Hasta La Gadget!

Say hello to NVIDIA’s GF106 core (please pretend you’ve never met before). The company’s third Fermi desktop iteration is described as “a little more than half of the GF104 implementation,” which in real terms means 192 CUDA cores versus the GTX 460‘s 336, reduced memory bandwidth with a 128-bit-wide bus and a lower number of ROPs at 16. These disadvantages are ameliorated by 783MHz graphics and 1566MHz processor clock speeds as well as a much more forgiving power profile — the new GTS 450 cards will require just the one 6-pin power connector for auxiliary juice. Pricing is aimed squarely at conquering the market currently occupied by ATI’s HD 5750, which, as we saw over the weekend, plants the 450 around the $130 mark. You’ll have to read the reviews below for confirmation, but NVIDIA promises “awesome” overclocking headroom on its new card, going as far as to suggest stable 900MHz graphics clocks aren’t out of the realm of possibility.

Read – HardOCP
Read – Tech Report
Read – Guru 3D
Read – PC Perspective
Read – Legit Reviews
Read – Hot Hardware
Read – TweakTown

Continue reading NVIDIA makes GeForce GTS 450 official, promises beastly overclocking

NVIDIA makes GeForce GTS 450 official, promises beastly overclocking originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You might have hoped that NVIDIA’s introduction of the 400M series of mobile GPUs would bring about a slew of hot new laptops to drop into our gaming boudoirs, but we are in fact left facing more of the same. Externally, anyhow. The chipmaker rolled out the green carpet for a set of upcoming machines in London today, but they were refreshes, rather than overhauls, of current hardware. The big news is to be found within, as the new GTX 460M has made a home inside the updated ASUS G53, Toshiba Qosmio X505, and MSI GT663. The common thread among these three is that they’re all big and hefty, and all emit a subtle vroom sound every time you touch them. What we learned from NVIDIA today is that the GTX 480M will remain an exotic (you might even call it quixotic) GPU reserved for large-screen gaming stations, the GTX 470M will similarly be an enthusiast part, and the GTX 460M will be the company’s big play for the mainstream performance market. It also became clear that even the third GPU in the company’s mobile hierarchy will need quite a bulky cooling setup (and a proportionately huge charger) to do its job, but NVIDIA’s promises of much-improved performance might just make it worthwhile.

As to the more sane among us, there was a selection of pleasingly thinner machines, like the ASUS N53 and Acer Aspire 5745, which make do with the lower-specced GT 420M and GT 425M graphics chips. Those are expected to be NVIDIA’s biggest sellers, and the video demo after the break of the 425M churning through StarCraft II is certainly appealing. We should note, however, that the latest (though definitely not greatest) Prince of Persia game was also on tap on one of these machines and its frame rate gave us a delightful old-timey feeling any time we entered combat with its emulation of stop-motion animation. So, as ever, it’s looking like great graphics will require great rigs, but we can probably expect a decent — not game-changing (get it?) — leap in performance among the lighter options as well.

Continue reading NVIDIA trots out GeForce 400M series laptops, shows off StarCraft II gameplay (video)

NVIDIA trots out GeForce 400M series laptops, shows off StarCraft II gameplay (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not everybody needs the world’s fastest mobile GPU, so NVIDIA is sagely trickling down its Fermi magic to more affordable price points today. The 400M family is being fleshed out with five new midrange parts — GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M, to give them their gorgeous names — and a pair of heavy hitters known as the GTX 470M and GTX 460M. Features shared across the new range include a 40nm fab process, DirectX 11, CUDA general-purpose computing skills, PhysX, and Optimus graphics switching. 3D Vision and 3DTV Play support will be available on all but the lowest two variants. NVIDIA claims that, on average, the 400M graphics cards are 40 percent faster than their 300M series counterparts, and since those were rebadges of the 200M series, we’re most definitely willing to believe that assertion. Skip past the break for all the vital statistics, and look out for almost all (HP is a notable absentee, while Apple is a predictable one) the big-time laptop vendors to have gear bearing the 4xxM insignia soon.

Continue reading NVIDIA GTX 470M highlights rollout of 400M mobile GPU series

NVIDIA GTX 470M highlights rollout of 400M mobile GPU series originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’d think with ATI having the performance, value and power efficiency lead for so long — at least since the Radeon HD 4000 series — NVIDIA would be in all kinds of trouble, but it’s only now that AMD’s graphics division has finally taken the lead in quarterly shipments. This is according to Mercury Research, whose analysts place the split at 51 to 49 percent in favor of ATI — still a tightly contested thing, but it compares very favorably to the Red Team’s 41% share in the same quarter last year. This data is concerned with discrete GPU shipments only (laptops included), whereas on the integrated front Intel continues to reign supreme with 54 percent of the market shipping its cheap and cheerful IGP units. ATI has made forward strides there as well, however, with 24.5% ranking ahead of NVIDIA’s 19.8%. If Apple shifting its iMac and Mac Pro lines away from the Green livery wasn’t enough, perhaps these numbers will finally start ringing some alarm bells over at NV HQ.

[Thanks, Zubayer]

ATI overtakes NVIDIA in discrete GPU shipments originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll be honest with you, we thought the GTX 480 was finally a graphics core too damn large and power-hungry to get the dual-GPU treatment. ASUS, however, is making us think again. Imagery has emerged of a Mars 2 (or II, if you’re into outdated numbering schemes) reference board that fits two 480s on its densely populated surface, and is fed by not one, not two, but three 8-pin auxiliary power connectors. Back when Galaxy showed off a dual-GTX 470 prototype at Computex a month ago, we deemed it an unreasonable proposition — in terms of power draw, heat dissipation, and cost — but apparently those Taiwanese focus groups are really into their extravagantly overpowered video cards. We suspect if and when this Mars 2 hits retail it’ll do so in a highly exclusive fashion, like its predecessor, and anticipate the unveiling of its cooler — which is likely to be either the biggest or best engineered one we’ve seen yet.

ASUS Mars 2 teases superpowered dual GeForce GTX 480 goodness originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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