motherboard supplies up to 75Watts of power to the graphics card.

HD56x0, also known as Redwood, is a powerful performer. Out-doing the 9600GT and the GT220, the HD5670 does what the HD4670 should have. The card requires no external power, and is very quiet and cool.

HD55x0;HD54x0, also known as Cedar, are the lowest of ATI's offerings. The HD5570 and HD5550 offer performance akin to the HD4670 and HD4650.

ATI, what we can expect:

First off, ATI's new series should be here before the end of 2010. It will be known as Southern Islands. Naming is unknown, though it would be viable for the series to take the HD6K moniker. Performance is not expected to be majorly increased, as this is merely a stop-gap for Northern Islands.

Northern Islands is ATI's 2011 GPU. Based off of the 28nm HKMG die, it will be very powerful. Little is known, however.

Just thought I'd fill you guys in, I know you all don't live under rocks, but hey, I was bored at 1am.

[PreDominance]

Fuck...I need to get an ATI card, 2 gf9800gt's just can't cut it sometimes :<

But you never know, nvidia might not be focusing too much on the retail gpu's and may be going more towards the professional/business solution gpu's(the quadro and tesla series that cost around 2-4 grand each and are like the size of a server unit)

Two 9800GTs perform just under an HD5850. An HD5850 literally doubles the performance of an HD4850, which is equal to a 9800GTX.

Also, that's what GF100 might be, professional GPUs. It's all about shifting around some architecture to get better (either double or single) precision.

[PreDominance]

I can't find any humongous charts.

[BoyButtSlapa]

heh heh thats why i bought the 5970 its such a killer card and i am an ATI user for life !!! still have to OC it when i choose to go water cool achieve the 925 mark which seems to be stable for mosts OC's on this card out there

[hulkvsspawn]

Too bad the 460 GTX isn't listed. I'd love to get one of those to replace my 4770 cf setup.

[PreDominance]

heh heh thats why i bought the 5970 its such a killer card and i am an ATI user for life !!! still have to OC it when i choose to go water cool achieve the 925 mark which seems to be stable for mosts OC's on this card out there

If you're watercooling it, then at max volts you might be able to hit higher, around 1kcore or around 975, with 1250 memory. Good luck!

Too bad the 460 GTX isn't listed. I'd love to get one of those to replace my 4770 cf setup.

That'd be a dumb move, no offense. Unless you have an x58 chipset, you're going to stick an nVidian card into a Crossfire motherboard?

Also, an HD4770 crossfire, which has excellent scaling, isn't that bad. What you SHOULD do is save up for either an HD5850 or an HD5770 crossfire. The HD5850 can be OC'd to 1kcore/1.2kmemory, which puts it past HD5870 levels in performance. The HD5770s will perform as good or a tad better than an HD5870 as well, though with two cards.

[TheKeef]

Onboard graphics ftw