VR-Zone

Nvidia's Fermi/GF100 was officially announced as a 512 shader (or CUDA Cores) part at the high end. However, thanks to seemingly endless problems and delays, the poor yield rumours led to rumours that Nvidia would struggle to put out a complete 512 SP product. Bright Side of News now report that multiple AIB partners have 'confirmed' that the flagship 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