Hasta La Gadget!

Want to know what the famous act of cutting down a graphics card to match a given price point looks like? Well, here it is, the $349 GTX 580 (aka GeForce GTX 570): it has 480 CUDA cores running at 1464MHz, a 732MHz graphics clock, and 1.25GB of GDDR5 memory hurtling along at an effective rate of 3.8GHz. Each of those specs represents a moderate downgrade from NVIDIA’s original 500 series GPU, while the physical construction — including that vapor chamber cooler — is almost wholly identical to the 580. Aside from the paintjob, the only difference is that the GTX 570 can live on a pair of 6-pin auxiliary power connectors. The best comparison for the 570, however, turns out to be NVIDIA’s former flagship, the GTX 480, as reviewers found the new card’s performance to be nearly identical to the old tessellation monster. Verdicts invariably agreed that the 570 is quieter, cooler, and more power-efficient, making it pretty much a no-brainer of a purchase in its price bracket. Of course, every recommendation comes colored with the warning that AMD should finally be unveiling its upper-tier wares next week — we’d wait the extra few days before parting with our cash.

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Continue reading NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 debuts: the 580 goes on a power diet to fit into $349 price bracket

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 debuts: the 580 goes on a power diet to fit into $349 price bracket originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 09:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whether you’re an NVIDIAn calling it SLI or a Radeonite referring to it as CrossFireX, a multi-card graphics setup is nowadays almost a prerequisite for experiencing the best that PC gaming has to offer. It’d be negligent of us, therefore, not to point you in the direction of the Tech Report crew’s latest breakdown, which takes an investigative peek at dual-card performance on NVIDIA’s latest and greatest GeForce GTX 580 and naturally compares it to a wide range of other alternatives on the market. AMD’s latest refresh, the Radeon HD 6870, is among those options, though it’s worth remembering that the company’s real high-end gear isn’t due for another couple of weeks. All the same, most people will be buying their holiday rigs right around now, and if you want an exhaustive guide as to what’s what on the graphics front, the source link is your best, um… source.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 and AMD Radeon HD 6870 square off in dual-card showdown originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 11:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So small, and yet potentially so disruptive. AMD’s 1.6GHz Zacate chip, bearing a pair of Bobcat modules, has been taken off the leash today, resulting in a torrent of benchmarks pouring down onto the internet. While perusing the sources below, you might think to yourself that it’s not exactly a world beater, sitting somewhere in the middle of the pack on most tests, but compare it to Intel’s dual-core Atom D510 — its most immediate competition in the target sub-$500 laptop price range — and you’ll find a thoroughgoing whooping in progress. The highlight of these new Fusion APUs is that they integrate graphics processing within the CPU chip, and Zacate didn’t disappoint on that front either, with marked improvements over anything else available in its class. The resulting chips might still not have quite enough grunt to earn a place in your daily workhorse mobile computer, but their power efficiency and netbook-level pricing goals sure do look delightful. Or dangerous, if you’re Intel.

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AMD’s Bobcat APU benchmarked: the age of the Atom is at an end originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 03:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We all knew this would inevitably happen, but seeing it in action is something else — the Kinect transformed by the power of open-source drivers into a true 3D video camera for capturing oneself. UC Davis visualization researcher Oliver Kreylos fed the streams from his peripheral’s infrared and color cameras into a custom program that interpolated and reconstructed the result, generating a mildly mindblowing 3D virtual reality environment he can manipulate at will. And if it makes him look a little bit like the proficiently penciled protagonists in Take On Me, that’s just the cherry on top. Don’t miss the videos after the break to see what we’re talking about.

Continue reading Hack turns Kinect into 3D video capture tool

Hack turns Kinect into 3D video capture tool originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Nov 2010 20:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Promising “visually rich user experiences not previously seen in consumer electronics devices,” ARM has introduced its latest embedded GPU architecture, Mali-T604, at its Technology Conference 2010 in California today. Though we’re unlikely to see it in devices any time soon, the introduction means that the new design is available to ARM licensees — and notably, the company points out that partner Samsung will be the first to get hooked up. Considering Sammy competes in the high-end embedded system-on-chip space already with its ARM-based Hummingbird line of cores, adding in the Mali-T604 is probably the next logical step for them. ARM says that it’s designed “specifically” with the needs of general purpose GPU computing in mind and includes extensive support both for OpenCL and DirectX, so look for some insane number-crunching capabilities on your next-generation phone, tablet, and set-top box. Follow the break for ARM’s press release.

Update: We sat down with ARM’s Jem Davies to get some more details about the new Mali, and discovered it’s only the first of several potential next-gen GPUs to come as part of the Midgard platform — while this particular processor is available with up to four shader cores, successors might have more. The T604 itself is no slouch, though, as it can theoretically deliver two to five times the performance of the company’s existing Mali 400 GPUs core for core and clock for clock — which themselves run circles around the PowerVR SGX 540 competition if you take ARM at its word. Davies told us that not only does the Mali-T604 do DirectX, it supports the game-friendly DirectX11 as well as the always-popular OpenGL ES 2.0, and will appear in an system-on-a-chip together with an ARM Cortex-A15 “Eagle” CPU, when both are eventually baked into silicon several years down the road. Of course, in the eyes of marketers the future is always now, so get a look at conceptual uses (hint: augmented reality) for ARM’s new Mali right after the break.

Additional reporting by Sean Hollister

Continue reading ARM intros next-gen Mali-T604 embedded GPU, Samsung first to get it (update: video)

ARM intros next-gen Mali-T604 embedded GPU, Samsung first to get it (update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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