2012-12-21-157

[Rumour] Nvidia Geforce GTX 480 to feature 480 SP

Nvidia's Fermi/GF100 was officially announced as a 512 shader (or CUDACores) part at the high end. However, thanks to seemingly endlessproblems and delays, the poor yield rumours led to rumours that Nvidiawould struggle to put out a complete 512 SP product. Bright Side of Newsnow report that multiple AIB partners have 'confirmed' that theflagship GTX 480 is in fact a 480 SP product.

This would mean that only 15 of the originally planned 16 SMs are enabled. If true, this is a clear indication that Nvidia is indeed struggling with yield rates. It could also be a move to keep the TDP down.

It is unknown if the leaked benchmarks were done on a 512 SP or a 480 SP part. If this is a late change, then chances are the benchmarks were held on a 512 SP card. If so, we can expect the 480 SP GTX 480 to perform almost identically to the ATI Radeon HD 5870, which retails at an average $399. BSN claim that the crippled GTX 470 is set to retail for $299-$349. As consumers, we certainly hope that is true, though clearly, Nvidia is likely to incur a hefty loss selling a GF100 based product at a $299 price point.

Curiously, the GTX 480's nomenclature seems to reflect the 480 SP, but this is just likely to be a co-incidence. The GTX 470 isn't named GTX 448, after all.

The Geforce GTX 470 and GTX 480 "release" on March 26th, 2010. This is largely expected to be a paper launch, with retail availability at a later point, though it is not clear when.

Reference: Bright Side of News