NVIDIA launched its first Fermi-based video cards during the previous weekend and for those of you that has read our review, you will know that GeForce Fermi 100 or the GF100 currently is the fastest single-GPU solution on the market. But you will also know that when taking pricing, power consumption and effectively into consideration, the picture is quite different. Still NVIDIA works hard on its first update of the Fermi and today information regarding the manufacturers middle segment cards has started to appear, a core called the GF104 it is expected to be launched during this summer.
NVIDIA GF104 will be based on the same architecture as GF100 and the GeForce GTX 400 series but it will only be equipped with 256 CUDA cores, half of what’s available on the GF100. The number of texture units will still be 64 but the number of ROP’s has been decreased to 32.
Everything will be connected through a 256 bit wide GDDR5 memory bus and NVIDIA is today said to be planning three models in a series called the GeForce GTS 400. The fastest will be the GeForce GTS 450 with a 725MHz GPU frequency coupled with memory clocked to 3600MHz, whereas its smaller siblings, the GeForce GTS 440 and 430, are showing a lot more modest specifications. Still the purpose of this range of cards is to compete with Radeon HD5830 for the faster models and Radeon HD5770 for its slower siblings.
|
GeForce GTS 430 |
GeForce GTS 440 |
GeForce GTS 450 |
| GPU |
nVidia GF104, 40nm |
| Technology |
DirectX 11, 2 Raster Engines, 192 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs, 24 ROPs, 192 Bit DDR Interface (with GDDR5) |
DirectX 11, 2 Raster Engines, 256 CUDA cores, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 256 Bit DDR Interface (with GDDR5) |
DirectX 11, 2 Raster Engines, 256 CUDA cores, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 256 Bit DDR Interface (with GDDR5) |
| Clock frequencies |
~ 20% less than GeForce GTS 450 |
~ 20% less than GeForce GTS 450 |
Up to 725/1500/1800 MHz |
|
Estimated performance
|
~ Radeon HD 5770 |
Better than Radeon HD 5770 |
Better than Radeon HD 5830 |
| Estimated price |
130-150 Euro |
160-180 Euro |
200-230 Euro |
*Table and information courtesy of 3DCenter.org
We know that NVIDIA’s working with implementing the Fermi architecture in several other price segments as well, but still it’s a bit early to say if the GF104 will look like this during its launch in the summer. But then again, followed by GF106 and GF108 for the budget and lower entry level market respectively, this might very well be the start of NVIDIA’s deploying of the Fermi core across all price segments.
Source: 3DCenter.org
