NVIDIA has unveiled a new service called GeForce Experience that is essentially a cloud-based service that aims to analyze your hardware and automatically adjust in-game settings and display resolution for a better and optimized experience when playing games. NVIDIA has always been about making you gaming experience as great as possible, but this takes it to the next level.
It may seem like a complicated service, but NVIDIA promises that the user won’t be required to do much of anything. The tool is made to make the user experience as simple as possible. It definitely seems like a perfect solution if you’re not into guess-and-check graphics settings, which can forever for gamers to dial in.
The service can even automatically adjust more advanced settings like anti-aliasing levels and shadow options. There are obviously tons of different configurations that gamers could theoretically apply, but GeForce Experience can fetch optimal settings from the cloud and apply them for you, and it makes changes directly to your game’s config file.
The service is currently in beta, but it’s not public, so get in line if you think you might want to give it a try. If you enjoy tuning your own settings, then GeForce Experience probably won’t change your life, but the service also comes with automatic driver updates, and that’s one thing that every gamer can benefit from.
Far Cry 3 officially launches today in Australia, with the European release arriving tomorrow, and the US seeing the game next week on December 4. To celebrate the launch, NVIDIA has released a new beta version of its GeForce graphics drivers that come with some very specific improvements for the game.
NVIDIA has updated it’s 310.54 beta drivers to 310.64 beta, and while you may not think it’s a huge update, NVIDIA claims that the update will boost framerates in Far Cry 3 by up to 38% when using Nvidia’s latest GeForce 600-series graphics chips. That’s certainly nothing to scoff at, especially considering that you can get that kind of framerate boost for free.
The claim comes from NVIDIA’s own internal testing, which the company ran the game at a 1920×1080 resolution with graphics setting maxed out. The test system used an ASUS Rampage IV Extreme motherboard with an Intel Core i7-3960X processor clocked at 3.3 GHz, 8 GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 670, GTX 680 or GTX 690 depending on the test.
In addition to the Far Cry 3 improvements, the new beta drivers also include tweaks for Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Assassin’s Creed III, along with general performance tweaks that provide up to a 16% boost in games like Battlefield 3, Skyrim, and StarCraft II. The new beta drivers are available now to download on NVIDIA’s website.
NVIDIA and Linux haven’t always been the most welcoming of bedfellows, but Valve seems to be defrosting that relationship somewhat. The Half Life maker has helped NVIDIA to tweak its 600 series GeForce drivers to reduce games’ loading times when used on Linus’ operating system. The R310 drivers are said to double performance when using Steam for Linux, which openes for beta today, meaning that you can try and survive twice as many zombie apocalypses in Left 4 Dead than you could a week ago.
Attempts to create truly small gaming desktops usually involve at least some kind of performance hit. Even HP’s category-bending Firebird, one of the few stand-out examples, had to use toned-down graphics to succeed in a tiny enclosure. Digital Storm might have broken the trend towards sacrifice with its new Bolt desktop: although it’s just 3.6 inches wide and 14 inches tall, the Bolt can cram in as much as a GeForce GTX 680 and will even let gamers upgrade the graphics like they would in a full-size PC. The seemingly logic-defying (if also finger-defying) case still allows room for as much as an overclocked 4.6GHz Core i7, 16GB of RAM and storage options that meld a spinning hard drive with up to two SSDs and a DVD burner. Digital Storm isn’t even setting an absurd base price, but it’s in the cost that we finally see the catch to the miniaturization tricks. The $999 entry-level Bolt carries a modest 3.1GHz Core i3, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive and GeForce GTX 650 Ti, while it takes a staggering $1,949 to get a fully decked-out Core i7 system with a GTX 680. Those prices might be worthwhile for anyone who has ever strained while lugging a traditional tower to a game tourney.
Who said Apple’s event was all about the little things? Apple just unveiled its first redesign to its iMac desktop in three years. The new all-in-one makes the widely expected leap to Intel’s Ivy Bridge Core i5 and Core i7 processors, but also represents a much leaner and meaner replacement for the 2009-era template — its edges are just 5mm thick, and it’s constructed with “friction stir welding” as well as a gapless, less reflective display that’s laminated together with the glass. Screen sizes remain the same and include both a 21.5-inch, 1080p model and a 27-inch, 2,560 x 1,400 model — sorry, no Retina displays this year. They share 720p-capable front cameras with dual mics as well as NVIDIA’s GeForce 600-era graphics, up to 32GB of RAM and a panoply of storage options that peak at 3TB of spinning storage, a 768GB SSD or what Apple calls a Fusion Drive that mixes both 128GB of flash with 1TB or 3TB of conventional storage (a hybrid drive, for those of us who’ve seen it before). There’s no optical drive unless you plug in a USB option.
The 21.5-inch model ships in November, and will set you back $1,299 for a 2.7GHz Core i5, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive; pony up for the 27-inch model at $1,799 and you’ll get a 2.9GHz Core i5 as well as the same memory and storage. Apple’s larger iMac doesn’t ship until December, however, which will give some impulse buyers at least a brief respite.
It’s time to take a peek at the MAINGEAR Potenza, a desktop gaming machine that’s small enough to fit under your desk if you wish, or sit right up out in the open with its powerful innards hidden by a perfectly stripped-down black and red outer metal body made of anodized aluminum with a steel frame inside. The unit we’ve got here utilizes the fabulous GeForce GTX 660 Ti for graphics, cutting the cost of the final build while it keeps with the Kepler power NVIDIA is known for. The Potenza is a customized (and customizable) machine that places heavy emphasis on hand-constructed and quality-assured building from MAINGEAR’s own highly-skilled staff of PC geniuses – and it shows.
Hardware
This beast is not light in between 20 and 30 pounds, but it’s certainly small at just 14.75 inches tall, 7.5 inches wide, and 9.25 inches deep. You’ve got all metal on the outside with the Maingear logo set up front in red lights cut into the surface. Everything you need to plug in to this system sits up top of the machine with a plastic grill set with large access points made perfect for securing cords as they slide through the area provided on the sides and back of the top area.
This machine was designed specifically for you to have cords coming upwards out of it and/or out the back of the top, certainly made for easy access at a floor level. Though the system can indeed be as simple as the black totem you see here, you can also get it aesthetically enhanced with laser-etched designs, automotive paint jobs, and “over 200 color combinations of internal and external colors” direct from MAINGEAR – go big with Burple, Citrus Fire, or even Organic Green if you dare!
The front and the back of the setup here are easy to remove as the top with pressure-clips holding them in place until you make the effort to pop them off. Inside you’ll find your hard drive and graphics card ready to look at, admire, or replace at will. Everything else is locked in tight – but if you REALLY want to un-do the precision construction here, there’s a multi-tool included in the box.
In fact, the package you get this computer in also includes every bell and whistle that would normally come with the components that make up the the final product as well, just incase you might ever need them. This set of components includes a couple of external antenna that make your wi-fi signal usable – you can do wireless web without them, but the metal makes it a bit less excellent than we’d like. You can also just toss these in the corner, too, as this amalgamation is ready for action right out of the box.
One you get past admiring the free MAINGEAR t-shirt you’ve likely gotten in the package, you’ll be having another peek at what’s under the grill up top. Here you’ll find a riser cutting the array in half, with a space for the power cord to find its way up and out the back area and the power and reset buttons to stay high. This riser also has the headphone and mic ports popping out the top along with two USB 3.0 ports. All of this sneaks its way out through the top grille when its closed down tight.
Besides the riser you’ve got a collection of ports of all kinds: a couple more USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, jacks for Wi-fi antennas, Ethernet, and a couple of powered e-SATA/USB ports. These sit near HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort connections all ready for action. All of this is hidden if you wish it to be, but when you’re making with the massive amount of connections at once, you’ll have an octopus of wires attacking your desk. This isn’t any different from the rest of the desktops out there, of course, but the one-ness of the system without cords can be deceivingly clean looking – you might just want to put the system up on its own on your desk just for the light. It looks that good.
The bottom of this unit has some rubbery bumpers so you’re not scraping metal against your desk or your floor, and the hardcore black power of its appearance demands that you get a monitor (or set of monitors) to match it. The way the unit is situated, you’ll still be able to work with your CD/DVD slot (you can even get a Blu-ray drive if you wish) extremely easily (that’s the slit up front of the unit, if you did not know), and you’ll have no trouble with overheating in any respect.
This unit uses vertical head dissipation with its motherboard rotated 90 degrees so that when heat needs to escape and rises to do so, it can come right out the top easily. It’s got an intake fan mounted at the bottom as well as a self-contained liquid cooler, all of which keeps the system less than hot with only a small amount of sound overall.
Inside this beast you’ve got a set of innards that’ve been custom installed and quality assured by MAINGEAR’s finest. You’ve got an Intel Core i5 (Ivy Bridge, 3rd Gen) processor at 3570k clocked at 3.4GHz/3.8Ghz with Turbo 6MB L3 Cache HD 4000, for starters, and it’s Redline overlocked to boot – that’s a pro job, if you did not know. Keeping it all cool you’ve got a MAINGEAR 120 Supercooler, and right up front you’ve got the beast – an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti – MAINGEAR gives you a vast collection of options in this graphics arena, and we’ve chosen the 660 Ti because of the waves it’s made in recent news blasts. Value with power!
We’ve also got a 30GB Corsair Accelerator SSD Caching Drive, 500GB Seagate 7200rpm hard drive with 16GB Cache SATA, and up front is an 8X Dual Layer DVD RW Drive Slot Loading SATA so you can watch Lord of the Rings – or whatever you do with a DVD drive these days. The motherboard here is made by ASUS, the P8Z77-I Deluxe with Lucid Virtu MVP and those lovely USB 3.0 ports next to SATA 6G, Bluetooth, and wi-fi connections.
Software
Inside this machine you’ll get a rather stripped-down version of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit with so little bloatware you’ll wonder if someone made a mistake and provided you with a dream. You’ve got a couple of shortcuts on your desktop right out of the box that offer you just a bit of added security for your system if you wish, but for the most part you’ve got an operating system that gives you just what you payed for – Windows 7 and the basics. With this you’ll have no cleanup duty to perform before getting down to business with hardcore gaming galore.
Benchmarking
With this system, as it is with all systems we test here on SlashGear, we give it the one-shot test with GeekBench. In addition to this we’ve tested a selection of games from Arkham City to World of Warcraft, each of which performed perfectly well, especially considering the fact that this isn’t the absolute most powerful system we’ve ever had on the testing bench. Performance on this system with maxed-out gear inside have been extremely favorable for the Potenza, and with what we’ve got in this build, we certainly cannot argue the possibilities.
Benchmark Score – System manufacturer System Product Name
Section
Description
Score
Total Score
Windows x86 (64-bit) – Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Integer
Processor integer performance
14279
16450
Floating Point
Processor floating point performance
24757
Memory
Memory performance
9740
Stream
Memory bandwidth performance
8396
If you’re planning on working with this beast with Windows 7 (which is what it comes with right this minute) or with Windows 8 (coming soon), you’ll be busting up skulls without a hitch. You’ll be the belle of the ball with whatever you’re playing too, as any limitation you’ve got here can be modded out if you do so please. Have a peek at some more specifications from inside this build here, as well.
System – System manufacturer System Product Name
Manufacturer
Maingear
Product Type
Desktop
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. P8Z77-I DELUXE
Processor
Intel Core i5-3570K
Processor ID
GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9
Processor Frequency
3.45 GHz
Processors
1
Threads
4
Cores
4
L1 Instruction Cache
32.0 KB
L1 Data Cache
32.0 KB
L2 Cache
256 KB
L3 Cache
6.00 MB
Memory
8.00 GB DDR3 SDRAM 678MHz
FSB
102 MHz
BIOS
American Megatrends Inc. 0504
Wrap-up
The MAINGEAR Potenza has a really good chance of bringing you much more power and performance than you paid for, and the construction of the system – the attention to detail and final product – are nothing to scoff at. The MAINGEAR Potenza is without a doubt one of the finest gaming systems we’ve come across, especially considering the cost. While it wont destroy the gaming universe with perfectly top-tier benchmark smacks with a basic build, it’s certainly one of the best mid-tier gaming desktops you can buy – that’s a category not often attacked – MAINGEAR does it well right here.
The build we’ve got right here will ring in at right around $2,000 – and you’ll start at closer to $1,000 without adding on the beastly bits. You can also ring up quite a bit larger bill with boosts here and there in your own customizations too, so keep that in mind! You get a beast in any case!
NVIDIA has revealed its latest graphics option, the GeForce GTX 650 iI, a $149 video card targeting upgraders looking for the company’s Kepler cleverness. Packing a promised five-times the performance of the GeForce 9600 GT, the GTX 650 Ti supports DirectX 11 and Full HD 1080p, and NVIDIA is even throwing in the promise of a free game for those who go shopping soon.
Buy a GeForce GTX 650 Ti-based video card from one of NVIDIA’s participating retailers, and you’ll get a copy of Assassin’s Creed III free. The game will have 768 CUDA cores to play with, along with a 925MHz GPU clock and 64 texture units, though no access to NVIDIA’s GPU Boost system.
There’s also 1GB of GDDR5 memory, a 128-bit memory bus and 105W TDP. It’s actually based on the same Kepler GK106 that powers NVIDIA’s GTX 660, though pared back somewhat on the specs so as to bring the price down to sit between that card and the GTX 550 Ti.
Connectivity includes a single 6-pin power connector, along with two dual-link DVI ports and a mini HDMI on NVIDIA’s reference design. However, the GPU itself supports up to four displays, though it’s up to manufacturers themselves to equip their versions with the right connectivity.
ASUS, EVGA, Gainward, KFA2 (Galaxy), Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, Palit, PNY, Point of View, and Zotac will all be pushing out video cards based on the GeForce GTX 650 Ti GPU, with availability from today.
If you’re building or upgrading a budget gaming rig, it’ll be hard to ignore the GeForce GTX 650 and 660. Whether or not NVIDIA’s new chipsets are worth the glance is another matter, and early reviews suggest that a sale depends on just which market you’re in. The GTX 660, by far the darling of the review crowd, competes solidly against the Radeon HD 7850 by outrunning AMD’s hardware in most situations while undercutting on the official price. Only a few have taken a look at the lower-end GTX 650, but it’s not as much of a clear-cut purchasing decision — the entry-level video often slots in between the performance of the Radeon HD 7750 and 7770 without the price edge of its bigger brother. Either card is much better value for the money than the GT 640, however, and looks to be a meaningful upgrade if you’re trading up from equivalent prior-generation gear.
NVIDIA’s had some trouble shaving its Kepler GPUs down to an entry-level price point, but it looks to have put the problem behind it with the new GeForce 660 and 650 graphics cards. The company’s ambition was to coax impoverished gamers clinging to DirectX9 (and to a lesser extent, 10) into switching up to this wallet-friendly pair of low-end units.
The 660 has been designed to be the “weapon of choice” for budget gamers. It’ll play most games at reasonably high settings, thanks to its 2GB of RAM, 960 CUDA Cores and GPU Boost, which automatically overclocks the silicon according to the demands of your software. While we’ll wait for real-world benchmarks, the company expects four-times the performance of the GeForce 9800GT, claiming games like Borderlands 2 and Guild Wars 2, in a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 will play at frame rates of 51fps and 41fps with full 3D, respectively
The 650 is the company’s self-proclaimed “gateway” into gaming, being the lowest-priced Kepler it’s planning to produce. Unlike the other cards in the range, it lacks GPU Boost, but the company left six-pin power on the card, giving card makers 64W to push the “good overclocker” 1GHz units all the way to 1.2GHz. It’s got 1GB of DDR5 RAM, which will apparently handle even the newest games at mid-range levels of detail with its 384 CUDA Cores. The pair are available from today, with companies like Maingear and Origin already announcing discounted desktops for them to nestle inside.
Whenever there’s a new video card or processor, Maingear is almost always on the scene with an upgrade — sometimes within seconds of its hardware partners. A plan to use NVIDIA’s new GeForce GTX 650 and 660 graphics chips from day one proves that rule in style, although Maingear is going the distance with some incentives beyond just shiny parts. Along with making the mid-tier GeForce technology an option for every desktop, the PC builder is offering special GTX 650 and 660 versions of its F131 and Potenza gaming rigs that knock as much as $150 off the price. The base prices of $949 for the limited-run Potenza and $1,199 for the F131 keep either system in serious gamer territory and preclude us from calling them tremendous bargains. Nonetheless, it’s difficult to grouse very loudly: it’s not often that a price drop and a hardware upgrade walk hand in hand.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
