With NVIDIA's next-generation Fermi now just a week away, a mass of leaked details are beginning to surface on the Internet.
Following yesterday's leaked slides - showing what appeared to be the first image of NVIDIA's reference GeForce GTX 480 design - technology site vr-zone has today followed up with detailed specifications, and pricing, too.
According to to the site, the first two Fermi-based cards - the GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 - will feature core clock speeds of 700MHz and 607MHz, respectively. The site has also let slip shader counts, memory speeds and bus widths, and to make it a little more palatable, we've put the speculative figures into the below table. For comparison's sake, we've also thrown in a few competing GPUs.
| Graphics cards | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB* | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB* | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1,024MB | ATI Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB | ATI Radeon HD 5870 1,048MB | ATI Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU(s) clock | 700MHz | 607MHz | 576MHz | 648MHz | 725MHz | 850MHz | 725MHz |
| Shader clock | 1,401MHz | 1,215MHz | 1,242MHz | 1,476MHz | 725MHz | 850MHz | 725MHz |
| Memory clock (effective) | 3,696MHz | 3,348MHz | 1,998MHz | 2,484MHz | 4,000MHz | 4,800MHz | 4,000MHz |
| Memory interface and size | 384-bit, 1,536MB GDDR5 | 320-bit, 1,280MB GDDR5 | 896-bit (2 x 448-bit), 1,792MB, GDDR3 | 512-bit, 1,024MB, GDDR3 | 512-bit (2 x 256-bit), 2,048MB | 256-bit, 1,024MB, GDDR5 | 256-bit, 1,024MB, GDDR5 |
| Memory bandwidth | 177.4GB/s | 133.9GB/s | 2 x 111.9GB/s | 159GB/s | 2 x 128GB/s | 153.6GB/s | 128GB/s |
| Manufacturing process | TSMC, 40nm | TSMC, 40nm | TSMC, 55nm | TSMC, 55nm | TSMC, 40nm | TSMC, 40nm | TSMC, 40nm |
| DirectX/ Shader Model | DX11, 5.0 | DX11, 5.0 | DX10, 4.0 | DX10, 4.0 | DX11, 5.0 | DX11, 5.0 | DX11, 5.0 |
| Vertex, fragment, geometry shading (shared) | 480 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue + MUL (unified) | 448 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue + MUL (unified) | 480 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue + MUL (unified) | 240 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue + MUL (unified) | 3,200 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) | 1,600 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified)) | 1,440 FP32 scalar ALUs, MADD dual-issue (unified) |
| Peak GFLOPS | 2,017 | 1,632 | 1,788 | 1,063 | 4,176 | 2,720 |
2,088 |
| Board power (max) | <300W | <300W | 289W | 183W | 294W | 188W | 170W |
| Connectors (native) | 2x dual-link DVI Mini-HDMI |
2x dual-link DVI Mini-HDMI |
2 x dual-link DVI, HDTV-out,HDMI | 2x dual-link DVI HDTV-out |
2x dual-link DVI Mini-DisplayPort |
2x dual-link DVI HDMI, DisplayPort, HDTV-out |
2x dual-link DVI HDMI, DisplayPort, HDTV-out |
*rumoured specification |
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Take the rumoured specifications with a pinch of salt, folks, and the same applies to pricing. According to vr-zone, the GeForce GTX 480 will retail at $499 (around £329 + VAT), whilst the GeForce GTX 470 will fetch $349 (£230 + VAT).
The site claims to have already benchmarked NVIDIA's latest and has found the GeForce GTX 470 to be five-to-ten per cent faster than AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5850. The range-topping GeForce GTX 480 is said to provide a similar improvement over an AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870.
We'll know for certain this time next week, and if you can't wait to see and try Fermi for yourself, take a look at the exclusive SCAN launch event.
