Ever since the introduction of the "Fermi" architecture back in November at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference the question has been, can it dethrone the HD 5000 series that ATI dropped on the world just a scant week earlier, bringing along game changing performance and the first DirectX 11 cards to market? ATI brought the heat and put NVIDIA on the ropes as its top single GPU card, the GTX 285, took a beating. Ever since the Fermi name was released there have been leaks and rumors that really threw up a smoke screen to cover up what was really under the hood. NVIDIA released little tidbits here and there to show progress as everyone waited for a firm release date. Just after CES we had an opportunity to sit in on an in depth look at the new architecture and see what it was really capable of. I came away from this eagerly waiting for the day I could lay hands on the first of the GF 100 cards, now known as the GTX480, to put it through the ringer and see if the canned tests we looked at were all she had or if there truly was more under the hood. Well, that day is today, right here, right now! Let's jump into a quick look at this sample from nVidia and see what happens!