After tantalizing us with demos of the prototype GF100 – the new 40nm DX-11 capable-GPU built on the brand-new Fermi architecture – NVIDIA has finally released the names of the first two production models to be released. The two cards will be called GeForce GTX 470 and GeForce GTX 480. Note that these are NVIDIA’s answers to AMD’s top-of-the-line single GPU, the Radeon HD 5870.
If you have already read all the tasty titbits (PolyMorph and Raster Engines, CUDA Cores, Graphics Processing Clusters) of information that NVIDIA has released in a slow trickle about the GF100 and Fermi architecture, then you will probably be eagerly awaiting the long-awaited announcement of the final specs! And now that the names are out, it follows that the specs must be out too – in what shape has GF100 finally made it onto shelves? How was it sliced and diced; just how much power will the beast require; what did the GTX 470 get; and what did the GTX 480? Well, you can let your breath go now. NVIDIA has yet to announce the release dates or complete specifications!
All we know is that the new GeForce GTX 470 and 480 are named right at the top of NVIDIA GPU food chain, towering above the GTX 295 (GT200x2) with nothing in between. This just might indicate the two GPUs’ appetites, because from what we’ve seen of the GF100 and its 3 billion transistors, they’re going to be big, mean, power-hungry monsters.