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NVIDIA Launches GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448-Core GPU

MojoKid writes "NVIDIA has just launched the GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 448 cores. Though perhaps a bit unimaginative in terms of branding, the new GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 448 cores is outfitted with the same GF110 GPU powering high-end GeForce GTX 570 and GTX 580 cards, but with a couple of its streaming multiprocessors fused off. The card has 448 CUDA cores arranged in 14 SMs, with 56 texture units and 40 ROPs. Reference specifications call for a 732MHz core clock with 1464MHz CUDA cores. 1.2GB of GDDR5 memory is linked to the GPU via a 320-bit bus and the memory is clocked at an effective 3800MHz data rate. Performance-wise, the new GPU proved to be about 10 to 15 percent faster than the original GeForce GTX 560 Ti and a few percentage points slower than the GeForce GTX 570."

127 comments

  1. Do they accept trade-ins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I bought a 560 Ti just a month ago and now this? FFFFFFfffffffffff...

    1. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by ebombme · · Score: 5, Informative

      If it is EVGA brand I believe they allow a trade in program within a certain amount of time for situations just like this. They have a trade in program where you send in your old card and pay the difference and they will send you the updated card of choice.

    2. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In all probability, the applications you use don't achieve the theoretical peak performance of the hardware, and there's probably some dynamic clock-speed adjustment to manage core temperatures.

    3. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by spacepimp · · Score: 2

      If it is EVGA brand I believe they allow a trade in program within a certain amount of time for situations just like this. They have a trade in program where you send in your old card and pay the difference and they will send you the updated card of choice.

      I just bought the 560 TI 2GB EVGA. Your post just made my day.

    4. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by flimflammer · · Score: 4, Funny

      Probably not but it doesn't hurt when you're thinking of future-proofing your investment in high end graphics card technology. Especially considering how fast it moves.

    5. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      future-proofing your investment in high end graphics card technology

      Funniest post of the day.

    6. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      I have an even better question...does someone have a translator please? Like what the difference between a Stream processor and a core is? Because my old HD4850 has 800 Stream processors but i have NO clue as to how to translate that to cores.

      Frankly the whole CPU and GPU business is starting to give me a bit of a headache. Remember when all you needed to know was MHz? Now there is in order and out of order, there are modules and full cores and hyperthreading and its all getting to the point one really needs a lookup table handy so one can translate this into numbers we can actually compare. While i doubt I'll be needing anything of this price range for me or my boys (they too are on HD4850s and quite happy as am I) I do still have a few gamer customers as well as some engineering and graphics guys and being able to translate to English would be off the good.

      BTW sorry to go a little OT but does anyone know how well Nvidia cards work with SolidWorks? I have an older engineer that uses the program (he gets it from the college he volunteers for, Jesus is that program high!) and the HD4650 I sold him seems to be doing okay with it but they keep having the 210s on sale and I wonder if anyone has run the program on one of those. Just adding the HD4650 to his main PC gave it a hell of a speed boost, with no more graphic hangs when he rotates large models, but I'd hate to tell the guy to buy a 210 if it turns out Nvidia cards aren't so good with it. all the website says is use the more expensive CAD cards but frankly he doesn't need FirePro or Quatro levels of precision, he just needs the models to render quick and clean. He is a hell of a nice guy (and a former NASA engineer, getting to hold some of the actual shuttle plans? Sweeet!) and I'd really like to steer him right.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    7. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Frankly the whole CPU and GPU business is starting to give me a bit of a headache.

      One of the reason I switched to a Mac. Tired of the Microsoft bullshit and tired of the upgrade treadmill bullshit. Now all I need to decide is if I want something portable or not, built-in display or not. Then I have two or three models to chose from. Once you apply your budget on your choices you might not even have a choice to make since you can only afford the low-end model. It's that easy!

    8. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by mikael · · Score: 1

      I believe a stream processor is a processor dedicated to processing pipelines of data. More optimized for sequential memory access and arithmetic/trigonometric calculations than for branching and conditional instructions.

      A core is just the basic CPU with or without an FPU, but will have support for multiple threads (shared code/data space but separate execution points). Multiple cores will have specially adapted cache memory to allow data sharing.

      --
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    9. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by mjwx · · Score: 1

      I bought a 560 Ti just a month ago and now this? FFFFFFfffffffffff...

      I knew NVidia were doing this six weeks ago. So I didn't buy a 560 Ti in the lead up to BF3. But look on the bright side AC, you still own a pretty good graphics card. I'm still on my 3yr old GF 285.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    10. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      EVGA rules. They might be a bit pricier, but their customer service and replacement quality is really good. Ever since they replaced a card that died on me with a newer model card a couple years ago, for free, I've been telling everyone I know to buy from them.

    11. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by bronney · · Score: 1

      got a gigabyte 560 ti oc last month for bf3, totally blew the 285 away. I know you feeling man. Having a 285 was awesome but man, the 560ti runs cool and oc very well. Give it a try and smile :)

    12. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by mjwx · · Score: 1

      got a gigabyte 560 ti oc last month for bf3, totally blew the 285 away. I know you feeling man. Having a 285 was awesome but man, the 560ti runs cool and oc very well. Give it a try and smile :)

      Yeah, it's summer here so a cooler card would be great.

      But I just bought a 1920x1200 monitor, so that old 285 is going to show it's age real soon.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    13. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it is EVGA brand I believe they allow a trade in program within a certain amount of time for situations just like this. They have a trade in program where you send in your old card and pay the difference and they will send you the updated card of choice.

      I just bought the 560 TI 2GB EVGA. Your post just made my day.

      Yeah, the trade in program requires a lot of legwork up front (I got hosed on it myself when the 580 series came out 96 days after I dropped a boatload on a pair of 480GTX cards) ... I missed by 6 days.

      You had to have registered your card with them within 30 days of your purchase
      You must send your invoice in to them (hope you have it)

      The URL you're looking for is this:

      http://www.evga.com/support/stepup/

    14. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by bronney · · Score: 1

      Ah I was always talking about 1920x1080. I run 2x 24" LG here doing those res. When I had the 285 I was running 2x 20" at 1680x1050. Before that it was 2x 9800gt. SLI is a lie and it rhymes!

      But yeah, get one. In fact get the old one and volt it 1.1V 900/1800 and leave the mem alone. Completely solid and made my BF3, all previous gen games so smooth. Skyrim lags a bit outdoor on high but perfectly playable. But DX11 makes it so beautiful.

      When I got the 560 Ti, I had 580 money in my pocket ready to blow but they ran out of stock and I needed a card that night. He looked at me like a little addict. You know, work and stuff nowadays. No time to buy cards and fiddle with cable management anymore. The 560Ti is actually shorter than the 285 by quite a lot and on full load oc I get 62C on a CM690 case. So awesome. I don't even hear the fans.

    15. Re:Do they accept trade-ins? by noodler · · Score: 1

      "I bought a 560 Ti just a month ago and now this? FFFFFFfffffffffff..."

      Don't worry.
      There won't be games that will use you cards full power for at least 2 or 3 years.
      Current game developers produce art that fits the consoles and PC gamers are stuck with sub-par graphics that run great on 2 year old hardware.

  2. And the name is the same? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They couldn't call it a 561 Ti, or a 560 Pt? Or Au, or Ir, or whatever other element is "better" than Titanium.

    1. Re:And the name is the same? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

      One up would be Vanadium, V. And why not, it has a pretty cool ring to it, as would 560V, don't you think? Sounds like it has a really high voltage. :)

      I mean, you have to leave some room for the future, if you call it the 560pt, you're soon at Gold, Mercury, Thallium and ... well, Lead. And I dunno if Lead is really what you want attached to your graphics card name, it doesn't really sound "fast"...

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:And the name is the same? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's been a while since I've looked at a periodic table, I was just going with a name theme, not so much a location on the chart.

      And just looked at one, and damn, Titanium is element 22? I guess I never paid much attention to it. No surprise there, mind you, not like we used it much in chemistry class.

    3. Re:And the name is the same? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yea, NVIDIA fails eternally at numbering conventions. ATI's numbering might be a little confusing, but it is actually meaningful if you know how to read it, NVIDIAs numbering just seems arbitrary. The problem here though is that it's not actually an "upgraded" 560, it's a downgraded 570, a situation that I don't really think fits in with anyone's numbering convention. That said, they still should have called it a 565 Ti, which would have at least sucked slightly less.

    4. Re:And the name is the same? by Shark · · Score: 1

      I know of some lead objects that move really fast, they come out the business end of a gun ;) We could call it the 560 Bullet when we get to that.

      --
      Mind the frickin' laser...
    5. Re:And the name is the same? by maglor_83 · · Score: 1

      Lead foot.

    6. Re:And the name is the same? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      By that logic, you could call the next version the "brass" version.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    7. Re:And the name is the same? by badkarmadayaccount · · Score: 1

      My AK-47 begs to differ.

      --
      I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
  3. fused off? Really?! by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 1

    "but with a couple of its streaming multiprocessors fused off."

    fused off? Really?!

    I don't know how they would do that, except than rather not connecting them in the blueprints.

    Or are they just "defect" 570 and 580 relabeled.

    1. Re:fused off? Really?! by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Informative

      They use lasers to cut the traces on the processor and firmware to disable what they can't cut. The chips are designed with this ability so they can bin and disable to differentiate models and use parts with defects. All the different model numbers are just binned parts with the bad sections disabled.

    2. Re:fused off? Really?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I did not RTFA, I did read some other storys on the new cards that said there a limited run of cards based on 580 cards that have defective cores which are disabled.

    3. Re:fused off? Really?! by mprinkey · · Score: 4, Informative

      Probably referring to efuses that can be burned out on the die. These are common and allow CPU/GPUs to have unit-specific information (like serial numbers, crypto keys, etc) coded into otherwise identical parts from the fab. Video game systems like the 360 use them as an anti-hacking measure...disallowing older version of firmware to run on systems that have certain efuses "blown." Likely, there is an efuse for each core or group of cores. Those can be burned out if they are found to be defective or to simply cripple a portion of the part for down-binning. That is a practice at least as old as the Pentium 2.

    4. Re:fused off? Really?! by mr1911 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Or they use fuzes, which leads to the "fuzed off" language. The fuzes are generally only accessible via the IC tester and the pads are not bonded out when packaged.

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      Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
    5. Re:fused off? Really?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or are they just "defect" 570 and 580 relabeled.

      Basically this.

      The GPU is designed to have various chunks that can be fuzed off if necessary. Manufacturing defects might result in a nearly-perfect chip... So they just fuze-off the bad chunk, and sell the rest of it at a slightly lower price.

    6. Re:fused off? Really?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuze? Is that some type of trademarked name for the concept of a fuse?

    7. Re:fused off? Really?! by mr1911 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Fuze? Is that some type of trademarked name for the concept of a fuse?

      I get my feeling hurt when no one makes snotty comments on my posts. It was troll bait. And it worked.

      Thank you.

      --
      This post comes with a double-your-money-back guarantee!
      Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
    8. Re:fused off? Really?! by jones_supa · · Score: 2

      Well played, sir.

    9. Re:fused off? Really?! by Ellis+D.+Tripp · · Score: 2

      Actually, "fuze" is a proper spelling--assuming you are talking about a timer/impact sensor/radio type device that sets off a bomb or artillery shell. The string or cord that you light with a match to set off a simpler type of explosive or firework is spelled with an "s", however.

      When referring to an electrical overcurrent device, it is also spelled with an "s".

      --
      Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
    10. Re:fused off? Really?! by fuzzywig · · Score: 1

      In UK English they're both spelled fuse, although personally I like the idea of the words for different things being spelt differently, even if they're pronounced the same.

    11. Re:fused off? Really?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, "fuze" is a proper spelling--assuming you are talking about a timer/impact sensor/radio type device that sets off a bomb or artillery shell

      Really? The only noun entry in *my* dictionary for "fuze" is:

      fuse, fuze, n.3 Obs. rare.

      [alteration of fusee, assimilated to prec.]

      = fusee[2] 2. Also fuse-wheel.

      (where fusee[2] is a form of musket)

      The dictionary in question is OED 4.0, which before you comment *does* include US variant words, so I'm assuming that's not the cause of your issue...

      The verb form (meaning "to furnish with a fuse" [in the "device for setting off explosives" sense]) can apparently be spelled with a 'z', however.

  4. Features! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And it makes toast!

  5. Cha-ching BitCoin! by stevegee58 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yay gotta get me one o' those!

    1. Re:Cha-ching BitCoin! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, because NVIDIA cards are so awesome for Bitcoin... /sarcasm

    2. Re:Cha-ching BitCoin! by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Last time I looked, it cost more in hydro to make a bitcoin than it's actual value.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    3. Re:Cha-ching BitCoin! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only thing more useless than BitCoin are the people who think it's actually good for something. Get a job you lazy cunt.

    4. Re:Cha-ching BitCoin! by omglolbah · · Score: 1

      Not if you rent with power included in your bill :p

      (Not that I'd bother with something like that, but I know people who would... nutters)

    5. Re:Cha-ching BitCoin! by stevegee58 · · Score: 1

      What's hydro? Some kind of Canadian thingy?

    6. Re:Cha-ching BitCoin! by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Afaict in canada (and possiblly parts of the US too) it is common to reffer to power from the electricity grid as "hydro". I believe this is because those places historically got most of their electricity from hydroelectric dams.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    7. Re:Cha-ching BitCoin! by fuzzywig · · Score: 1

      It's also slang in some places for hydroponicly grown weed. Which will also cost you loads of electricity, so in some ways it's interchangeable.

    8. Re:Cha-ching BitCoin! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Last time I looked, it cost more in hydro to make a bitcoin than it's actual value.

      If you're doing it with GPUs, yes. There are FPGA-based designs that get about 20x more hashes per watt-second, although they are more expensive to set up.

  6. The summary doesn't make it clear... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The summary doesn't make it clear, but... how many cores does this new video card have?

    1. Re:The summary doesn't make it clear... by ebombme · · Score: 2, Funny

      The summary doesn't make it clear, but... how many cores does this new video card have?

      448 cores

    2. Re:The summary doesn't make it clear... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Whoosh? The AC was making a joke, numbnuts. The 448 core thing is mentioned in the title and the first three sentences of the summary and they were mocking the redundancy of it all.

    3. Re:The summary doesn't make it clear... by jones_supa · · Score: 2

      On the same note, even the "The AC was making a joke, numbnuts." message could in theory have been humor too. :)

    4. Re:The summary doesn't make it clear... by timeOday · · Score: 1

      More importantly, what does "core" really mean in this context?

    5. Re:The summary doesn't make it clear... by Surt · · Score: 1

      Worse, the 448 core thing is actually in the product title, so it isn't even the fault of the summary.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    6. Re:The summary doesn't make it clear... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who effing cares? This one has 448! Way more than eleven.

    7. Re:The summary doesn't make it clear... by bberens · · Score: 1

      I think it has something to do with the Marines.

      --
      Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
    8. Re:The summary doesn't make it clear... by Tarsir · · Score: 2

      It's jokes all the way down!

  7. Marketing. by hollywoodb · · Score: 1

    What is with the branding scheme on these things? I see a summary with lots of letters and numbers and almost no useful information as to what the hell good they all are.

    --
    I may have to share this planet with animals, but I'm doing my damn best to eat every last one of them.
    1. Re:Marketing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Moores Law-style performance, at Moores Law x 5 prices. For Moores Law x 1 prices, see the cheaper models, which are the Moores Law x 0, relative to performance about 5 years back.

    2. Re:Marketing. by E+IS+mC(Square) · · Score: 1

      To give slashdot some credit, I do see few words in between, such as "high-end", "performance" and "faster".

  8. what else to say by xorbe · · Score: 1

    They already implied that these are salvaged 570 parts for a limited holiday production run. If you snag one with a free game you want, not a bad deal. Think carefully if you might go SLI in the future, since they'll be hard to find later.

    1. Re:what else to say by billcopc · · Score: 1

      Not so hard to find, if you check ebay or craigslist.

      The ones that are truly hard to find are the super-high-end dual-GPU cards. And by "hard to find", I mean you usually have to pay some goddamned scalper a ton of money because the retail inventory sold out in mere weeks.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
  9. But Zotec? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Jeez, I don`t like them.

    1. Re:But Zotec? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's because it's easier to get cards from them for "free" for a review site than ones like EVGA. They are a good manufacturer nonetheless.

  10. yes, really by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Informative

    all parts have defects. although sometimes companies don't test throughly enough to find the defects. and usually the defects don't impact normal operation. But when the potential exists for problems, they are forced to either scrap the part or bin it as a lower spec part. Binning improves yield and helps keep prices down on the higher-end parts that do pass tests.

    But here's the problem with binning from a marketing standpoint: "and a few percentage points slower than the GeForce GTX 570". This binned 570 is about $60+ cheaper and will likely slide down to the old 560 Ti (naming is confusing!) prices. So now they've created a cheaper version that is almost the same performance, and run the risk that customers will choose the cheaper product over the more expensive (and I assume higher margin) product.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    1. Re:yes, really by AdrianKemp · · Score: 0

      Oh I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the more expensive card is higher margin...

      My information is all third hand quite possibly bogus, but everything I've heard and learned over the years about graphics cards is that the highest performance cards are low margin. They make them because they have to, more than anything. Since you're already doing all the R&D to make faster cards, you might as well sell some. Meanwhile the high performance cards from three years (or more) ago that now cost three bucks to make are sold for 80% or more profit.

      However, I will freely admit that I don't see how that situation works with intel doing on-chip graphics for a lot of the workstation/mid-range market. So that information could be out of date, or could never have been right in the first place.

    2. Re:yes, really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They have probably been filling the bin since the 570's started rolling out of the factory. I'm sure they waited until they stopped producing regular 560's, and waited until they had a waning supply of regular 560's before announcing this "new" 560. They probably have a person or team of people dedicated to figuring out the perfect time to stop production of one card and when to release another card. This isn't a small inexperienced start-up we're talking about here.

    3. Re:yes, really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not in the case of a binned part. Production goes all the way to the testing phase as if it were a high spec part. All costs up to this point are now sunk. For those that pass testing, they package and sell at a high price point. For those that don't pass, further processes happen, which results in more cost and a lower margin, and the final product is sold at a lower price point, further reducing the margin.

    4. Re:yes, really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The high end cards are almost always high margin per unit sold. They just contribute the least to profits because they don't sell that many. The mid-range or "sweet spot" cards are lower margin per unit, but bring in much more money due to volume sold.

    5. Re:yes, really by billcopc · · Score: 5, Informative

      Strictly speaking, it costs the same to make this new 560 Ti chip as a balls-out 580 chip. They're identical from the fab's perspective. In practice, the 560 Ti is a way to maximize yield by salvaging defective 580s. This is very much like Celerons being Pentiums with the defective parts lasered or fused off.

      If it weren't for this binning, they would have to toss these chips in the garbage. In theory, salvaging imperfect chips allows them to price things more aggressively across the product line, since the sunk cost of manufacturing is averaged out over a much greater volume.

      Here's an example, and note these numbers are purely arbitrary, I know nothing about fab economics:

      Suppose they had to throw 4 out of every 5 GTX chip away, and each one cost $100 to make, then each good GTX would cost $500 on average. The yield is thus 20%.

      If instead, they can sell those 4 bad chips as lower-spec products, each chip costs $100. The yield is now 100%.

      So yes, the higher binned cards theoretically cost the same to build as the cheap ones (assuming similar memory/outputs/PCB). They are thus higher-margin, but also scarce due to manufacturing limitations. The smaller the pitch, the harder it is to produce a perfect chip. This scarcity is what leads to the increased cost. After all, if a 580 cost the same as a 560, everyone would want the faster one and no one would buy the rejects. OEMs partially compensate by bundling a bunch of stuff with the high-end cards, like pack-in games, DP converters and assorted swag - cheap stuff with a higher perceived value. Put it this way: a recent title like Battlefield 3 might sell for $69 in stores, but you can be sure the OEM is paying much less to bundle it with their product. That goes a long way toward buttering up prospective buyers.

      I'm sure NVIDIA would rather be stuck with a handful of "true" 570s than a shit ton of useless defective chips. People will choose the cheaper product, that's the point! If it weren't for binning, these chips would be worth zero dollars, destined for the incinerator. Pricing doesn't really matter that much, this late in the generation. The GTX 6xx (Kepler) is due out in March 2012, and will probably be available only as a high-end part at first. Bleeding-edge nutjobs like myself will be able to blow $1500 on a pair of the latest and greatest, while the sane people buy out the remainder of 5xx inventory at clearance prices, and only then will the new low-end cards be launched. They've got it down to a science.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    6. Re:yes, really by Kjella · · Score: 1

      It's half and half, obviously quite a few are binned because of real defects. This I suspect is also why Intel got so many confusing variations with various virtualization features. But it also happens that the mix isn't what the market demands, for example say they're producing too many fully functional 2600Ks while the market wants 2500Ks. Those who do the math say those customers can't be sold up to the 2600K because they're cash limited and slashing the 2600K prices would reduce total revenue from all the other sales, making it unprofitable. Basically you need more of a limited chip to fill a certain price point. Then it happens that they fuse off fully functional parts to do it, and in the past there have been hacks for some products to unlock these parts. Sometimes it's been ignored because so few do it, sometimes they've resorted to more drastic means to make sure it's physically impossible to activate them again.

      Some people get annoyed when they learn that their hardware has been intentionally crippled like that, but you got what you paid for. That it's actually cheaper to make one product and sell multiple variations is more of an internal matter, just like most of the time the different versions of software is just a few #ifdefs in the code. If you bought Photoshop Express, you got that and it's a bit odd to complain that you only got a crippled Photoshop CS to that price. Also it's not like they instantly must bin everything to a current product, sometimes they save particularly good or bad chips to introduce a low volume better/worse model. It's complicated, but at the end of the generation they like to have sold as many of the chips as possible for the most they could. A thrown away chip is after all a wasted chip you got nothing for.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    7. Re:yes, really by Gavin+Scott · · Score: 1

      It has been suggested that this will be a limited-production chip/card.

      They may have simply accumulated enough fermi chips with a particular defect profile that it made sense to introduce this "new" version which would let them clear out that accumulated inventory.

      G.

    8. Re:yes, really by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Bleeding-edge nutjobs like myself will be able to blow $1500 on a pair of the latest and greatest, while the sane people buy out the remainder of 5xx inventory at clearance prices, and only then will the new low-end cards be launched. They've got it down to a science.

      ...and some of us will get them years later, used, and they'll still run everything we want to run. And on behalf of this group, I want to thank you for spending the big bucks so that they're motivated to keep cranking out newer, bigger, and faster cards, which I enjoy but do not want to pay full price for.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re:yes, really by isorox · · Score: 2

      Suppose they had to throw 4 out of every 5 GTX chip away, and each one cost $100 to make, then each good GTX would cost $500 on average. The yield is thus 20%.

      If instead, they can sell those 4 bad chips as lower-spec products, each chip costs $100. The yield is now 100%.

      But what if the availability of those $100 chips reduces demand for the $500 ones? You could end up selling the 4x$100 ones, but can't shift the $500 one.

      Look at airlines. They fly a plane from London to New York, it has 200 economy seats, 50 business seats.

      Economy sell for $500. Business for $2000.

      After everyone's on board, the cabin crew notice that Business class only has 30 people in (economy has 150 people). They hold an auction to upgrade economy travellers, and remaining 20 seats go for $200 each.

      On the face of if, the cabin crew have just raised an extra $4,000 for their airline.

      however

      On the next flight the business is empty. Economy has 180 people in. The cabin crew do the same auction, and this time seats go for $250 each. Wonderful, they've now made $12,500, at least on the surface.

      The problem is, the people that would normally spend $2,000 on a business ticket will buy economy for $500 and pay for the upgrade ($250)

      The first flight would have made 30*2000 + 150*500 = $135,000
      The upgrades would have bumped that up to $139,000

      However the effect of the upgrades caused the second flight to be economy class only. The flight makes 180*500 + 50*250 upgrades, or $102,500.

      Sometimes it's worth throwing away stock, or seats, to protect your market.

    10. Re:yes, really by billcopc · · Score: 2

      The fundamental difference is that economy and business class seating both arrive at the same destination, at the same time. I couldn't care less about the cheap seat, as long as I get there in one piece. A high-end GPU runs a lot faster than the low-end variants, which for some of us is all that matters.

      I like to run my games at 2560x1440. Why ? Because that's my native resolution on these 27" LCDs. Sure, I could use 1920x1080, or even 1280x720, but I like the higher res. If I can spend a little more on GPUs to push those extra pixels and be wowed by the graphics once in a while, to me it's well worth it.

      Or, to be perfectly frank, if the cheaper GPU can't handle the raw graphics bandwidth to run my racing games at a smooth 60fps 2560x1440 times 3 displays for the surround view, well that GPU is worth exactly $0 to me, because I'm a big baby and I like my big shiny toys. And then I do batty stuff like Cuda-assisted raytracing, which turns GPU clusters into happy faces. Wackos like myself are only interested in the $500+ GPUs, and thumb our noses at anything less than 2 of whatever card is the newest hotness. You could not sell me a $100 GPU if it came with a lifetime supply of maple-roasted bacon. So no, I don't think the low-end cards are hurting high-end sales much at all. The sweet spot is in the $150 to $225 range, where the great majority of gamers lurk, and that segment is quite safely isolated from the high and low extremes.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    11. Re:yes, really by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      It probably depends on how the bean counters decide to account for the cost of the wafer run.

      Afaict what happens is a wafer run is ordered. Between binning and potentially having a mixture of designs on a wafer (masks can be pretty expensive) that wafer run will produce a variety of parts of differing performance.

      So to determine a margin for an individual part you have to divide the cost of the wafer run between the different parts produced, how this division is done will determine how the profit margins for the individual parts look on the books. At one extreme you could apportion an equal part of the wafer run's cost to each part, at the other extreme you could assume that the high end chips are the main product and the lower end parts you get are just nice extras at no added cost.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  11. Impressive specs by ifiwereasculptor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As a whole, it's impressive that we can build such a thing. It's equally impressive that the number one reason for such an advanced piece of technology is so people can virtually shoot the current unfashionable eastern europeans by using more polygons.

    1. Re:Impressive specs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's equally impressive that the number one reason for such an advanced piece of technology is so people can virtually shoot the current unfashionable eastern europeans by using more polygons.

      Speak for yourself. Some of us use these things in HPC projects and couldn't care less about their ability to render 3D shit.

    2. Re:Impressive specs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's equally impressive that the number one reason for such an advanced piece of technology is so people can virtually shoot the current unfashionable eastern europeans by using more polygons.

      I don't get what point you are trying to make. That an entertainment device was created to be sold to an entertainment market instead of curing cancer?

      Video cards render graphics, that's what they are for. How about complaining about how the extremely high-quality (DPI) screens on iPhones were invented for people to play angry birds and make phone calls instead of for use in medical imagers?

    3. Re:Impressive specs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's equally impressive that the number one reason for such an advanced piece of technology is so people can virtually shoot the current unfashionable eastern europeans by using more polygons.

      Speak for yourself. Some of us use these things in HPC projects and couldn't care less about their ability to render 3D shit.

      You might want to care, since the only reason why you have cheap GPUs for your niche HPC projects is because of all those unwashed masses who buy them to render 3D shit.

  12. Expensive much? by RobinEggs · · Score: 3, Informative

    I still can't fathom spending $300 on a video card....and feeling like I got a slammin deal in the process.

    What happened to the red-hot competition of 2008, when I built my first modern system and got a newly released Radeon 4850 for $150? That card was maybe the fourth most powerful you could get; there was no serious improvement to be had without adding more dies, via either X2 cards or crossfire.

    Now today the 560 Ti and the 6950 occupy the same relative position in the hierarchy of GPUs that my 4850 held in 2008...yet rather than being brand new and $150 those two cards are almost a year old and $250-$300.

    Ouch.

    1. Re:Expensive much? by modecx · · Score: 1

      I remember when a megabyte of RAM cost about $150, so I don't feel too bad about what a $150 video card will do these days. That's about where the sweet spot is, unless you really need to push very high resolution displays.

      --
      Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
    2. Re:Expensive much? by mikael · · Score: 2

      My first PC in 1988 was around £2000 or $3000.

      Now, even smartphones and USB sticks are getting GPU's to do texture-mapping at HD resolutions.

      To think that it used to $150,000+ just to get a basic 24-bit color framebuffer and basic graphics API.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    3. Re:Expensive much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're off by a bit there. The 460 is equivalent to what your 4850 was in 2008. 460's can be had nowadays for less than $100 when they go on sale. It's still a very good card for even modern games.

    4. Re:Expensive much? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      > I still can't fathom spending $300 on a video card....and feeling like I got a slammin deal in the process.

      Did you miss the $300 Radeon 5970 on the NewEgg Black Friday sale too? =)
      http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103195

      While I agree it's hard to justify that price point, that combination of THAT bang/buck is phenomenal !
      http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063.html

      Specifically ...
      http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-8.html

    5. Re:Expensive much? by Calibax · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I remember when a megabyte of RAM dropped to under $1,000,000, when we switched from core to semiconductor technology circa 1972. And we thought it a great advance.

      Now get off my lawn, noob.

    6. Re:Expensive much? by Raenex · · Score: 1

      Considering the price of computers these days and the diminishing returns on graphic cards, I'd say $50 is the sweet spot.

      Seriously, the games were already looking pretty amazing not long after 2000. Just how much better does a game look with this year's model versus a card from three years ago?

    7. Re:Expensive much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously, the games were already looking pretty amazing not long after 2000. Just how much better does a game look with this year's model versus a card from three years ago?

      For most of the last three years PC game graphics have been limited by the need to also run on consoles with antique GPUs. It's only recently that game developers seem to have decided that they might benefit from building games that actually take advantage of PC hardware.

    8. Re:Expensive much? by karnal · · Score: 1

      I bought a new 8800gt at 300$ and felt I got my money's worth out of it. Of course, now I got a gently used GTX 280 (for free) and haven't played games for about a year... heh.

      --
      Karnal
    9. Re:Expensive much? by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      a 9600GT is still a pretty good card for modern games if your around 720p (I use a 1280x1024 screen) as the fact that all modern games are made to run on consoles which had stale video cards in them on launch.

  13. Great, but how many cores does it have? by Radical+Moderate · · Score: 1

    Nice summary, more redundancy please!

    --
    Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
    1. Re:Great, but how many cores does it have? by Surt · · Score: 1

      It's not the summary's fault. 448 cores is actually in the product title.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  14. Very nice, but by TheGoodNamesWereGone · · Score: 1

    That's pretty impressive.... It takes the current crown for fastest video card... all so I can play a dumbed-down Skyrim with its dumbed-down console interface and low-res console textures. What is it *for*?

  15. In other news Kepler trails AMD by edxwelch · · Score: 1

    More interesting news is that Nvidia's next high end card will probably arrive in late 2012, or even 2013 - while AMD's high end card Tahiti is expected in January 2012.

    http://www.edn.com/article/520175-Nvidia_Kepler_GPUs_to_trail_AMD_s_next_generation.php

  16. Not worth it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if you read all the information available on these gpu's and cards, they will only be available for a month or 2 while supplies of these binned gpu's last, one article i read even referred to them as a limited christmas edition card. which is totally going to suck when you decide you'd like to sli it in a few months

  17. Who buys discrete graphics anymore? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm sure all 37 hardcore gamers in the world will be ecstatic, but who else is going to buy these highend cards?

    1. Re:Who buys discrete graphics anymore? by aztracker1 · · Score: 1

      Bitcoins anyone? Seriously though, A lot of people don't quite settle for the onboard GPU, especially if you like to game with a very high resolution, or multiple monitors. I wouldn't even consider myself a gamer, but I run discrete in my desktop, though it's a now aging ATI Radeon HD 5770, it still works well enough for my needs. My biggest reason is multiple displays supported well. Most discrete graphics don't have multiple digital connections, so one will be via VGA, and invariably the colors won't match between two of the same monitor, which is far more annoying than anything to me, and calibration was still too far off for my tastes.

      The point is far more people are willing to buy these. I happen to favor mid-range cards for myself, and usually will start with onboard graphics for anyone that doesn't play 3d games.

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    2. Re:Who buys discrete graphics anymore? by cashman73 · · Score: 1

      There is most certainly a use for high-end GPU nVidia cards. Like in supercomputing applications,. . .

    3. Re:Who buys discrete graphics anymore? by Gaygirlie · · Score: 1

      Seriously though, A lot of people don't quite settle for the onboard GPU, especially if you like to game with a very high resolution, or multiple monitors.

      I sure as hell wouldn't be able to settle for an onboard GPU, they're simply too slow. I already cringe whenever I'm away from home for longer periods and have to kill some time by trying to play on my laptop, and these days I'm starting to feel my overclocked Geforce 460 on my desktop is starting to get slow and needs a replacement soon.

    4. Re:Who buys discrete graphics anymore? by bberens · · Score: 1

      I'm in the same boat. I run a discrete graphics card on my desktop because for about $50 I got a video card that runs all of the games I play (I only buy video games when they hit the $10 bin at [big box store]), while the on-board graphics card won't handle it. Of course, my desktop is about 8-10 years old now so that might be a bad example.

      --
      Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
    5. Re:Who buys discrete graphics anymore? by kramulous · · Score: 1

      For a very few specialist problems. Just like FPGAs.

      On the whole, are they're useless for most applications requiring performance. A lot of people bought into the hype.

      --
      .
    6. Re:Who buys discrete graphics anymore? by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      That's starting to change with things like the AMD Fusion chips, but the key phrase is "starting to."

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  18. heat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    haha, being as its a nvidia chip it probably will produce enough heat to turn an steam turbine.

  19. I wonder? by cashman73 · · Score: 1

    Impressive! Imagine what a Beowulf Cluster of these things could . . . wait a minute! This chip IS it's own Beowulf Cluster! =)

  20. How fast for Angry Birds? by bryan1945 · · Score: 2

    Does it make my speedy bird go really really REALLY fast?

    --
    Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
    1. Re:How fast for Angry Birds? by Surt · · Score: 1

      There actually is an easter egg in there for owners of high end graphics cards. If you have a sufficiently good one your speedy bird will cross the light speed barrier, creating a warp wake that creates a wave of destruction. Sorry if you're missing out with your wimpy card though.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  21. Opinion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ' Performance-wise, the new GPU proved to be about 10 to 15 percent faster" ,source-wise they are 100 percent proprietary and documentation-wise they are 0 percent competitive. Knights corner seems to be the way.

  22. Let's go backwards. by garyoa1 · · Score: 1

    Still trying to figger out the method to the madness of going back wards. They had a 9000 series and then a 500 series. Then a 200 series. I'm waiting until they come out with the zero series. And it's not just Nvidia. Seems a lot of companies are doing it.

    --
    Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
  23. Insane power consumption by Lawrence_Bird · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Its pretty difficult to get precise power figures on graphics cards - reviews always rate against 'total system' but never give us for reference the system power use without the card (or perhaps an onboard video solution). In any event, all modern cards are total power pigs. At a time where Intel and AMD try are trying very hard to reduce cpu power consumption, graphics cards are using up many multiples of those savings. I'm not sure where 'it has a wall outlet plug' gave these card and gpu producers license to subsidize the power companies.

    1. Re:Insane power consumption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not sure where 'it has a wall outlet plug' gave these card and gpu producers license to subsidize the power companies.

      It started ca. 2003. Just before that, Nvidia had narrowly reclaimed the "gaming performance crown" from ATI's Radeon 8500 by tweaking the drivers of the Geforce 3. Despite being released first, ATI's next generation hardware, the Radeon 9700 series, was cleanly faster than Nvidia's Geforce FX 5800 series. Nvidia resorted to a dual-slot "wind-tunnel" (I prefer the pejorative "hair dryer" myself) cooling solution that sent noise and thermal waste into the stratosphere, and still couldn't beat the single-slot (by virtue of such a cooling solution's being sufficient!) 9700 series. Even many of Nvidia's mid-range 5700 & 5750 products were dual-slot-width, though not all required the hairdyer (however, most required auxiliary power beyond the AGP spec.).

      This continued with the speed-bump generation Radeon 9800 / Geforce 5900. Since then, both vendors have seen fit to produce GPUs with thermal characteristics requiring dual-slot cooling solutions because the 5800 revealed that PC gamers will put up with that kind of crap even though the obvious engineering solution is to double the reliability while selling at half the cost and achieving 90% of the performance. The market will bear anything it's possible to cool, not merely what it's economically or ergonomically or environmentally reasonable to cool.

      Some (enough, obviously) PC gamers have tunnel vision, caring only about performance at the cost of all else. 3- and 4- dual-slot (and potentially dual-GPU!) desktops? How will you be paying? [This is an exercise posed to the thoughtful reader.] That kind of waste should be relegated to time-critical applications (e.g. medical diagnostics, RT systems, etc.) where human well-being is a factor.

    2. Re:Insane power consumption by Krneki · · Score: 1

      Hey my 4850x2 keeps my feet warm during the winter seasons.

      --
      Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
    3. Re:Insane power consumption by Tim+C · · Score: 1

      3- and 4- dual-slot (and potentially dual-GPU!) desktops? How will you be paying?

      At a guess, I'd say that most of the people with that sort of card are single/childless/both and so have the spare cash not to care, or were bought them by their parents and so aren't.

    4. Re:Insane power consumption by Lawrence_Bird · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately it seems that what was once "high end" eventually filters down to the low/mid end too thus sticking the rest of us with far higher power needs than we really want. I'm not begrudging somebody who is all ok with the higher operational cost (and perhaps reduced heating bill) but when it leaves me with the choice of a middling on motherboard solution or paying up, I'm not happy.

  24. Crazy by Guppy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Meanwhile, at AMD/ATI Headquarters:

    "Well, fuck it. We're going to 449 cores."

  25. Nah, far too few by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    ATi redefined what they call a "core" some time ago to basically mean each sub processing unit of their cores so they say their Radeon 6970s have "1536 Stream Processors". I'm sure at some point nVidia will redefine theirs to mean each bit of an operator or something and we'll have cards with millions of "cores" before long.

  26. Unfortunately there's not a good translation by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    nVidia and AMD do it different. nVidia counts their processing sub units as a "core". They aren't quite a core as you'd think of it on a CPU, but similar. AMD counts each execution sub unit in their "cores" as a "stream processor". So roughly speaking for the 4000 and 5000 series there are 5 SPs for each core.

    That doesn't quite tell the whole story though as what each core can do is different between the different vendors. More or less, to the extent it is useful information at all, it is only comparing within products of one vendor.

    Also there are other things not advertised as much that matter. That would be things like ROPs (Render Output Unit) and TMUs (Texture Mapping Unit). Those deal with rasterizing pixels and textures respectively. So those relate to rendering speed as well. Those used to be all that graphics cards talked about, before they had the processing section that makes them a GPU.

    Really the thing to do is this: Decide how much you can spend, decide what you wish to do, then go read reviews that show how the cards actually work with that software. For me as a gamer, I read HardOCP. They take the cards and actually play games with them, and you can see how well they fair.

    Solidworks plays fine with nVidia cards. Probably better than an ATi card since nVidia's OpenGL drivers are top notch (just as fast and features as their DX drivers) and ATi's are not quite as optimized. In terms of a nVidia 210, well those are very low end, lower than a 4650 so I don't know how much it'd help. Still probably be head and shoulders above the integrated graphics though.

    1. Re:Unfortunately there's not a good translation by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the reply, that does make it a little easier to grasp. Like I said me and mine are happy with the HD4850s, our screens are all 1600x900 so we can pretty much max out on most games with the HD4850 but I do have some customers that are always looking for a new card.

      As for the Geforce 210 that isn't to replace the HD4650 which surprisingly is damned good with SolidWorks so i don't know if AMD has helped ATI in the OpenGL dept or what, because it makes the machine smooth as butter. What the Geforce 210 will be for is his back room PC which he moved to the back when i built him his new AMD triple. it only has an Nforce IGP and frankly SW runs like ass on IGP, it shits pixels all over the screen and leaves little glitches when you move an object. But with him being mostly retired he has to watch his budget as like PC repair the work he does at the college is feast or famine so if he can score a card for cheap that will give him an okay boost over the Nforce he's all for it.

      Personally I was hoping for another ATI card as after I got burnt by a bumpgate card frankly I don't know how well i trust Nvidia at this point but unlike the summer sales where you could pick up HD4650s cards for less than $15 it looks like Geforce cards are gonna be the cheapie this Xmas

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  27. Correct and what people need to understand by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    Is you pay by the wafer when making chips. A wafer will cost a certain amount to make depending on the process, the size, the fab and so on. That is how the company that makes GPUs is charged. So the more chips that come off the wafer, the more the cost of that wafer can be spread out. That means not only having smaller chips, which of course can fit more per wafer, but having less defective chips.

    Hence binning based on units that work (or don't). As you say, it brings up yields and thus brings down unit cost.

    This is particularly useful for large chips. Defects are the kind of thing that occur at a certain frequency per wafer. So if you have a wafer that has, say, 4 defects roughly evenly spaced around it, you probably have 4 chips with failures. If your chips are small and you fab 2000 of them per wafer, no big deal, just toss them. However if your chips are huge and you fab 20 of them per wafer, that is a massive amount of failures. If you can instead simply shut down the damaged section and bin it as a lesser chip, you can bring yield back up.

    That's also why chips that are designed smaller can cost less. That is more or less what lower end GPUs are. They just design a smaller chip, with less of the units form the bigger one. You can then put more of them on a wafer, and thus they cost less.

  28. How many monttors can it take? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can I use

    DVD
    DVI
    HDMI

    for three display hookup, or do I need some expensive adapter for the displayport?

  29. Is it just me? by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 1

    Or all these companies (AMD, nVidia, Intel) slapping more "cores" on their products and only yielding 10 - 15% performance improvements kind of lack luster? I think if companies can't at least double performance then they shouldn't bother releasing a new product. The trickle release of half-hearted improvements in performance has to end.

    --
    I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
  30. Best Part about this story is... by DarthVain · · Score: 1

    maybe the 560 Ti's will come down in price to that magical 150-175$ threshold to which I refuse to spend over for a video card.