| Impulsivity said: It might be good, it really depends on how it is used and how much it costs. They compare it to a last generation 285 (the 385 should be out shortly with much more competitive numbers much like the 5870 blew away all the last gen processors when it came out) and it does a bit better, yes, but not really that much better. |
If shortly is April-May, then yes. That's what Nvidia told their board partners at the last conference.
Performance is not good. Early indications show a projected core clockspeed of about 600MHz on A3 rev (current A2 rev is 500MHz and unprofitably low yields). Assuming no performance increases, and the confirmed 512 shaders, that's about 7% faster than the GTX295. Let's be optimistic and say a 10% boost in IPC, even though all of the architecture changes shown will only help GPGPU. So 15-20% faster than the 5870, yet a die size bigger than a GTX285 and nearly double that of a 5870. It will have to launch at $400+ to compete factoring in higher 40nm costs, and won't threaten the 5870 on price or the 5970 on performance. Add that to TSMC's 40nm issues and Nvidia's extreme lateness in getting large-die 40nm parts yielding propely (AMD's 4770 was ready in May; the similarrly sized GT240 launched in November), it's not looking good.
