NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470: 6 Months Late, Was It Worth the Wait?
by Ryan Smith on March 26, 2010 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Odds & Ends: ECC & NVIDIA Surround Missing
One of the things we have been discussing with NVIDIA for this launch is ECC. As we just went over in our GF100 Recap, Fermi offers ECC support for its register file, L1 cache, L2 cache, and RAM. The latter is the most interesting, as under normal circumstances implementing ECC requires a wider bus and additional memory chips. The GTX 400 series will not be using ECC, but we went ahead and asked NVIDIA how ECC will work on Fermi products anyhow.
To put things in perspective, for PC DIMMs an ECC DIMM will be 9 chips per channel (9 bits per byte) hooked up to a 72bit bus instead of 8 chips on a 64bit bus. However NVIDIA doesn’t have the ability or the desire to add even more RAM channels to their products, not to mention 8 doesn’t divide cleanly in to 10/12 memory channels. So how do they implement ECC?
The short answer is that when NVIDIA wants to enable ECC they can just allocate RAM for the storage of ECC data. When ECC is enabled the available RAM will be reduced by 1/8th (to account for the 9th ECC bit) and then ECC data will be distributed among the RAM using that reserved space. This allows NVIDIA to implement ECC without the need for additional memory channels, at the cost of some RAM and some performance.
On the technical side, despite this difference in implementation NVIDIA tells us that they’re still using standard Single Error Correction / Double Error Detection (SECDED) algorithms, so data reliability is the same as in a traditional implementation. Furthermore NVIDIA tells us that the performance hit isn’t a straight-up 12.5% reduction in effective memory bandwidth, rather they have ways to minimize the performance hit. This is their “secret sauce” as they call it, and it’s something that they don’t intend to discuss at in detail at this time.
Shifting gears to the consumer side, back in January NVIDIA was showing off their Eyefinity-like solutions 3DVision Surround and NVIDIA Surround on the CES showfloor. At the time we were told that the feature would launch with what is now the GTX 400 series, but as with everything else related to Fermi, it’s late.
Neither 3DVision Surround nor NVIDIA surround are available in the drivers sampled to us for this review. NVIDIA tells us that these features will be available in their release 256 drivers due in April. There hasn’t been any guidance on when in April these drivers will be released, so at this point it’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll arrive in time for the GTX 400 series retail launch.
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nyran125 - Monday, April 12, 2010 - link
Im going wiht the less power hungry ati 5000 series. I know a 5850 card will easily fit in my Case aswell. There no way id choose the GTX 470 over any of the ati s870 or 5850 cards. So that only leaves the GTX 480 against either the 5870 or the 5850. The performance increase and power increase is NOT worth me paying for a nvidia card thats higher in price over the 5870.I meen even looking at the games. The games ill probably play Crysis adn BAttlefield bad company 2 come out on top of the nivdia 480 GTX. so bla.
Nvidia you need to make a much bette rcard than that fo rme to spend money on a GTX 470 or GTX 480 ove rthe 5870 or 5850.
nyran125 - Monday, April 12, 2010 - link
oh and secondly, if your buying a 200 series nivida card or the GTX 480 it isnt fast enough to future proof your computer. You might aswell go spend less money on a 5970 or a single 5870 you know it will last for the next 2 years and the GTX 480 will NOT last any longer than teh 5000 series with its 10-15% performance increase. I didnt like the 200 series nvidia cards and im not interested in even MORE power hungry cards that. I want less power hungry cards and efficiency. To me a game plays bugger all different with 60 FPS average and 100 fps average. If you have a 200 series card save your money and wait for the next gen of cards or at least wait till a DX 11 game actualyl comes out not just Just cause friggin 2..vagos - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
ok all theese cards are nice. new technology is very welcome. but where is the games to push them?? if i spent 400$ or 500$ on a new card where i could see a really big difference against my old 8800GT?? they sell hardware without software to support it...2 or 3 games makes no difference to me. ps3 an xbox360 have very old graphic cards compared to ati 5800 series and nvidia 400 and still tha games are looking beautifull. an in some cases mauch better than on pc...make new games for pc and then i will buy a new card! until then i will stuck with my xbox360...
Drizzit101 - Sunday, May 9, 2010 - link
I have been running the GTX 295. The plan was to buy a second GTX 295. Looking at the prices, I was thinking about just buying two GTX 470's. What the better move?Krazy Glew - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link
See http://semipublic.comp-arch.net/wiki/Poor_Man%27s_...In particular
US patent 7,117,421, Transparent error correction code memory system and method,
Danilak,
assigned to Nvidia,
2002.
http://semipublic.comp-arch.net/wiki/Poor_Man%27s_...
Matt Campbell - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link
Ryan, what was the special sauce you used to get Badaboom working on Fermi? My GTX 460 won't run it, and Elemental's website says Fermi support won't get added until Q4 2010. http://badaboomit.com/node/507niceboy60 - Friday, August 20, 2010 - link
I have the same probleme on my GTX 480 , Badaboom does not work on fermi ,according with my own experience and Badaboom official web siteI dont think this benchmarks are accurate
niceboy60 - Friday, August 20, 2010 - link
I bought a GTX 480 based on this review as I do a considerable amount of video convertingJust to find out ,dispite the GTX 480 is showing very good resaults when using Badaboom
The truth is Badaboom is not compatible yet with any GTX 400 series according with The badaboom web site .
adder1971 - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
The Badaboom website says it does not work and when I try it with the GTX 465 it does not work. How were you able to get it to work? I have the NVIDIA latest release drivers as of today and the latest released version of Badaboom.wizardking - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
I bought this card for it only ! I used badaboom with number which you use !!!!!!