Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve been following NVIDIA’s news blasts this past week, you know that they’ve revealed their next-generation chipset to be working with CUDA-capable GPUs. What’s more, you’ll have a bit of an idea what that means for mobile devices, the computing power they’ll have extremely soon, and you’ll be pumped up about that power coming to smart vehicles through their new developer program. This new developer kit goes by the name NVIDIA Jetson Development Platform – available to you right this minute!

This new platform is a big ol’ amalgamation of metal and plastic, power and next-generation precision. What developers in the smart segment of the next generation of our everyday road-ready vehicles will be doing with this beast is optimizing their ideas for the processing power of NVIDIA’s Tegra processors. Automakers will be able to work with this proof-of-concept in a tiny 1-DIN form that fits in a car stereo slot.

Jetson Development Platform package:

• Jetson main board
• Tegra VCM with automotive-grade Tegra 3 mobile processor
• Embedded Breakout Board (EBB) with a wide range of connectivity options
• NVIDIA CUDA-capable discrete GPU
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth module, and GPS antennas
• 64 GB mSATA Drive
• Touchscreen display and cables
• Power supply and cables
• USB cable (mini-USB to USB)
• HDMI to DVI cable

With the 1-DIN model of the Jetson, you’ll have the performance of a beastly NVIDIA Tegra VCM combined with the excellence of a Kepler-glass GPU. This GPU supports CUDA as well as OpenCV so any and all developers creating software for this setup will be able to do so with the following visual-based technologies:

• Pedestrian Detection
• Lane Departure Warnings
• Collision Avoidance

This development kit is made not just to make the developer’s job awesome with the processing power of Tegra and Kepler, but to make their job as easy as possible so they can concentrate on what matters most – making their ideas a reality. Jetson is designed to help automakers overcome three key challenges, too, each of them allowing for quicker and easier implementation of forward-thinking technologies.

NVIDIA’s Jetson Development Platform does the following:

1) Simplifies and streamlines the development of advanced driver assistance and connected car technologies.

2) Accelerates the transition to each new generation of mobile SoC, enabling automakers to better keep pace with the rapid innovation cycle in consumer electronics.

3) Reduces the number of processors and independent silver boxes needed to develop infotainment, navigation, computer vision and driver assistance capabilities.

Sound pretty good to you? Have a peek at the timeline we’ve laid out below for all the NVIDIA action you can handle from this past week alone! NVIDIA is ramping up for not just GPUs in your most masterful gaming desktop computers, not just for some of the most powerful mobile processor architectures in the mobile universe for your superphones and tablets, but for next-generation smart vehicles of all kinds, soon and very soon!

NVIDIA Jetson Development Platform hits smart cars with CUDA and Kepler power is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

AVADirect is now offering the newly unveiled NVIDIA GTX Titan graphics processing unit in its high-quality, custom-built computers. AVA Direct is a custom computer manufacturer that builds high-end computers designed to meet the latest and greatest in the advances of computer technology. They’re on the same line as other custom system manufacturers like Cyberpower, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest, Geekbox, IBUYPOWER, Maingear, Origin PC, Puget Systems, V3 Gaming, and Velocity Micro.

So you can expect that when NVIDIA announced the Titan, AVADirect was all over it. The NVIDIA GTX Titan GPU includes and improves existing NVIDIA features, like NVIDIA adaptive veritical sync and NVIDIA Surround. It offers support for 3-way SLI and support for up to 4 displays. It also supports up to 4k resolutions and the DirectX 11.1 API. The GPU will cost $999, have 2,688 CUDA cores, 6GB of GDDR5 RAM, and 7.1 billion transistors.

The NVIDIA GTX Titan is a very powerful, and very efficient GPU, one that NVIDIA claims as “the most powerful GPU on the planet”. It is designed with pro-gaming in mind and will meet all the needs of even the most demanding games out there, like Crysis 3. The Titan will be one of the greatest tools in any pro-gamer’s arsenal.

Of course, at the $1000 price-tag, the Titan won’t be for everyone. AVADirect, however, will offer the Titan in customized computer builds that will still be relatively affordable. Its goal is to get the GPU to as many consumers as possible, because while it may be a highly coveted, powerful GPU, it shouldn’t be unattainable. Check AVADirect’s site out in the coming days to see its updated system configurations. Also, check out the timeline below to check the latest news regarding NVIDIA’s innovations.

[via AVADirect]

AVADirect is now offering the NVIDIA GTX Titan GPU is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the teams behind the NVIDIA GeForce Experience have unleashed the Open Beta version of the software, available for download by not just the select few (40,000 users, to be fair), but the greater public – you can grab it now! This Open Beta allows you access to the one and only GeForce Experience, a system where the teams of professionals and undeniably powerfully-minded graphics know-it-alls of NVIDIA’s GeForce ranks have for you sets of optimizations for the games you play all the time. In short: your PC games are about to get a whole lot more awesome.

This release has a limited number of games for which you’ll be able to get next-level optimization on your own GeForce-toting gaming PC. This release pumps up the availability of optimization beyond what the closed beta offered, with both Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPU support now ready for action. NVIDIA also added 2560 x 1440 display resolution support this time around – that having not been part of the closed beta release either.

With the GeForce Experience Open Beta you’ll see improved game detection logic as well as a collection of 41 games ready to look and work as magnificent as they’ve ever been on your machine. Having added FarCry 3, Mechwarrior Online, and the battle action heavy Hawken for this release, GeForce Experience is now able to work with 41 total titles. The rest are as follows:

Assassin’s Creed 3, Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Counter-Strike:GO, CrossFire: Rival Factions, Crysis 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Diablo III, Dirt 3, DOTA 2, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, F1 2012, Fable III, Fallout New Vegas, Far Cry 3, FIFA 12, FIFA 13, Football Manager 2013, Hitman Absolution, League of Legends, Left 4 Dead 2, Mass Effect 3, Max Payne 3, Mechwarrior Online, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Planetside 2, Portal 2, Shogun 2: Total War, Star Wars The Old Republic, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Team Fortress 2, The Secret World, The Sims 3, The Sims Medieval, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, World Of Tanks, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

The actual app and usage therein is beyond simple. Once you’ve got it downloaded and open, you hit the scan button to see if there are any games on your machine that are part of the current list the GeForce Experience works with. The machine we’ve used here is an Alienware M17x R4 (see our full review here), and on it we’ve got none other than Batman: Arkham City (see our full review here) which the GeForce Experience software recognizes easily.

From there it’s just a button click or two more before we’ve got full NVIDIA-approved optimization of our settings, based entirely on the hardware/software combination we’ve got and ready for the best-case-scenario outcome when we kick out the gaming jams.

And that’s it! The simplicity of this app is part of the experience, the GeForce Experience being one that’s meant to be beyond simple. This environment makes certain everyone takes the time to optimize their machines with as easy a process as possible so that NVIDIA’s GeForce graphics can do their work as well as possible – and everything looks and handles hot!

This release includes upgrades in performance for client startup, game scan, billboard display, and nothing less than straight up communication with NVIDIA as well. If you’re all about getting some fantastic support for your games straight from NIVIDA, it’s time you headed over to the GeForce Experience Beta download page and had at it. This release works with Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, and is just 9.16 MB in file size – make it yours!

Bonus! Have a peek at the two videos below direct from NVIDIA – the first was filmed at the CES 2013 event we attended (see the timeline below for more info) with the bossman talking about the release iteration of GeForce Experience. The other video shows the app again in simple terms with fancy graphics flying everywhere – hot stuff!

GeForce Experience Open Beta hands-on: optimization for all! is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Just about anyone who has bought more than one aftermarket graphics card knows that bundled games rarely matter. They’re usually year-old titles or neutered editions built only to showcase the GPU’s performance for a few hours. AMD thinks its Never Settle bundle might finally get us to notice. Buy any modern Radeon HD video card from the 7770 GHz Edition on up and you’ll get a download code for at least one new game you’d genuinely want to try, ranging from Far Cry 3 on basic cards to a full three-game deal that supplies Far Cry 3, Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs to high rollers buying the 7900 series. There’s likewise a discount for Medal of Honor: Warfighter and promises of bundles in 2013 for Bioshock Infinite and the reimagined Tomb Raider. As long as you’re not dead set on springing for a GeForce board in the next few months, one of the qualifying cards might be worth a look to jumpstart your game collection.

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Peripherals, AMD

AMD Never Settle bundle gives Radeon HD 7000 buyers free games they’d actually care to play originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Leadtek today introduced its high-end GeForce GTX 660 graphics card. This GPU delivers smooth graphics performance at 1080p. The Leadtek WinFast GTX 660 features a GPU Boost function for users to make dynamic clock adjustment for optimal performance/watt. Designed for power gamers, this graphics card offers a PCI Express 3.0 bus, a 192-bit memory interface width, a 2GB GDDR5 VRAM and memory clock at 6008 MHz. In addition, the Leadtek WinFast GTX 660 also supports DirectX 11 and nVidia PhysX technologies. [Leadtek]