Hasta La Gadget!

It’s taken NVIDIA a mighty long time to squeeze its Kepler GPU into something more affordable than the GTX 670, but it’s finally happened — the mid-range GTX 660 Ti is out and available to purchase for $299 on boards from EVGA, Gigabyte, ASUS and the usual suspects. Some buyers may complain that’s $50 more than the 560 Ti, while others will no doubt be reeling off their CVV codes already. For its part, NVIDIA claims the 660 Ti is the “best card per watt ever made” and that it beats even AMD’s higher-priced Radeon HD 7950 at 1920 x 1080. Check out the slide deck below for official stats, as well as for examples of what the card can do with its support for DirectX 11 tessellation, PhysX (particularly on Borderlands 2, which you may well find bundled free) and NVIDIA’s TXAA anti-aliasing.

We’ll wait for independent benchmarks in our review round-up before making any judgment, but in the meantime it’s fair to say that this 150-watt card comes fully featured. For a start, it has just as many 28nm CUDA cores as the GTX 670, the same base and GPU Boost clock speeds, the same 2GB of GDDR5 and indeed the same connectivity. The only sacrifice is memory bandwidth: all that computational performance is limited by a 192-bit memory bus, compared to the 256-bit width of the 670. Judging from those specs, we’d expect it to be almost 670-like in performance, and that’s going to be pretty impressive.

Continue reading NVIDIA announces $299 GeForce GTX 660 Ti, lets Kepler walk among the people

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

NVIDIA announces $299 GeForce GTX 660 Ti, lets Kepler walk among the people originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA’s fiscal performance in its second quarter shows the rewards of patience in the mobile sphere. It just saw its profit double versus a glum first quarter to $119 million, even though the company only slightly edged ahead in revenue to $1.04 billion. In explaining the success, the company is quick to point to a confluence of events that all worked in favor of its bank account: a slew of Tegra 3 phones and tablets like the Transformer Pad TF300 made NVIDIA’s quarter the brightest, but it could also point to a much-expanded GeForce 600 line on the PC side and the shipments of the first phones with NVIDIA-badged Icera chips. The graphics guru expects its revenue to climb more sharply in the heat of the third quarter as well — between the cult hit Nexus 7 tablet and a role as a major partner for Windows RT, NVIDIA has at least a temporary license to print money.

Continue reading NVIDIA Q2 earnings bounce back through Tegra: $119 million profit on $1.04 billion in revenue

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Tablet PCs

NVIDIA Q2 earnings bounce back through Tegra: $119 million profit on $1.04 billion in revenue originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 17:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Think those are some pretty slick graphics in your Galaxy S III? Samsung’s latest smartphone packs some mighty graphics prowess of its own, thanks to the Mali-400 MP GPU, but once you spend a few minutes with the Mali-T604, the company’s next-generation chipset, the improvements become quite clear. After seeing the Mali-T604 in action, as we did at SIGGRAPH today, the capabilities leave us hopeful for the future, and perhaps feeling a bit self-conscious about the silicon currently in our pockets. The reference device on hand was operating in sync with a variety of unnamed hardware, protected from view in a relatively large sealed box. We weren’t able to squeeze many details out of ARM reps, who remained mum about the demo components, including clock speed, manufacturer and even fabrication size. What we do know is that we were looking at a quad-core Mali-T604 and dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 processor, with a fabrication size in the range of “28 to 40 nanometers” (confirming the exact size would reveal the manufacturer). Clock speed is also TBD, and the early silicon on demo at the show wasn’t operating anywhere close to its top end.

In order to experience the T604, we took a look at three demos, including Timbuktu 2, which demonstrates elements like self shadowing and depth of field with OpenGL ES 3.0, Hauntheim, which gives us an early look at physics simulation and HDR lighting with OpenCL, and Enlighten, which rendered silky smooth real-time illumination. You can see all of the demos in action after the break, and you can expect T604-equipped devices to make their debut beginning later this year — ARM says its working with eight manufacturers to get the licensed tech to market as early as Q3.

Continue reading ARM’s Mali-T604 makes official debut, we get a first look at the next-gen GPU (hands-on video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Displays, Gaming, Tablet PCs

ARM’s Mali-T604 makes official debut, we get a first look at the next-gen GPU (hands-on video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Most of us experience the Los Angeles Convention Center during one of its most chaotic weeks of the year, when tens of thousands of gaming industry manufacturers, video game designers and consumers descend upon downtown LA for the annual E3 expo, booth-babe radar tweaked to 11. There’s a hint of graphics prowess amid the halls this week, too, albeit on a vastly smaller scale, and with a heavy heap of civility. SIGGRAPH is a trade event through and through, with attendees demonstrating their latest tech, taking in a handful of seminars or hunting for networking opportunities, in search of employment and partnerships. It’s often also a venue for product launches, which is what’s brought us out, along with the usual bounty of kooky creations that serve to entertain and lighten the mood. As always, we’ll be bringing you a little bit of everything over the next few days, letting you sample the best of SIGGRAPH from the comfort of your own device — head over to our SIGGRAPH 2012 tag to follow along.

Filed under: Announcements

We’re live from SIGGRAPH 2012 in Los Angeles! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Aug 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This month the epic court war of Apple vs Samsung is taking place and the newest battle is in: Apple is presenting a set of slides which accuse Samsung of straight up copying their designs for mobile device icons. In each of the following slides (included in this post) you’ll find Apple’s presentation (via CNET) to be quite convincing in some areas and perhaps a bit of a reach in others. It’s all up to your own senses, of course, until the jury is able to reach a conclusion of their own in this massive and multi-faceted case.

First have a peek at what could be an undeniable theft or, if Samsung is able to convince the jury, an incredible coincidence. This is the Telephone app icon for the iPhone – which still exists today – as it appeared on the first iPhone. Below the image, as it is with the rest of the examples as well, Apple shows a collection of Samsung devices with their icon of choice for the Samsung Android version of the Telephone app. Green icon with a white landline-type phone aiming upward and to the right.

Next is the iTunes trademark as compared to Samsung’s choice of a CD with a music note in front of it. This is a bit of an odd one because Apple’s icon for iOS (on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch) is actually more of a music note in a white circle than it is an iTunes logo. Apple presents their original trademark application image for the iTunes logo to the right of the mobile icon for comparison to Samsung’s collection below.

Next is the Settings icon from iOS being compared to the Samsung Settings icon on everything from the Captivate to the Galaxy S II. One might ask one’s self why the gear is being claimed by Apple when it should be clear that the base Android system the Samsung devices in question were built on also had a gear for its own shortcut to Settings. Have a peek first at the Apple comparison to Samsung, then to an icons pack from an early version of Android: version 1.6 Donut.

There’s a Notes app in both the iPhone and each of the Samsung devices Apple is showing in this next slide. This is where things get a bit more suspicious once again as not only are the colors replicated rather closely, but the lined yellow paper looks the same as well. Why on earth neither company went for the more obvious sticky-notes type icon, we cannot say!

The Photos icon comparison between iOS and the Galaxy line of Samsung smartphones is a bit odd as there is indeed a flower in both of the options – but they’re sized quite differently. Apple’s icon is a clear image of a sunflower on a blue sky background while Samsung chose to have flower pedals shown with two photos of those pedals sitting on to, with a play button on top of the stack as well.

Finally there’s the Contacts icon as presented by Apple (as it is with the rest of these slides) with the original iOS icon up top and a collection of Samsung Galaxy smartphones below. Though the color scheme here isn’t the same, it’s quite clear that both of these groups grabbed inspiration from the same source. OR that one saw the other at some point and decided to make good.

Make your own judgements here and let us know if you feel that Apple or Samsung – or both – were wronged in how similar their mobile device icons look to one another. It’s no small accusation saying that a design was copied directly from your own, and we hope neither company is taking any of this situation lightly.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see additional insights into this case and stay tuned as Apple and Samsung cut each-other to shreds over the coming weeks and months.

Samsung “icon theft” images shown by Apple is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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