Graphics card giant Nvidia has had a tough time of late. After dominating the market in the past with their best-selling Geforce 8800 series, they arguably rested on their laurels as their main rival in the market, AMD, flopped, unable to compete with Nvidia on both price and performance. In the last couple of years the tables have turned and now AMD with their ATI Radeon graphics cards are enjoying dominance in the market and now Nvidia is playing the role of the troubled underdog.

With its existing range of graphics cards in trouble, Nvidia has been hard at work with a new series of products to re-establish itself as a market leader. The new technology now under the ‘Fermi’ label has finally hit the market for home users with two new cards now available: the high-end Geforce GTX480 and the mid-range Geforce GTX470. There has been a lot of speculation in recent months about the price and performance of these cards, and rumors abound that Nvidia is plagued with performance and design issues along with low chip yields (the percentage of chips produced that are considered usable). of any particular manufacture). batch). Through this fog of Internet speculation, the new cards finally arrived. With reviewers and consumers finally able to test the cards for themselves, it’s time to see if Nvidia can reclaim its crown.

The GTX 480 shoots squarely at the goal of the fastest graphics card on the market, the card comes at a hefty price tag and competes with ATI’s 5870/5970 cards. The GTX480’s performance benchmarks show that, in one respect, it has achieved its goal. Out of the box, it outperforms ATI cards in most games and benchmarks in terms of performance. However, this is only part of the battle to win over consumers and there are factors that can cause the GTX480 to fall out of favor. The first problem is the price – although faster than the ATI cards, the Geforce costs more. The performance advantage is there, but the somewhat insignificant, added cost is not. In an age when people’s financial resources are scarce, many people will be willing to save a few dollars at the expense of a marginal increase in performance. The card is also large, draws a lot of power, is noisy, and gets very hot, even while idle. These are not factors that are a good fit for gaming enthusiasts.

So has Nvidia turned the war around? Not yet. The technology in the new cards shows promise, but the newly released cards aren’t ready to start taking ATI parts just yet. It will be interesting to see what Nvidia can do in the coming months as it refines its production processes and begins to bring more competitively priced mid-range cards to market. But at least for now, ATI is still the king of graphics cards.