CustomPC now have the first Fermi chip the GTX480. Apparently the first impressions are going live just after midnight. Time to see if NVidia can finally do something about the rise of ATI.
" After what seems like a decade of delays - it's actually closer to about nine months - Nvidia's new GPU, codenamed Fermi is finally here. Well, it's here in our labs, but we can't tell you about it until tomorrow (Saturday)! Never fear, our coverage will be live as soon as the clock ticks past midnight and we will be able to reveal just how fast the new GeForce GTX 480 is. "

I',m interested to see a proper review. There are a bunch of posts in the EVGA forums, but it's translations from a Japanese site, so it's not exactly clear and the translation could well be suspect. But the graphs are easy enough to read.

I hope Nvidia get back in the game soon. Having ATI with its piss poor industry support and crappy drivers completely dominating the scene when it comes to hardware prowess is actually making the market worse than it has been in years. I really do wish there was more of a middle ground between the two. But as it stands I'll stick with the more dependable one.

My answer did not appear in 40 minutes so I assume my post ended up in the Abyss.So I'm reposting it.
I never had any real problems with ATI drivers. The same can't be said about Nvidia.

So what happened to nvidia's 300 series of cards are they just going to skip a generation and go straight for 400 series?

There were a few cards (the strongest was a rembranded 240).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_300_Series

I switched from X800GTO to a 7600GT, apart from PS3.0 and more ram, the switch sucked. I also never had problems with my ATIs. Not really sure what people are talking about, nvidias drivers are bloated, slow [too]. At least ATIs cheaper.. ;)

well nvidia is late to the game really. i see massive drop in prices. and announcement of series 6000. don't have much hope for 400 series.
oh. btw. i am running software overclocked 4850 with 430W PSU although recommended is 450W.
No problem whatsoever. ATI drivers being worse than nvidia nowadays is more a myth than fact.
and nvidia drivers can burn your house down if you know what i am talking about :D

Thanks, I wish nvidia would stop renaming their old cards though it gets confusing.
It kind of depends how much better this thing performs with tessaltion then the 5000 series ati cards. I don't see ati bringing out 6000 series cards for a while even if they do annouce them soon.

People were joking that 400 was taking so long because they had problems with placing stickers on the 200 cards :P.

I've used a 4580 for almost 2 years now and even with it's tiny 512MB ram it still runs almost everything. ATI have had a few duff drivers like 9.8 but on the whole they have been good. At the moment ATI are cheaper and more powerful than their equivalent Nvidia cards which is bad for competition. I am hoping the GTX 480 is not only as good or better than the 5870 but cheaper as well, it really needs to be if Nvidia are serious about taking the market back.
A lot like it was when ATI made the woeful 2900 and 3800 cards are Nvidia were just rebranding 8800's.

Only now it doesn't seem like there's anything on the market at all that's worth the money. Not that I'll be looking to upgrade for a long time yet. But it would be nice to know I had options when the time comes.

Blame Nvidia for that. They thought they were so big they could ignore ATI and take on Intel.

It's always been the opposite for me. Even from before the first Radeon. Even on other people's computers. ATI's drivers seemed to actually be getting worse last year. Introducing new problems rather than fixing current ones.

I'm getting flashbacks to 3DFX.
I think they honestly believe people will think it's a whole new card.

According to leaked benchmarks the GTX480 is generally about 10% faster than the 5870 in most games.
I hate, hate, HATE Ati with all of my guts. As others have said the drivers are horrible, and this stuff is so stupidly buggy it's amazing beyond belief.
When I installed Windows 7 the DVI output on my 4870 just stopped working and it NEVER worked again no matter what kind of voodoo magic I tried to use. I still have to use VGA and I'm fed up with it. Not only that, but GPU scaling (as in preserving an original 4:3 aspect ratio) has entirely disappeared from the CCC for MONTHS. It's the same issue with many other ATI users, and ATI doesn't give a damn about fixing their shitty software.
Every day I curse myself at having went with ATI instead of the GTX 260 I was also considering. Can't wait until I have some money later this year to get me a nice 480 and dump ATI FOREVER.