Hasta La Gadget!

NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience isn’t a baby anymore – several months in and 2.5 million downloads since this system’s introduction and eventual public beta release, this game optimizing control center will replace the company’s “NVIDIA Update” system as the standard. In each driver package included with a GeForce graphics card, the GeForce Experience will be packaged, starting this week with the R320 GeForce GTX 780 launch driver.

The NVIDIA GeForce Experience will be released in version 1.5 this week as well, bumping the number of games supported to 70 and ushering in support for the newest graphics hardware on the market with the GTX 780. This release will be the first in which the GeForce Experience is packaged with a driver, but will be retro-fit to all systems supported being released in the future – where applicable.

The GeForce Experience is now well out of beta, acting as both a user interface through which a gamer’s check and update to the newest GeForce drivers is made simple and providing a place where games can be optimized instantly.

The big deal with the GeForce Experience is the gamer’s ability to one-step optimize their game settings to the best they can be given their computer’s abilities. This system is made for two kinds of people playing games:

1. Users who know what some of the setting available to them are, but not the whole lot, and want to optimize their gaming experience.

2. Users who want to optimize their gaming experience and have no idea what the vast majority of the settings are – or mean – in each game.

For each of the 70 games optimized uniquely by NVIDIA graphics and performance specialists, maximizing image quality “while maintaining great performance” is literally as easy as clicking the button “optimize.”

NVIDIA has also let it be known that they’ll be releasing new features for the GeForce Experience later this summer, one of them being Optimal Playable Settings (OPS) Customization – this means you’ll be able to bump up a setting here, knock another down here, and the system will compensate and act accordingly. More than just “this is best” will be available to you once this customization feature is released.

This summer users will also see support for NVIDIA SHIELD. This little mobile device will have its own connection on your PC, rather than having its own Android application, this allowing you to optimize the full-powered network-streamed games it’s capable of playing straight from the source – but optimized for SHIELD. Further details surrounding unique SHIELD options will be coming soon.

Finally there’s ShadowPlay, another “later this summer” update. This release is essentially “TIVO for games”, as one NVIDIA representative puts it, allowing you to record video of your system constantly and select segments you’d like to save. ShadowPlay will use Kepler graphics driver technology to record 20 minute segments at a time, allowing you to keep what you want and toss the rest – all through the GeForce Experience.

GeForce Experience replaces “NVIDIA Update” as graphics driver standard is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As NVIDIA continues its journey down the gaming road with software specifics such as the GeForce Experience, so too do they continue to tweak and empower their graphics cards – like the GeForce GTX 780, for instance. This week the GTX 780 has been revealed with much of the same hardware delivered in the GeForce GTX TITAN, but with slight differences that make it just a little bit less expensive and, as NVIDIA has informed us, “more of a pure gaming focus card than TITAN.”

The GeForce GTX 780 works with the same GK110 GPU used in the GeForce GTX TITAN. Inside are 12 SMX units bringing 2,304 CUDA cores, along with six 64-bit memory controllers (that’s 384-bit) with 3GB of GDDR5 memory – that’s 50% more of each than the GTX 680 delivered.

This memory interface also delivers up to 288.4GB/second peak memory bandwidth to the GPU. Like TITAN, this card is meant to run next-generation technology such as WaveWorks and FaceWorks, each of these demoed at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference earlier this year.

GeForce GTX 780 works with a base clock speed of 863MHz while a typical Boost Clock speed works at 900MHz. This number comes from an average found by NVIDIA running “a wide variety of games and applications”, while the actual Boost Clock speed will depend completely on your actual system conditions. Memory speed on the 780 is noted at a 6008MHz.

The GeForce GTX 780 works with a new Adaptive Temperature Controller – working here with NVIDIA’s GPU Boost 2.0, fan speed will be adjusted up or down “as needed” to maintain a temperature of 80C. With the Adaptive Temperature Controller working on the GTX 780, an adaptive temperature filter eliminates “unnecessary” fan fluctuations with an advanced RPM and temperature targeted control algorithm.

The software solution that allows this control will be available on the NVIDIA reference design for the GTX 780 as well as to partners who wish to implement it on their fans. Expect a bit more of a smooth ride with this feature implemented on your card – TITAN quiet.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 is build to work with, again, the same die as the GTX TITAN, but here has no extra double-precision floating-bit. Users will be working with around a 70% performance upgrade over the GTX 580, and an overall experience that’s consistent with gamers wanting to blast out maximum graphics settings and screen resolutions with high levels of AA to boot.

The NVIDIA-made GeForce GTX 780 reference board is 10.5-inches in length and works with two dual-link DVIs, one DisplayPort connector, and a full-sized HDMI out. Users will need to power this amalgamation with one 6-pin PCIe power connector and one 8-pin PCIe power connector.

THe NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780′s pricing sits at $649 USD and this will be the first card delivered with NVIDIA giving manufacturers the GeForce Experience to include on their install disks. While the GeForce Experience is an entirely optional system to install, and it’s completely free to download from the web either way, this release does mark the first point at which NVIDIA is formally pushing the GeForce Experience as an interface they recommend to anyone and everyone working with GeForce hardware and a love for one-button graphics and performance optimization for games.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 delivers TITAN die with a “pure gaming focus” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

You probably won’t have noticed the following problem, unless you happen to be the IT manager in an architecture firm or other specialist environment, but it’s been an issue nonetheless. For all our ability to virtualize compute and graphical workloads, it hasn’t so far been possible to share a single GPU core across multiple users. For example, if you’d wanted 32 people on virtual machines to access 3D plumbing and electrical drawings via AutoCAD, you’d have needed to dedicate eight expensive quad-core K1 graphics cards in your GRID server stack. Now, though, NVIDIA has managed to make virtualization work right the way through to each GPU core for users of Citrix XenDesktop 7, such that you’d only need one K1 to serve that workforce, assuming their tasks were sufficiently lightweight. Does this mean NVIDIA’s K1 sales will suddenly drop by seven eighths? We couldn’t tell ya — but probably not.

Filed under: Networking, Software, NVIDIA

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AMD might have already unveiled their HD 8000M series graphics back in December and at CES 2013, but they left out a certain chip in particular and saved it for today. The company unveiled the Radeon HD 8970M, which they claim is the world’s fastest laptop graphics chip, saying that it outpaces NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 680M graphics.

The new chip features AMD’s new “Graphics Core Next” architecture, and it’s quite a big jump up from the company’s HD 8800M series. The 8970M features 1,280 stream processors, and a clock speed of 850MHz with a memory speed of 1.2GHz. The new chip should be able to handle pretty much any new game you throw at it on your laptop.

As for the first laptop to get the new 8970M, it’ll be the MSI GX70, which will come with an AMD A10 quad-core processor, Eyefinity support, Killer gaming network card, and will have a 17.3-inch display with a 1920×1080 resolution. However, we should be seeing more laptops with the new graphics chip later this year, possibly next month at Computex.

Of course, you’ll be paying a pretty penny for any machine that will run AMD’s latest graphics chip, with the GX70 most likely exceeding well over $1,000, but they also have slower 8000M series chips that the company unveiled in January, including the 8500M, 8600M, and the 8700M. Of course, the 8500M may not live up to AMD’s 8970M chip, but the 384 stream processors along with the 650MHz clock speed and 1,125MHz memory speed should keep you humming along with most games while on the go.

AMD Radeon HD 8970M claims world’s fastest laptop graphics crown is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The age of underpowered integrated notebook graphics is over. Prepare your eyes for awesome. Intel announced Wednesday that its fourth-gen Intel Core Haswell processors will include its new Iris Graphics technology. What this means in something other than marketing-speak is …