GeForce 500 series

A Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 released in 2011, the series'flagship model; this one fromEVGA
Release date	November 9, 2010; 15 years ago (November 9, 2010)
Codename	GF11x
Architecture	Fermi
Models	GeForce series GeForce GT series GeForce GTX series
Transistors	292M 40 nm (GF119) 585M 40 nm (GF108) 1.170M 40 nm (GF116) 1.950M 40 nm (GF114) 3.000M 40 nm (GF110)
Cards
Entry-level	510 GT 520 GT 530
Mid-range	GT 545 GTX 550 Ti GTX 555 GTX 560 GTX 560 Ti GTX 560 SE
High-end	GTX 570 GTX 580
Enthusiast	GTX 590
API support
Direct3D	Direct3D 12.0 (feature level 11_0)[1] Shader Model 5.1
OpenCL	OpenCL 1.1
OpenGL	OpenGL 4.6
History
Predecessor	GeForce 400 series
Successor	GeForce 600 series
Support status
Unsupported

TheGeForce 500 series is a series ofgraphics processing units developed byNvidia, as a refresh of theFermi based GeForce 400 series. It was first released on November 9, 2010 with the GeForce GTX 580.

Its direct competitor wasAMD'sRadeon HD 6000 series; they were launched approximately a month apart.

The Nvidia Geforce 500 seriesgraphics cards are significantly modified versions of theGeForce 400 series graphics cards, in terms of performance andpower management. Like the Nvidia GeForce 400 series graphics cards, the Nvidia GeForce 500 series supportsDirect3D 12.0 (feature level 11.0),OpenGL 4.6, andOpenCL 1.1.

The refreshed Fermi chip includes 512stream processors, grouped in 16 stream multiprocessors clusters (each with 32CUDA cores), and is manufactured byTSMC in a 40nm process.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 graphics card is the first in the Nvidia GeForce 500 series to use a fully enabled chip based on the refreshed Fermi architecture, with all 16 stream multiprocessors clusters and all six64-bit memory controllers active. The new GF110 GPU was enhanced with full speed FP16 filtering (the previous generation GF100 GPU could only do half-speed FP16 filtering) and improvedz-culling units.

On January 25, 2011, Nvidia launched the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, to target the "sweet spot"segment where price/performance ratio is considered important. With its more than 30% improvement over the GTX 460, and performance in between the Radeon HD 6870 and 6950 1GB, the GTX 560 Ti directly replaced the GeForce GTX 470.

On February 17, 2011, it was reported that the GeForce GTX 550 Ti would be launching on March 15, 2011. Although the GTX 550 Ti is a GF116 mainstream chip, Nvidia chose to name its new card the GTX 550 Ti, and not the GTS 550. Performance was shown to be at least comparable and up to 12% faster than the current Radeon HD 5770. Price-wise, the new card trod into the range occupied by the GeForce GTX 460 (768 MB) and the Radeon HD 6790.^[2]

On March 24, 2011, the GTX 590 was launched as the flagship graphics card for Nvidia. The GTX 590 is a dual-GPU card, similar to past releases such as the GTX 295, and boasted the potential to handle Nvidia's 3D Vision technology by itself.^[3]

On April 13, 2011, the GT 520 was launched as the bottom-end card in the range, with lower performance than the equivalent number cards in the two previous generations, the GT 220 and the GT 420.^{[citation needed]} However, it supported DirectX 11 and was more powerful than the GeForce 210, the GeForce 310, and the integrated graphics options on Intel CPUs.

On May 17, 2011, Nvidia launched a less expensive (non-Ti) version of the GeForce GTX 560 to strengthen Nvidia's price-performance in the $200 range. Like the faster GTX 560 Ti that came before it, this video card was also faster than the GeForce GTX 460. Standard versions of this card performed comparably to the AMD Radeon HD 6870, and would eventually replace the GeForce GTX 460. Premium versions of this card operate at higher speed (factory overclocked), and are slightly faster than the Radeon 6870, approaching the performance of basic versions of the Radeon HD 6950 and the GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

On November 28, 2011, Nvidia launched the "GTX 560 Ti With 448 Cores".^[4] However, it does not use the silicon of the GTX 560 series: it is a GF110 chip with two shader blocks disabled. The most powerful version of the 560 series, this card was widely known to be a "limited production" card and was used as a marketing tool making use of the popularity of the GTX 560 brand for the 2011 Holiday season. The performance of the card resides between the regular 560 Ti and 570.

• ¹Unified shaders:Texture mapping units:Render output units
• ² Each Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) in the GPU of GF110 architecture contains 32 SPs and 4 SFUs. Each Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) in the GPU of GF114/116/118 architecture contains 48 SPs and 8 SFUs. Each SP can fulfil up to two single precision operations FMA per clock. Each SFU can fulfil up to four operations SF per clock. The approximate ratio of operations FMA to operations SF is equal 4:1. The theoretical shader performance in single-precision floating point operations (FMA)[FLOPS_sp,GFLOPS] of the graphics card with shader count [n] and shader frequency [f, GHz], is estimated by the following:FLOPS_sp ˜ f × n × 2. Alternative formula:FLOPS_sp ˜ f × m × (32 SPs × 2(FMA)). [m] – SM count. Total Processing Power:FLOPS_sp ˜ f × m × (32 SPs × 2(FMA) + 4 × 4 SFUs) orFLOPS_sp ˜ f × n × 2.5.
• ³ Each SM in the GF110 contains 4 texture filtering units for every texture address unit. The complete GF110 die contains 64 texture address units and 256 texture filtering units.^[5] Each SM in the GF114/116/118 architecture contains 8 texture filtering units for every texture address unit but has doubled both addressing and filtering units.

All products are produced using a 40 nm fabrication process.All products support DirectX 12.0, OpenGL 4.6 and OpenCL 1.1.

The GeForce 500M series for notebook architecture.

• ¹Unified shaders:Texture mapping units:Render output units

Nvidia announced that after Release 390 drivers, it will no longer release32-bit drivers for 32-bit operating systems.^[16]

Nvidia announced in April 2018 that Fermi will transition to legacy driver support status and be maintained until January 2019.^[17]

The cards of this generation, particularly the smaller length 550 Ti model, are common cards of choice bycounterfeit resellers, who take the cards and illicitly modify the firmware to have them report as more modern cards such as the GTX 1060 and 1050 Ti models. These cards are then sold viaeBay,Taobao,Aliexpress andWish.com by scammers. They may have a minimum of functionality to ensure at a first glance they appear legitimate, but defects caused by the fake BIOS, manufacturing and software issues will almost always cause crashes in modern games and applications, and if not, the performance will still be extremely poor.^[18]

• GeForce 200 series
• GeForce 400 series
• GeForce 600 series
• GeForce 700 series
• GeForce 800M series
• GeForce 900 series
• GeForce 10 series
• Nvidia Quadro
• Nvidia Tesla

• David Kanter (September 30, 2009)."Inside Fermi: Nvidia's HPC Push". realworldtech.com. RetrievedDecember 16, 2010.

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