Fermi is the name of NVIDIA’s coming DirectX 11 graphics circuit architecture and the launch is slated for Q1 2010. The name of the retail version of Fermi if GF100 and this card have been shown on pictures on several occasions, but no performance numbers have been shared. This changed though as the media embargo lifted and additional details on the Fermi architecture and its game performance was revealed.
Even prior to the media embargo lifted a couple of videos from a closed presentation at CES in Las Vegas leaked onto YouTube. The movies show a benchmark in Far Cry 2 where GF100 hits 84 fps in 1920×1200 pixel resolution with 4xAA and Ultra High settings. The reference cards achieves 50 fps in the same test.
The reference card is most likely AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5870, which is currently the fastest single-GPU graphics card. Fermi and GF100 looks promising, but this is just one test, against a card that launched last fall.
When NVIDIA gets GF100 out on the market AMD will be well prepared. Except from a video with above mentioned benchmarks there are also two videos with technology demonstrations published by an anonymous source at YouTube.
