Hasta La Gadget!

Crystal dynamic’s reboot of Tomb Raider has become a big hit in the gaming industry, receiving top marks and rave reviews from game sites all around the web. The game has been praised for its stunning graphics, simple game play, riveting story, and convincing protagonist. While the game is already great, NVIDIA has found a way to make the game even more so. It has released the GeForce 314.21 drivers that will dramatically improve your Tomb Raider gameplay.

NVIDIA had planned on releasing its GeForce GTX Driver support for Tomb Raider during Day 1 of the game’s launch, however the company didn’t receive the game on time to do so. It’s better late than never, and NVIDIA graphics card owners are still grateful that NVIDIA followed through with its support. The company promises that its new 314.21 drivers will improve game performance by about 45%-60%.

The company measured the performance boost on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 at both the 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions. Many users have also stated that they’ve seen dramatic boosts in performances in their games. One user stated that his GTX 580 SLI received a 49% boost in performance, with frame rates in the game jumping from 50.3FPS to 74.9FPS on the Ultimate preset.

NVIDIA does really well in updating its drivers. Just a couple of weeks ago, the company launched its 314.14 beta drivers that’s optimized for a variety of games including StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, SimCity, Hawken PhysX, and Resident Evil 6 (which will launch on the PC March 22nd). With its 314.21 updated drivers, the best GPU company is able to improve on one of the best games this year so far.

[via NVIDIA]

Tomb Raider gains NVIDIA GeForce GTX Driver support is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Remember the Titan supercomputer? Back in November, it became the world’s fastest supercomputer, and it’s powered by NVIDIA chips. Now you can get a piece of Titan in your own home because NVIDIA has announced the GTX Titan graphics card, a $1,000 GPU that sports 2,688 CUDA cores, 6GB of GDDR5 RAM, and 7.1 billion transistors.

NVIDIA says that the new GTX Titan graphics card is “powered by the fastest GPU on the planet,” which we certainly can’t refute at this point. The graphics card itself is huge, measuring in at 10.5-inch long, and it’s capable of pushing 4,500 Gigaflops, which is quite impressive if we do say so ourselves.

However, the GTX Titan falls just a tad short of NVIDIA’s current top-tier offering, the GTX 690, as far as raw specs and computing power are concerned, but efficiency is where the Titan really shines. The GTX Titan features over a thousand more CUDA cores than the GTX 690, but it requires less power, as well as generates less heat and runs quieter overall.

As far as availability goes, NVIDIA The Titan GPU will be available starting on February 25 from various partners, including ASUS, eVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI, at a price of around $1,000, which certainly isn’t going to want you to make an impulse purchase, but if you’re looking for supercomputer-like speeds with your gaming rig, this card may be well worth it.

NVIDIA unveils GTX Titan GPU with supercomputer performance is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

One of the most interesting customizable systems to ever come from the team at Velocity Micro is here this week: the Raptor MultiPlex, complete with gaming and home theater features made to blow the market apart. This beast is meant to bring Velocity Micro into the world of both home theater aficionados and those that want the best of the best in gaming hardware. It all begins with a lovely solid aluminum case and output made for top of the line 1080p presentations for your HDTV.

This machine works with an ASUS P8Z77-V Pro Motherboard with the ability to connect to your peripherals with Thunderbolt. Attached you’ll find a lovely Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor (3rd gen, of course, Ivy Bridge it is), and 16GB DRR3-2133 memory. Your setup in its out of the box form will work with an NVIDIA GTX600 series graphics processing card and will be more than ready to take on all next-generation games throughout 2013 – and beyond!

You’ll find Intel 520 series solid state boot drives in this amalgamation of greatness along with up to three 2TB Hard Drives configured to be tough in RAID 5. Each system works with Windows 8 Pro and is ready and willing to act as your premiere home theater controller. The Raptor MultiPlex works with Digital TV tuners able to work with up to 4 recordings concurrently.

You’ll also be working with S/PDIF out for High Definition 9.1 Channel audio and will be able to play Blu-rays at 1080p via PowerDVD12. Most of these options are also upgradable – pick up an NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti, 670, or 680 if you’re feeling like you want to break out with the nicest of the nice. The base price for this setup is $1,849 USD, and you’ll be able to upgrade across the board straight from the Velocity Micro online shop – go big!

Velocity Micro Raptor MultiPlex merges home theater with gaming prowess is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Earnings may be down slightly sequentially for the graphics and mobile CPU powerhouse, but things are still looking good compared to the same period last year. For the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013 NVIDIA is reporting $1.1 billion in revenue, a small dip from last quarter’s record $1.2 billion, but up from 2012’s $950 million. That’s an increase of 16.1 percent year-over-year and, perhaps most importantly, net income was up 50 percent to $174 million. That does, however, mark a significant drop from Q3’s $209 million in profits. Still, while it didn’t offer specific numbers in its press release (those may come during the company’s earnings call later today), NVIDIA declared that its Tegra business was continuing to grow. And its GPU division continued to put up impressive numbers, raking in $3.2 billion for the year, despite a sagging PC market. If you’d like to dig into all the financial particulars check out the PR after the break.

Update: In its earnings call, NVIDIA said Tegra products for smartphones and tablets, which include recent Windows RT models, have risen 50 percent year-over-year to around $540 million. NVIDIA is also currently sampling 4G LTE modems with its Tegra 4 processor, which was announced at CES this year. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that “LTE modems will allow Tegra to enter into new markets where LTE is necessary.” Later in the call, Huang gave praise to the much-hyped Project Shield, stating that the portable console will be a great companion device for GeForce, thus enhancing their case for the GPU. “We have more than just Android application processors,” he said. “We have Android, we have Windows RT, we have Shield. Tegra is not just for smartphones.”

Nicole Lee contributed to this report.

Filed under: NVIDIA

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Having found some of the most recent Free to Play games out on the market today to be undeniably awesome, NVIDIA has decided to stoke the fire with a set of F2P Bundles with their GeForce GPUs. When you purchase a GeForce GTX graphics card (as long as it’s 650 or above) you also get a set of in-game credits for three of the most excellent FPS games in play today. These games are Planetside 2, World of Tanks, and everyone’s favorite mech warrior free-for-all: Hawken!

Each of the games included in this release are and continue to be free for you to download and play with or without a purchase from NVIDIA – what you’re getting here is cash inside each game. Each of the games here is free to download and play, making a profit from in-game purchases that include feature upgrades, personalization of in-game elements, and oddities galore.

But it’s not just the free-to-play fad’s popularity in and of itself that NVIDIA is aiming for, it’s the situation this inflicts. Millions of users play these games with below-recommended hardware, meaning they’re nowhere near the optimal experience these games are able to present. With a GeForce GPU, they’ll get heavy bumps.

With World of Tanks you’ll be getting a big boost in graphics power – not that you’d need to be working with a top-power GeForce card to make this game work, but with an upgrade to a GeForce GTX GPU, you’ll have much more realistic gameplay and, when you get down and dirty with the stats, straight up higher FPS. Planetside 2 is a game you’ll be jumping into with massive boosts in usability as you jump into the GTX range of processors – there’s really no comparing 10FPS and 60+FPS when you’re hunting on alien worlds.

Then there’s Hawken, which benefits directly from NVIDIA’s own PhysX technology. Have a peek at the difference in gameplay with PhysX on and off in the demonstration video below. Also be sure to check our Hawken review to find out more about this beastly game.

The two deals up for grabs here are as follows: purchase a GeForce GTX 650 / 650 Ti and you’ll get $25 for each of the three games, equaling $75 in-game credit total. With a purchase of a GeForce GTX 660 or higher, you’ll get $50 in in-game credit for each of the three games above, that equalling out to be $150 USD. In both cases that credit is at least 75% of the original cost of the card – so if you’d have otherwise been spending that cash in-game, you’re golden!

NVIDIA grasps “Free to Play” explosion with GeForge F2P Bundles is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.