HardOCP recently had the opportunity to sit down with NVIDIA face-to-face and discuss its next generation GPU, codenamed "GF100" which is based on the "Fermi" architecture you have likely heard so much about for the last few months. Currently NVIDIA is not sharing GF100 based video card specifics. This is NOT a product launch! This is a look into the GF100 GPU’s inner workings and how that relates to gaming. The "GF" in "GF100" stands for a "Graphics" solution based on the "Fermi" architecture. The "100" denotes that it is the high-end part of the current GPU family.

The GF100 is NVIDIA’s next big investment, and it is yet to be seen if it will pay off for them. The GF100 is more than just a GPU for gaming; we all know that based on the recent information that has been given. However, don’t let this GP-GPU nonsense fool you, NVIDIA made it clear to us...finally…the GF100 is built for gaming.

On this page is the official presentation in its entirety, and on the second page you will find the entire GF100 White Paper posted along with some opinions.

Months ago at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference, CEO Jen Hsun Huang announced the upcoming Fermi architecture to the world. Due to the nature of that conference, very few -if any- details were leaked regarding the architecture's performance in the one area where NVIDIA's roots lie: 3D graphics processing. All we knew at that time was Fermi-based cards weren’t anywhere near mass production capable and that ATI already had troops on the ground in the DX11 marketplace. Since then, ATI has continued to run away with the DX11 GPU market and things couldn’t have looked worse for Team Green. Designing a whole new architecture from the ground up takes time and NVIDIA was always the first to admit that.

If anything, NVIDIA has been extremely tight-lipped about all things Fermi ever since the GTC but from the information we received from our moles within their Santa Clara offices, things were moving along at a quick pace. New technologies were being developed to showcase the chip’s advanced capabilities, features were being toyed with, drivers were written and TSMC was pistol-whipped into shape after showing disappointing yields on early silicon. As CES rolled around, NVIDIA wanted to put most of their cards on the table and finally disclosed how they have adapted Fermi's architecture for the consumer GPU marketplace. This included selective tech demos and hardware being shown on the show floor as well as all-day “Deep Dive” briefings for select journalists being conducted behind the scenes. We attended one of these briefings and in this article we will finally shed some light on the technologies that will make the Fermi architecture hum along in games and other 3D apps.

While we have been talking about Fermi as the name for the all-encompassing architecture up to this point, it should be pointed out that there will be several sub categories as well. This includes the already-announced Tesla C2000-series for HPC markets and an unnamed series of Quattro cards as well. The market we are most interested in for the purposes of this article is that which holds actual 3D graphics cards and NVIDIA has finally come forth with a name for us: GF100. However, the “GF100” moniker won’t be used for the final retail cards but will be used to describe a whole range of products based off of the GeForce version of the Fermi architecture. It may not be telling much but at least it gives us an alternative to the overused “Fermi” name.

Before we really get into things, we should warn you that while there was actually a shed-load of information discussed, NVIDIA was still silent when it came to discussing price, final clock speeds, memory sizes, and availability. Nonetheless, we’ll do what we can to make some educated guesses based off of what we know and what was hinted at within our briefing.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, NVIDIA had several things going on. In a public press conference they announced 3D Vision Surround and Tegra 2, while on the showfloor they had products o’plenty, including a GF100 setup showcasing 3D Vision Surround.

But if you’re here, then what you’re most interested in is what wasn’t talked about in public, and that was GF100. With the Fermi-based GF100 GPU finally in full production, NVIDIA was ready to talk to the press about the rest of GF100, and at the tail-end of CES we got our first look at GF100’s gaming abilities, along with a hands-on look at some unknown GF100 products in action. The message NVIDIA was trying to send: GF100 is going to be here soon, and it’s going to be fast.


Fermi/GF100 as announced in September of 2009

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves though, let’s talk about what we know and what we don’t know.

During CES, NVIDIA held deep dive sessions for the hardware press. At these deep dives, NVIDIA focused on 3 things: Discussing GF100’s architecture as is relevant for a gaming/consumer GPU, discussing their developer relations program (including the infamous Batman: Arkham Asylum anti-aliasing situation), and finally demonstrating GF100 in action on some games and some productivity applications.

Many of you have likely already seen the demos, as videos of what we saw have already been on YouTube for a few days now. What you haven’t seen and what we’ll be focusing on today, is what we’ve learned about GF100 as a gaming GPU. We now know everything about what makes GF100 tick, and we’re going to share it all with you.

With that said, while NVIDIA is showing off GF100, they aren’t showing off the final products. As such we can talk about the GPU, but we don’t know anything about the final cards. All of that will be announced at a later time – and no, we don’t know that either. In short, here’s what we still don’t know and will not be able to cover today:

1. Die size
2. What cards will be made from the GF100
3. Clock speeds
4. Power usage (we only know that it’s more than GT200)
5. Pricing
6. Performance

At this point the final products and pricing are going to heavily depend on what the final GF100 chips are like. The clockspeeds NVIDIA can get away with will determine power usage and performance, and by extension of that, pricing. Make no mistake though, NVIDIA is clearly aiming to be faster than AMD’s Radeon HD 5870, so form your expectations accordingly.

For performance in particular, we have seen one benchmark: Far Cry 2, running the Ranch Small demo, with NVIDIA running it on both their unnamed GF100 card and a GTX285. The GF100 card was faster (84fps vs. 50fps), but as Ranch Small is a semi-randomized benchmark (certain objects are in some runs and not others) and we’ve seen Far Cry 2 to be CPU-limited in other situations, we don’t put much faith in this specific benchmark. When it comes to performance, we’re content to wait until we can test GF100 cards ourselves.