Graphics card giant Nvidia has been going through a tough time lately. After dominating the market in the past with their blockbuster Geforce 8800 series, they arguably rested on their laurels as their main market rival AMD failed, unable to compete with Nvidia on both price and performance. In the last two years, the tables have turned and now AMD, with its ATI Radeon graphics cards, is enjoying dominance in the market and now Nvidia is playing the role of the troubled homeless.
With its existing lineup of graphics cards in trouble, Nvidia has been hard at work with a new series of products to reestablish itself as the market leader. The new technology now under the ‘Fermi’ label has finally hit the market for home users with two new cards now available: the high-end Geforce GTX480 and the mid-range Geforce GTX470. There has been a lot of speculation in recent months about the price and performance of these cards, and rumors abound that Nvidia is plagued with performance and design issues along with poor chip performance (the percentage of chips produced that are considered usable in any given manufacture). lot). Through this fog of internet speculation, the new cards have finally arrived. With reviewers and consumers finally able to test the cards for themselves, it’s time to see if Nvidia can win back its crown.
The GTX 480 aims squarely at the target of the fastest graphics card on the market, the card is priced high and competes with ATI’s 5870/5970 cards. The performance benchmarks of the GTX480 show that, in a sense, it has achieved its goal. Out of the box, it outperforms ATI cards in most games and benchmarks in terms of performance. However, this is only part of the battle to win over consumers and there are factors that can cause the GTX480 to lose favor. The first problem is the price, although faster than ATI cards, the Geforce costs more. The performance advantage is there, but it is insignificant, the additional cost is not. In an age when people’s finances are tight, many people will be willing to save a few dollars at the expense of a marginal increase in performance. The card is also large, it consumes a lot of power, it is noisy and it gets very hot, even when idle. These are not factors that are a good fit for gaming enthusiasts.
So has Nvidia changed the war? Not yet. The technology in the new cards shows promise, but the newly released cards are not yet in a position to start chipping away at ATI just yet. It will be interesting to see what Nvidia can do in the coming months as it refines its production processes and starts rolling out more competitively priced mid-range cards on the market. But at least for now, ATI is still the king of graphics cards.