So just how fast is NVIDIA's Fermi graphics card? We find out.

Showing Fermi off

Here are the same two NVIDIA cards running Dark Void, released in the US today and in Europe on the 22nd January.

Based on the Unreal Engine 3 with lots of PhysX thrown in for good measure, NVIDIA ran the timedemo at 1,920x1,200 with 4xAA and 16x AF and PhysX set to medium.

GeForce GTX 285 finishing running Dark Void - click to enlarge

The GeForce GTX 285 returns an average frame-rate of 38.38fps and a minimum of 29.28fps, suggesting that the game will need a beefy GPU if it's to run well at this setting.

NVIDIA Fermi finishing running Dark Void - click to enlarge

The same test on Fermi shows an average frame-rate of 78.32fps and a minimum of 53.32fps.

We will endeavour to provide comparable AMD Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5970 benchmark results as soon as we have the game in our hands.

Double the frame-rate

So why is it over twice as fast as GTX 285 here? The main reasons are that whilst the GeForce GT 200-series can run both PhysX (compute) and graphics on the same GPU, Fermi's considerably faster switching time between the two - about 20 microseconds - helps keep performance chugging along with only a minor frame-rate hit. Fermi's greater on-chip cache - now there's a dedicated L1 for load/store operations - also assists in ensuring performance is solid when running more than one workload.

Fermi is due to hit the retail shelves fairly soon and should become the fastest single-GPU graphics card in the world. Give the complexity of the architecture and die-size, it's difficult to imagine it not usurping AMD's finest in the performance stakes.

Cheap Fermi - an oxymoron?

Speaking from an economic standpoint, the top-end Fermi cards simply won't be cheap and will therefore be limited to a very small portion of the market. NVIDIA needs to derivate down to the mid-range as soon as possible, to make the GPUs more appealing to Joe Average who is willing to shell out $150, and not $599, on a new card.

AMD's about to complete a top-to-bottom DX11 line-up with the Radeon HD 5K series, so whilst Fermi looks damn fine on paper, we will need to see the full range, sharpish, if NVIDIA isn't to lose a bunch of sales to AMD.

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Do us a favour and bench Farcry 2 on a 5970, same settings of course. :)

Thing is the 5970 is really a 5870x2 (AMD just changed the branding scheme), it's two cores (which gives wonky performance on games not built to deal with multiple GPUs like a lot of games that aren't brandspanking new - which is why I went for 5870 myself ), so you could only really fairly compare it to two Fermi cards in SLI.

However there is absolutely no reason why Dark Void should have not been tested on a 5870 too otherwise the second review page is largely pointless (comparing it to old hardware when people that wanted high performance already switched to 5870), though again looking at reviews it seems to be a game that is also biased in design for nVidia cards like far cry 2, so probably not a good idea to trust nvidias tests at all til independent ones are carried out on games that they haven't anti-competitively bribed developers to exclude AMD from (“The Way It's Meant To Be Played” scheme).

I don't care about brands, just what's best within reason (I was going to buy gtx285 before 5870 appeared). Far Cry 2 and Dark Void are on all accounts crap games (PC Gamer magazine did great reviews as well as zero punctuation, dark void is this month in PCG and apparently the flying is a gimmick and you only get to use it at the very start and very end of the game, for the rest it's a substandard corridor shooter), I don't care how well they run as an nvidia-sponsored benchmark program. ;)

I wonder how much “tweaking” was done for that presentation… It's rather sad, but one can never believe either companies claims on performance.

Perfectionist
Thing is the 5970 is really a 5870x2 (AMD just changed the branding scheme), it's two cores (which gives wonky performance on games not built to deal with multiple GPUs like a lot of games that aren't brandspanking new - which is why I went for 5870 myself ), so you could only really fairly compare it to two Fermi cards in SLI.

However there is absolutely no reason why Dark Void should have not been tested on a 5870 too otherwise the second review page is largely pointless (comparing it to old hardware when people that wanted high performance already switched to 5870), though again looking at reviews it seems to be a game that is also biased in design for nVidia cards like far cry 2, so probably not a good idea to trust nvidias tests at all til independent ones are carried out on games that they haven't anti-competitively bribed developers to exclude AMD from (“The Way It's Meant To Be Played” scheme).

I don't care about brands, just what's best within reason. Far Cry 2 and Dark Void are on all accounts crap games (PC Gamer magazine did great reviews), I don't care how well they run as an nvidia-sponsored benchmark ;)

Yep but the talk is that the g100 should go up against the 5970. They both use 8-pin and 6-pin connectors putting g100 above 225w - some claims of 280w are being made.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/-rumour-dual-gpu-gf100-in-april-possible-/8314.html

This g100 is a lot closer to a 5970 than it is to a 5870, and that is also what it has to beat.

Also the 5970 is not 2x 5870 is it? Its a mixture of 5850 and 5870 joined IIRC (please correct me if im wrong). The card nvidia used is probably going to be their range toping card, it has a double die size of the ati equivilant along with a much more expensive design process and other hardware that costs a bomb in comparison! That means in price wise, this is probably the equivilant to a 5970.

I could be wrong and hope i am as competition would be great, however this is how i see it!.

So just how fast is NVIDIA's Fermi graphics card? We find out.

Showing Fermi off

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