NVIDIA’s First DirectX 11 capable GPUs coming to market

[z3r010]

NVIDIA’s First DirectX 11 capable GPUs coming to market

NVIDIA today announced they are bringing the first 2 GPUs of their GeForce GTX 400 Series product line which support DirectX 11 to market: the GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470. The GTX 480 will be available at retail for an estimated price of $499 USD and the GTX 470 will be available at retail for an estimated price of $349 USD.

 

NVIDIA wanted to have the first of their DirectX 11 capable GPUs available around the same time Windows 7 hit the market in October but needed more time to further “bake” the architecture. They have put a lot of investment in the new architecture present in these new GPUs. And if NVIDIA were bakers, and these GPUs were cupcakes – these new GPUs we’re talking about today would be some very delicious cupcakes.

Previously known simply by the codename “GF100”, the GTX 480 and GTX 470 are the first of NVIDIA’s next-generation GeForce GPUs and based on NVIDIA’s new Fermi architecture. The new features and capabilities of the GTX 480 and GTX 470 are exposed especially in Windows 7 where NVIDIA has taken advantage of the enhancements Windows 7 offers users today – such as DirectX 11. With DirectX 11, the GTX 480 and GTX 470 can offer some impressive effects through scalable hardware tessellation. Tessellation offers the ability to create rich detail in through either games or software applications with geometric realism – it’s better at doing geometric processing. A realistic render of water with one of these GPUs renders up to 1.6 billion triangles a second! See this post from NVIDIA on some impressive DirectX 11 demos. Through SLI, two GTX 480s together offer up a 90% performance increase in scaling if you want even more powerful graphics for your PC. With the GTX 480 and GTX 470, NVIDIA’s goal was to provide cinema quality visuals and to enable game developers and software developers the ability to create cinema quality visuals for their products.

The GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs bring to market NVIDIA’s new 3D Vision Surround Technology. With 3D Vision Surround, you can do full HD gaming in 3D across 3 HD monitors at 5760x1080 resolution! 3D Vision Surround also supports gaming across non-3D capable displays as well. To enable 3D Vision Surround, 2 GTX 400 Series GPUs with SLI and 3D Vision capable displays and glasses are required. For more on 3D Vision Surround, I recommend reading this blog post from NVIDIA’s Bryan Del Rizzo.

NVIDIA will be providing software with each that showcases the capabilities of the GTX 480 and GTX 470. NVIDIA’s Design Garage application lets you create and design a car that utilizes things like DirectX 11 and real-time “ray tracing” (the tracing of light for shapes and shadows), one of the first consumer GPUs to offer such a feature.



I was unable to get my hands on one of these new GPUs at the writing of this blog post. However you can expect another post to come once I do!

More...

 

[Zen00]

According to the reviews, the heat/power issues were not rumors. They are more powerful cards, but you have to have a heavy system to handle them. The GTX480 was running at 95C while gaming in Ryan's review. PC Perspective - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 Review - GF100 and Fermi tackle gaming

 

[Everlong]

Hexus showed load temps at 93C too, which is 8C hotter than what the GTX285 was at.

They also mentioned at PAX tonight that both the 480 and 470 will be shipped with that Physx rocket game and the raytracing app, which will both be fun to play with.

 

[Crispy]

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 400 Cards Finally Out

After months and months of delays and secrecy, NVIDIA's highly anticipated GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics adapters have finally seen the light of day, with the Santa Clara-based GPU maker having made the formal announcement at PAX 2010. They are made on the 40nm GF100 graphics processing unit, designed on the Fermi architecture, and, according to NVIDIA, are the most powerful single-GPU cards in existence.

Full read here: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 400 Cards Finally Out - DirectX 11 adapters see their official introduction - Softpedia

 

[CarlTR6]

Now to see how well they actually perform.

 

[Lebon14]

Now to see how well they actually perform.

Benchmark are out already. Late to the party, eh?
GeForce GTX 470 & 480 review

 

[CarlTR6]

No, how well they perform in actual use on user's pc's. I don't put a whole lot of stock in benchmarking.

 

[Everlong]

When I next get paid on 16th April, I'll let you know how a 470 performs

 

[Zen00]

Apparently the 5970's scale better than the 480's.

PC Perspective - Benchmarks with 3-Way SLI on the new GTX 480, we salivate

 

[CarlTR6]

When I next get paid on 16th April, I'll let you know how a 470 performs

Please do let me know - and I hope performs very well.

 

[cobija]

I thought GTX 300 were next. rawr.

 

[cloud8521]

I thought GTX 300 were next. rawr.

they already are out, but are OEM only

 

[Zen00]

The 300's are a rebranded 200.