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MMT or Multimedia Technology is an Australian distributor; while they do a lot of products the one we’ll be looking at today is the GTX 400 series. They’ve made a few points in an email; let’s diagnose it and help some of their customers really understand.

BOLD Statments are from the email.

Please find confirmed specs and pricing on New GTX480 and GTX470

Thanks; let’s look.

Here is where they are positioned.

Ok let’s find out.

It’s a mixed bag today and maybe driver related but in real world gaming:

I know it’s quite the mixed bag; and it’s not driver related. NVIDIA did have six months. It’s ok now you know though.

GTX470 is a little quicker than HD5850,

Arghhhhhhhhhhh – I hate to say it but it’s not all the time!

while at higher resolutions with 8AA or better, it even out performs HD5970.

Yeah; nah not really! At 2560 x 1600 we do see the HD 5850 pretty much win out every time. Maybe you should’ve focused on the lower resolution performance. The GTX 470 really wins out there. As for it beating the HD 5970 with 8x AA. The best game the GTX 470 performed in with AA for me personally was Far Cry 2 and while the MINIMUM matched the HD 5970 it’s average was a fair bit down compared to the model.

In my eyes its HD5850/HD5870 equivalent. Time will tell what consumers want.

Equivalent how? It’s better at some things and worse in others when compared to the HD 5850. Even NVIDIA say the model sit’s BETWEEN the HD 5850 and HD 5870. If it’s equivalent to anything it would be a HD 5850 OC. You’re right though time will tell what consumers want.

GTX480 overall is slightly less than HD5970, while clearly taking the fastest single GPU crown. At times it exceeds HD5970 well. However the price on GTX480 is much less.

Hate to break it to you champ but even NVIDIA haven’t compared the GTX 480 to the HD 5970 for a reason. The word slightly has been used a bit too loosely there. I haven’t had the pleasure of testing the GTX 480 myself though so I won’t say much else.

Stock will not be available for 2-3 weeks, pricing is likely to change (downward). Use the below pricing to help secure back orders and deposits from your customers.

Ouch! another 2 – 3 weeks for stock. Still not really a surprise. That’s for letting us know that price could be cheaper though.

When stock arrives you can either make more profit or pass on the saving if the price decreases.

That’s helpful – nice to know someone took Sales 101.

GTX480 and GTX470 will be in shortage, as are HD5870 and HD5970 from selected brands today. Shortage meaning if you order 500 pcs, you cant get 500 pcs.

Does NVIDIA know you’re using the word Shortage? I thought we have 480 CUDA cores now so we don’t have a shortage. NVIDIA even told me launch will be good; much better then there competitor. As for HD 5870 and HD 5970; stocks getting better every week, I understand you sell ATI products as well but maybe you make more from EVGA? Who knows.

Also what if we order 50pcs? or 5pcs? Will customers get that?

EVGA will release Reference Clocks, Superclock (SC), FTW (For The Win) and Waterblock editions of these cards within the next 2-3 weeks.

W00t!

Please do not discount heavily, these items will be shortage, you can make good money on shortage products. I have listed a guestimate for RRP, but this will also decrease as stock becomes readily available. As EVGA was first with pricing into Australia, the price you list will be a benchmark.

Roger that! Price Gauge. We’ve got it.

So what are the “Guestimate” prices?

Suggested RRP: around $859-879 or higher???

Suggested RRP: $589 inc or higher?

No problems; if we can price gouge enough we’ll go higher.

I’ve just got a couple of questions about the GTX 470. Since this is the more “Mainstream” model of the two this is probably what will be the most popular.

I heard that the card runs hot, loud and draws lots of power? You seemed to miss these in your little email. It’s ok I’ll answer them for you.

I get my temperature reading from the back of the card directly where the GPU fits. The temperature is grabbed during 3DMark Vantage. The GTX 470 came in at 76.1c; the HD 5850 came in at 59.2c and the HD 5870 63.1c. The heat will bother some but not others.

On the bright side the card mustn’t be very loud since it’s that warm; well I suppose that depends if 73.6dB at load is loud compared to 61.1dB and 62.6dB on the HD 5850 and HD 5870. From my review I made this note.

At between 55dB to 65dB you can’t tell a whole lot of difference between a card. When you get into the 70dB zone, though, you can clearly hear it over other things like ambient noise.

As for power; yes the GTX 470 sucks some juice. It draws about as much power as the HD 5970 which is a Dual GPU card from ATI. on our testbed which only uses the bare minimum that put’s the number at 397 Watt. You need to look out for spikes and other stuff like that though.

What I hate so much about this email though is the person behind it seems like an uneducated noob. And he’s the “Group Product Manager”

There’s so many good things about the GTX 470 and GTX 480 like CUDA Support; PhysX, Ray Tracing and more. There’s no mention of SLI performance, nothing about Surround Gaming or 3D Vision apart from in some of the “features” information where the GTX 470 and GTX 480 is described. Come on though; explain the tech a bit better, get people excited about it.

The reason the people in these computer stores know so little when it comes to the products they’re selling is because the people selling the product to them don’t know what they’re talking about. Please note I don’t mean all people in computers shops; I have a number of mates in stores that really know what they’re talking about.

Video Cards are full on; the trend changes a lot and there’s a huge range of models available so knowing all the models is on its own a very busy job.

Maybe next time a wholesaler might like me to do the email information out; sure I understand that you’re not going to show the negative things but come on. Some of this stuff is just pure fabrications, why is the performance @ 1920 x 1200 and 1680 x 1050 completely ignored?

Feel free to drop us a line MMT or any other wholesaler for that matter; I’m sure I can help sales with just simple newsletters that have information that’ll get people excited about the product.

For those interested my GTX 470 review can be found here; and if you want to know some behind the scene stuff there’s a great article I did here. Yes I called my own article great!

Yesterday one manufacturer let me know that they had hoped to get the GTX 400 series in stock by April 2nd; talking to a few more today though it seems that this is the date NVIDIA will be shipping stock to its partners.

The latest date for retail is April 12th; with that said supply could swing either way as we know that companies are going to want to get the model out there as soon as possible. While the “delayed” retail date is April 12th there doesn’t seem to be any paperwork tied into this date. So what that means is if the cards come in earlier companies will be able to sell them earlier.

At the moment it looks like Europe and the USA could be waiting the longest from purely a logistical stand point; with the cards shipping out of ASIA you’ll see places like Hong Kong and China get soon after that April 2nd date. From there you’ll see places like Australia get stock due to the distance from ASIA not being all that far. Finally stock will arrive on US and Europe soil.

Since most companies tend to talk US; as in US $ and US time frame we figure the April 12th date is the US date for stock to arrive and probably a worst case scenario.

You have to remember as well it’s not just a matter of getting the card and then shipping to its distribution channel; these companies have to pack the cards and prepare the package which also takes time.

Reviewers have GTX 400 series cards and no doubt that within the community of them talk is happening on what we think of the models. It would come as no surprise to know that now ATI probably have a fair idea about how the GTX 400 series competes against their current line up of video cards.

Word floating about was that if need be a price drop would take place to combat the new cards from NVIDIA; as for a refresh one might be ready but we haven’t heard anything all that solid on that. For now ATI still need to get the Eyefinity6 model launched.

As far as a price drop goes though it seems ATI and its partners are comfortable with how the models sit and with stock becoming a non issue for the cards; they don’t have anything to worry about it seems.

The GTX 400 series has been plagued with issues but within only days we’ll know exactly how the two models perform. There’s no doubt that ATI have a fair idea of how the models perform against their current crop of cards though.

I’ve got an Eyefinity6 card at the moment but am yet to receive an active DVI adapter since what I really want to do with the card is compare it to the HD 5870 1GB at 2560 x 1600 to see just how much the extra memory helps.

Doing some research and talking to partners though it’s clear that they’re preparing to make a HD 5870 2GB; when we say HD 5870 2GB how this differs to the Eyefinity6 is that the card will carry the standard two Dual-Link DVI connectors, HDMI and single DisplayPort for support up to three monitors.

Why we haven’t seen the model yet though? It’s clearly because of stock being an issue for many months with cards becoming really available only now.

As for an ETA there’s no 100% date but I’ve been told it won’t be far away.

While word is that NVIDIA have dropped the amount of cores to 480 to help increase the amount of stock that is going to be available, talking to a couple of NVIDIA partners it’s become clear that many are still waiting on stock to arrive.

Unfortunately for NVIDIA stock is only one issue and if NVIDIA wants to have sold more GTX 400 series cards then the HD 5800 series and HD 5900 series combined by the end of summer they’ll need to have an awesome card on hand.

GTX 400 series boards are no doubt in the hands of reviewers and being tested all over the world at the moment. Currently I’ve got a GTX 470 with me and while I hope that a GTX 480 would arrive before NDA it seems without manufactures getting stock it won’t happen.

Of course we’ll get one soon after the NDA is lifted and have a review up ASAP; for now though we’ll have a review of the GTX 470 go live as soon as the NDA is lifted.

Speaking to partners it’s become clear that ATI are preparing for a price drop on its high end models including the HD 5850, HD 5870 and HD 5970. In turn we would probably also see some smaller price drops on the HD 5830 and below to simply keep the value of these products in line with everything else.

What’s interesting though is I’m hearing that the price drop will only happen if they feel threatened by NVIDIA and its new GTX 470 and GTX 480 products. There’s a few thing that need to happen with the new GTX 400 series for this price drop to happen.

First the products have to be competitive against the HD 5850, HD 5870 and HD 5970.

Secondly the stock has to be available or at least the impression that mass stock is coming.

While everyone loves a good price drop it’s clear that ATI are only going to do it if they need too. At the end of the day they’re a business and there’s no need to drop the price if the GTX 400 series doesn’t compete against the HD 5000 series.

I absolutely love that the GTX 400 series is around the corner; and if you have no intension of buying one as you enjoy the high end ATI setup you already have; you should as well since ATI have held nothing back in the driver department lately.

The latest area to get shown love by the Catalyst Driver Team is the new Cross Profiles which will have their first update Monday.

Below is a list of what will be improved when you install the profile:

Heaven – Crossfire profile
Dark Void – Crossfire profile
Singularity – Crossfire profile
Unigine Heaven Demo – Crossfire profile
Just Cause 2 -> Single GPU and Crossfire profile
Battlefield Bad Company 2 -> Crossfire profile
AvP -> Single GPU and Crossfire profile

Ouch! I feel bad for NVIDIA who have chosen to send only one GTX 400 sample to myself and the decision to make it the slower one of the two new models. I think it’s going to look pretty unattractive against a sea of red.

I’m about to jump on a con call with NVIDIA but I just got the usual brief about the con call and it cleraly says:

“NDA embargo is 7:01PM EST 3/26 (=10:01AM Sydney 3/27). No leaking!”

So it looks like everything is good to go on the 26th of March.

It’s pretty safe to assume though that the information regarding the card hitting retail on April 9th is still correct.

At the moment I’ve only managed to lock in a GTX 470 from NVIDIA directly who have said that getting a GTX 480 isn’t possible due to short supply. That’s fine; I can understand that. So I do what I always do at launch, chase a couple of manufactures for stock and get some retail samples.

I had one company commit to sending the GTX 470 and GTX 480 2 weeks ago but with cards only shipping between the 15th and 19th they didn’t feel they would be able to send me full retail packaging. That’s fine but today being the 19th factories in Taiwan and Honk Kong are still high and dry with no stock, making it at the moment impossible to lock down any retail samples.

Word going around is that the review date has been pushed back to as early as the 29th of March or as late as April 9th which we where first told was just going to be the retail date.

I’ve got a con call with NVIDIA in 10 hours and while we’re under NDA there should still be information I can tell you. Either way I’ll be sure to keep everyone in the loop.

ATI are really on the ball lately; they’re not about to sit on their morals though and hope that the HD 5970 is going to get them through the green minefield that is going to be laid soon. The 10.3 driver set was already looking promising for people with Eyefinity thanks to some good features being implemented; yesterday though AMD dropped a bomb shell when it came to performance improvements of what was being offered in the new driver.

If you don’t know what’s on offer I recommend you check out my blog post from yesterday here.

Instead of making us wait around for a WHQL driver though they’ve thrown the preview driver up giving people the chance to get in on the party now.

You can grab the driver here; of course it’s a beta so blah blah blah it’s at your own risk and what not but I’ve been using it for the past 24 hours and haven’t experienced any problems, let’s just say that the fan hasn’t stopped running on my card and died in Starcraft.

Anyway grab the driver and keep an eye out on TweakTown for a preview of it on a number of ATIs HD 5800 series cards.