fermi posts

Technically Nvidia isn't suppose to launch their next-gen graphics card until March 26 at PAX East but in the meantime the company keeps teasing us with some more info about the capabilities for their their GeForce GTX 480 and 470 products. The company put up a new YouTube video that shows off the product's DirectX 11 features, such as tessellation.

At the end of the video they also show off Nvidia's answer to ATI's Eyefinity multi-monitor tech. It's called 3D Vision Surround and lets players hook up three 1980p 3D supported monitors with the appropriate GeForce graphics card and see the view in full 3D with Nvidia's 3D Vision glasses. Yes, it's really cool but yes it's also really expensive to buy all the things needed for it to work. Our sister site Engadget has posted up a video that shows more 3D Vision Surround in action which you can check out after the jump:

On Monday Nvidia announced they would be holding a major launch event for their next-generation graphics chip at PAX East in Boston in late March. But was this just a preview event or an actual launch for their long awaited first DirectX 11 product (known as "Fermi" and also as GF100)? Now Nvidia's Twitter page has the answer.

The page's latest message states, "Apologies for the confusion around our most recent GF100 update. To clarify, launch date for GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 is March 26, 2010." Those two product numbers were previously revealed to be the first GeForce cards that would use the GF100 chip. All in all it looks like Nvidia is going all out to make their launch event at PAX East a huge deal and perhaps gain back some, if not all, of their lead they lost from AMD, who took the performance and feature lead with their first DirectX 11 graphics cards last October.

Nvidia's big announcement, teased on their Twitter page a few days ago, isn't quite what we had expected but it's still pretty cool. The PC graphics chip maker will launch their next-gen graphics product at the inaugural PAX East event in Boston on March 26-28.

In addition to a exhibit booth at the show where the new product will be demoed (and perhaps even sold) Nvidia will host a special theater event on the first day of the show and they promise that if you miss it, "you'll likely be spending the next few months kicking yourself!" Nvidia will also sponsor PAX East's BYOC and LAN rooms and will also raffle off a PC that will have dual GeForce GTX 480 graphic cards. Yep, that's the name of one of the cards that will use Nvidia's next-gen graphics chip. Finally Nvidia is sponsoring a Battlefield Bad Company 2 online tournament that will give its winner a trip to PAX East for a chance to win $10,000.

Hardcore PC hardware junkies are dying to learn more about what Nvidia plans for its next-generation graphics product. However the company has been keeping details on their launch plans close to the vest. A couple of weeks ago it revealed some technical details on the graphics chip which is known both as Fermi and GF100.

Now Nvidia's Twitter web page has announced that the first official graphics chips that will be based on the GF100 will be named the GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470. Once again that's all we know but Nvidia is expected to reveal the big details (launch date, clock speed, and cost) for their new products sometime in early March.

AMD is currently leading the next-gen PC graphics card race with its recent ATI Radeon products that support DirectX 11. However Nvidia has been hinting that their own entry in the race, known both as Fermi and the GF100, will also be a powerful chip. Today an embargo was lifted and a number of hardware based web sites got to reveal info they learned about the upcoming chip from Nvidia.

Unfortunately, Nvidia is still keeping some major details of the upcoming graphics chips secret including a launch date, clock speed, and the big one: cost. However it has revealed some technical details on the chip itself which suggests it will be twice as powerful as Nvidia's current champion, the GT200. Firing Squad reports that Nvidia claims the chip will run Far Cry 2 at 84.3 frames per second with 1920x1200 resolution with 4xAA/16xAF. Dark Void ran at 76.82 frames per second at the same settings. You can see a demo of in-engine graphics running on the chip above.

Nvidia has been letting AMD take the lead in the first DirectX11 graphics chip race, but it looks like a rival chip is almost ready to go. Legit Reviews reports that during CES, Nvidia is giving a sneak peak of its next-gen chip, known as the GeForce GF100 or by its previous code name Fermi.

The demo was shown running the Unigine DirectX 11 benchmark but official performance numbers were not being given out by Nvidia (although the article has some speculations we won't repeat here). The article also says that "several sources" have indicated an early March 2010 launch date for the GeForce GF100.

Remember when an Nvidia rep called ATI's current lead in DirectX11-supported graphics chips "insignificant"? Well, that exec may have to eat his words. According to the sometimes unreliable site DigiTimes, Nvidia's next-gen graphics card, code named Fermi, won't be ready for a release until March 2010.

If true that means AMD's current ATI-branded DirectX11 graphics products could have as much as a five month lead before Nvidia launches their first chip that supports DirectX11 features. Indeed, the same article claims AMD will launch more new mainstream ATI cards in late January or February. Any way you slice it, it's looking more likely that Nvidia has a lot of catching up to do.

At the moment if you want to see and play Dirt 2 with all the DirectX11 effects turned on, you need a graphics card from AMD's ATI division. The company has had graphics card with DirectX11 support for a couple of months now. Meanwhile its main rival Nvidia has been on the sidelines with only hints about a next-generation graphics card, code named Fermi, being released.

However, Nvidia believes AMD's current lead is not all that important. Computerworld reports that Michael Hara, Nvidia's senior vice president of investor relations and communications, stated at a recent conference, "This 60-day lag between these events of when our competition has DX11 and when we're coming to market will absolutely seem insignificant in the big picture." Fermi is currently expected to debut sometime in the first quarter of 2010, but there's currently no specific release date nor hardware specs for the product.

PC graphics chip maker Nvida held a big press event this week to introduce folks to what you see above. That is their all new GPU architecture that they have code-named "Fermi". With 512 CUDA cores inside, the technology behind the Fermi architecture will be the basis for the next generation of GeForce-based graphics cards.

Which is all well and good but where are those cards? As we reported recently rival AMD has begun shipping their own next-gen cards which are the first to have true DirectX11 support. HardOCP posts up a quote from Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang who states, " Nobody likes when the competition has a product. I don't like keeping our enthusiast waiting on our next generation processors. I would rather be shipping today, but we will ship when the product is ready to ship." However speculation on many hardware web sites state we may have to wait until sometime in the first quarter of 2010 before Nvidia has an actual shipping card with the Fermi technology. That gives AMD a pretty big head start.