Is ATI Planning a Counter Punch to Fermi?
Is ATI Planning a Counter Punch to Fermi?
Posted 04/02/2010 at 6:43am
| by Paul Lilly
24
Comments
Print
Now that Fermi has launched (on paper, anyway) and taken the single-GPU performance crown, is it ATI's turn to return fire with a new GPU of its own? Probably not, at least not right away.
Fudzilla claims to have spoken with "people close to ATI" and the general feeling is that ATI doesn't feel real threatened by Fermi. One reason for this is that Fermi hasn't actually shipped yet, though it will later this month. But the lack of a next-gen dual-GPU part from Nvidia also has ATI feeling comfortable with its Radeon HD 5970, still the fastest videocard on the planet.
Not a whole lot was said, at least from what Fudzilla is reporting, but you have to believe that power consumption and pricing both are playing roles in ATI's confidence. Nvidia's flagship GTX 480, while mostly faster than ATI's HD 5870, also costs more and puts a bigger strain on your power supply.
What would you do if you made the decisions for ATI? Sound off in the comments section below!
Image Credit: Flickr cheetah100
More like this
24
Comments
Comments are closed on this article
imagonex
April 03, 2010 at 10:18pm
Fudzilla sounds like they should be up for the Mediocrity of the Month Award. Fudzilla is to PC hardware news what TMZ is to news reporting.
PC hardware changes every six to 12 months! Everyone knows that. By end of 2010 the GTX485 will most likely come out. ATI by the end of 2010 will do the same. Most likely they'll announce the HD6870 or whatever.
At this point, for me, personally, the hardware cycles come so often, that I'm at the point I don't really care anymore. I know they'll ship something stronger, faster, cooler in 6 months from now.
Yawn.
white_sereph
April 03, 2010 at 7:24pm
It is really a matter of speculation? There are so many knowns presented as "inside info without breaking NDA's" and such. Let's break down the most obvious repeating sentiment:
ATI and nVidia are working on something.
Big surprise. They always are. That is their industry.
Historically this GTX 4xx (Fermi) stinks of GeForce 5xxx series issues. Back when nVidia released the GeForce 4, ATI destroyed them by an enormous margin for a very long time with the Radeon 9xxx series. Finally, the GeForce 5xxx was to be the answer, but (and here is where it starts sounding like Fermi) it was a power-hog, ran rediculously hot (creating the need for the worlds first dual-slot video card with that enormous cooler), and in the end still resorted to driver implemented benchmarking cheats in order to look as though it was even competitive to the 9xxx series.
Now Fermi, on the heels of a lengthy ATI beatdown in the benchmarks during both the 4xxx and 5xxx series cards, emerges setting new records (again) for power consumption, heat dissipation, and, well, no word yet on driver cheats - let's hope it doesn't get that desperate for nVidia again this time around.
I know nVidia has had their stretches in the lead as well (during the GeForce 7xxx, 8xxx, and 9xxx series). Things were looking kinda bad for ATI for a while. This industry, I expect, will always ebb and flow back and forth.
I'm no fanboy - I just appreciate power, efficiency, and a fair price. Right now that makes me side with ATI.
ATI's current line up is basically as fast as Fermi, costs less, and won't set my PC on fire.
avenger48
April 03, 2010 at 9:04pm
The spam filter wouldn't let me add this to my other post. I do agree that they are obviously working on new parts. Ati still has no 5890 and nvidia still has no fermi with 512sp.
avenger48
April 03, 2010 at 9:02pm
The only cards ati was having a beatdown with were the 5850, 5870, and 5970. Now the 470 beats the 5850, the 480 beats the 5870 (or at least ties it), and the only beatdown is coming from the $700 (!) 5970. The 4000 series never had a beatdown, except for the 4870 X2 which was ALSO the most expensive card on the market, ALSO consumed almost 300W, and ALSO ran hotter than your average skillet. It was eventually quelled by the 295 and ati's 280-killer 4890 merely fizzled at the feet of the stepdown GTX 275.
The only card which is currently having a beatdown is the 5970, which can only run in 2-way CfX, and drains 300W while acting like a space-heater.
I realized this post made me sound like a nvidia fanboy, and maybe I am, but PLEASE don't try to spout nonsense and act like you're an unbiased party. No flame intended.
white_sereph
April 03, 2010 at 10:26pm
I don't work for AMD or nVidia, I've bought from both companies in the past (depending on who was better at the moment) an pointed out when each company commanded leads - in what way do you discern my bias?
iDaeth
April 03, 2010 at 5:39pm
I think ATI should make some drivers for their cards to make Nvidia's 3d vision kit work, just to kick em when they're down. I know they're working their own version of 3d, but in the meantime, please ATI?
Keith E. Whisman
April 02, 2010 at 2:35pm
So in the pic above what company is the girl? Ati? I would love to see ATI as a man in a picture slapping a female dog. I imagine that AMD has a new video processor under it's sleeve and I believe they should release it within the next six months to ensure that Nvidia doesn't catch up. I understand ATI wants to make as much money it can off it's current product but they need to get one more generation past Nvidia as quickly as it can for the long term.
JohnP
April 02, 2010 at 2:35pm
This article is just speculation. Both ATI and NVidia are hard at work on new products. No use to have large development teams just sitting around.
ATI has the advantage though, they still can boost their chip size to add stuff while NVidia is not even able to ship the full chip yet due to yield issues.
NVidia is going to need a completely new architecture to get yield and power issues down.
Keith E. Whisman
April 02, 2010 at 2:38pm
Historically die shrinks have proven to cure problems with heat and power draw. I believe that is all that is keeping Fermi from being shipped with everything turned on.
CentiZen
April 02, 2010 at 12:12pm
I don't know who fudzilla was talking too, but judging by fud's track record, probobly not anyone. They are the national inquirer of tech news.
On the other hand, my uncle does work for ATI (well, in AMD at least, but they are both owned by the same so he hears the news). He told me what he could, as he obviously didn't want to break his NDA, but he said that they are working on things up in the lab. That's all he could say. But he told me if I wanted the fastest single GPU card, to wait.
SHEILA: AMD X4 965 3.2GHZ ; 4 GB G.SKILL GAMING RAM ; RADEON HD 5770 1GB
filip007
April 02, 2010 at 11:38am
The next GPUs will be more optimized, i don't think that 4 billion trans. and 28nm tech won't do any better than todays one, the big question is if they can make GPUs that small with that much of trans and what will be the next PSU requirement probably higher so just stop buying bigger LCD that's the problem and today games are just dumb as the user is so what's the point.
DOOMHAMMA
April 02, 2010 at 9:03am
I've decided to side with ATI for a variety of reasons:
ATI wins the price performance crown, again.
ATI doesn't impose standards that only work with their hardware.
ATI, in my mind, is the innovator, while Nvidia just plays keep up. Eyefinity? Check. Energy Efficient energy use? Check. Double win!
Honestly, TWIMTBP is something that incredibly ticks me off. That with PhysX locking out non-Nvidia products. Nvidia is turning into a real turd.
Then Nvidia essentially forces gamers to upgrade their PSU's in order to use the GeForce 480. Lame.
Also, just want it to be known. I'm not a fanboy, I just enjoy voting with my money, and picking the best bang-for-your-buck GPU's. I have owned both ATI and Nvidia cards, and enjoyed all of my choices.
Digital-Storm
April 02, 2010 at 10:24am
And Nvidia hasn't come up with anything good? SLI? Cuda? Power Gating on the GPU to turn off parts that arent in use. And I also saw a while back about the GPU being able to be completely turned off when its not in use, to the point where you could pull it out, and put it back in while the system is on.
Ashton2091
April 02, 2010 at 10:42am
True enough. nVidia has come up with some good technologies. Oh, and their drivers are (mostly) solid. But still, ATI packs a good punch when it comes to price vs performance and power. I think they have both been great innovators but RIGHT NOW, ATI has a special place in my heart. I mean, I want great performance, but not at the price of nvidia. I could build an entire new rig at the price of nvidia's cards. Seriously. Not that I couldn't with ATI, but lets face it..nvidia cards are way overpriced. I'm not a fan boy. I actually like both sides, but when it comes to my pockets and my electric bill...it seems that ATI cares more. LOL, so you're both right.
Ashton2091
April 02, 2010 at 10:43am
I take that back about the drivers. I can't really speak much on them because I don't currently own an nvidia card anymore. Oh, but their drivers used to be solid. Not sure what's going on now. Haven't owned an nvidia card since my 8500 GPU a few years ago.
SEALBoy
April 02, 2010 at 1:15pm
nVidia may have solid drivers now, but there was a time (around Vista release) that nVidia's drivers were shockingly bad. The majority of Windows Vista crashes were the result of bad nVidia drivers, if I remember correctly.
Ashton2091
April 02, 2010 at 2:31pm
i remember that time period. yeah, that was a bad time for nvidia. lol, and nvidia owners. it was left field. i used nvidia cards from the Geforce 2, 5500, and all the in betweens up to the 8500. then came vista drivers. yeah...glad i switched. i'm not a fanboy, so if nvidia can come up with a descent card that doesn't make me go broke and performs well (all of their chips do), i'll consider them an option. but until then...it's ati.
JohnP
April 02, 2010 at 2:30pm
MS never bothered to give other companies early access to Vista, which hurt the launch tremendously. They learned their lesson with Win7 though and had a terrific launch.
Thursday
April 02, 2010 at 8:55pm
Everybody had the same access to the DX10/Vista kernel prior to release. Vista was also in beta for a year prior to RTM. However, nVidia accounted for almost 30% of all driver crashes. ATI accounted for 9%. And before somebody brings up market share as a reason for the disparity, remember that Intel has more VGA chips "in the field" than everybody else combined. Intel accounted for about 9% of crashes...and that's including the initial buggy Intel ProSet and Intel 4965AGN drivers.
nVidia also took more than twice as long to get their drivers up to snuff when compared with ATI. I remember this clearly because when I updated to Vista my ATI based machine was running perfectly, while I had to revert to XP for over a year while waiting to update my nVidia based gaming rig. Now they both run 7 perfectly and it truly seems nVida has cleaned up their driver department.
Who knows, maybe all the issues they were having with 400 yields gave the software engineers enough time to perfect their drivers this time :)
Ashton2091
April 02, 2010 at 2:32pm
love windows 7. even the beta was pretty solid. yeah, i can see that. that's why i said it was kind of left field. you're right JohnP
alex911
April 02, 2010 at 8:41am
If you can get the yield of the 5870 up high enough then drop the price of the 5850 to the $225 area and the 5870 to the $300 area you could go after nvidia and basically own the whole market. Nvidia doesn't have a midrange line up at all. They only have rebadged 8800gt chips still.
Once that is clean, make a 5890 refresh and up the clocks 10% on the 5870 and sell that for $350-370 and you'd have a card on par with the gtx480 for $130 less. Nvidia drops the price and loses money per a card or just eats the bad sales numbers?
I really am waiting for a die shrink in fall but judging by tsmc we wont see silicon on the 28nm till q2 2011 at the earliest, sob.
UberLaff
April 02, 2010 at 8:36am
obviously ATI is working on something. Following ATI's recent trend though, I don't think they are all that interested in the $500 GPU market. I think they will wait and see what nVidia is making in the $199 market and strike there if necessary.
jihnn
April 02, 2010 at 8:20am
i have had more nvidia cards than ati curently its a evga 260 core 216 oc ftw card. i play wow and still have driver problems. the last 3 nvidia cards have all been heat sinks and power hungry.
seems like the ati i have owned all worked, ran cool or at least weren't blast furnaces and didn't take a power generator to run.
still have an old ati 9800 pro in an old computer which seems to work very well for its age and type, can't say that about any of the nvidia i have owned
new build will roll with ati most definatly
not gonna pay more for what i consider an inferior part..speed is great, but i'm after the whole package
Connect with MaximumPC
Featured Content
The gang discusses the GTX 690, Trinity, Ivy Bridge, Amazon, big-box stores, MMOs,...
This month's issue
Feature
Build a PC On Any Budget
Feature
Cloud Services Showdown
How-To
Encrypt Your External Drive
Build It
Upgrade an X58 Rig
Most Commented Articles
Latest Max PC Tweets
- maximumpc: Original RickRoll Video Returns to YouTube After 24-Hour Copyright Hiatus http://t.co/MaH9Sxyy18 hours 14 min ago
- maximumpc: Corsair has decided not to go forward with its $78 million IPO, citing weak equity market conditions http://t.co/A5a4DAzj18 hours 23 min ago
- maximumpc: Want to work at Maximum PC? Our Online Managing Editor, Alex, is moving away, so we need a new one. http://t.co/9Z7JCh0E2 days 16 hours ago
