Specifications and Prices of GeForce GTX 400-Series Emerge on the Web

From X-bit Labs: Although much is known about Nvidia Corp.’s next-generation architecture code-named Fermi, there are still a few pieces missing from the puzzle, including performance of GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 graphics cards, their pricing and their specifications. A web-site claims that it has obtained information about pricing and specifications of the forthcoming products.

Rather surprisingly, the GeForce GTX 480 graphics board will carry the GF100 graphics chip clocked at 700MHz with only 480 stream processors (down from 512 originally promised by Nvidia) operating at 1400MHz, will carry 1536MB of GDDR5 memory connected using 384-bit bus and will have 295W thermal design power (TDP). The more affordable version of Fermi – the GeForce GTX 470 – will feature graphics processing unit (GPU) with 448 stream processors (607MHz/1215MHz), will feature 1280MB of GDDR5 memory connected using 320-bit memory bus and will also sport 225W thermal envelope.

According to VR-Zone web-site, the GeForce GTX 480 will have manufacturer suggested retail price of $499, whereas the GeForce GTX 470 will cost $349.

It is a huge surprise that Nvidia decided to install a cut-down version of the code-named GF100 chip (NV60, GT300, G300) onto its flagship GeForce GTX 480 graphics board. Nvidia has been claiming that its high-end Fermi chip has 512 stream processors for about half a year now, but it looks like such chip appears to be very hard to manufacture and power hungry. Late last year Nvidia cut-down the amount of stream processors on Tesla C2050 and S2070 computing processor boards to 448, which was the first official indicator that there are issues with fully fledged GF100 chips with 512 stream processors.

Performance of the new GeForce GTX 400-series graphics cards is not known. However, TDPs of the novelties seem to be rather mind-blowing: the higher-performance graphics card has thermal envelope similar to that of dual-chip ATI Radeon HD 5970, whereas the more affordable board consumes 37W more power than the ATI Radeon HD 5870. For the sake of truth it should be noted that the model GTX 470 is much shorter than the model HD 5870, hence, it will fit into smaller systems.

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