MotoCzysz is known for its electric motorcycles, which have dominated races and won awards for years. In an effort to further up its game, the company has teamed up with NVIDIA to utilize the company’s Maximus technology and Quadro GPUs, with the goal being to create a motorcycle that sets a new speed record. The company used NVIDIA’s Tesla K20 GPU and Quadro K5000 GPU to improve its productivity in design.
MotoCzysz has tasked itself to prepare for this year’s electric motorcycle racing season, and in doing so the company’s workers are spending ample time designing in Solidworks, its software of choice. To give the designers the power they needed to perform their jobs well, the company utilized NVIDIA’s Tesla K20 GPU and Quadro K5000 GPU.
As a result of this, the company says that it experienced a huge productivity boost in the design department. Because of the hardware, the designers were able to use SolidWorks for looking at the bike’s details in-depth without fighting against computer lag and other issues that commonly result from such hardware-intensive tasks. Finally, by combining the Tesla GPU with Bunkspeed Pro for ray-tracing, both rendering and simulations could be performed in the background.
MotoCzysz senior engineer Nick Schoeps had this to say: “The reason why the NVIDIA Quadro K5000 makes sense for us is because we can create fully rendered images of a bike before we actually build it. A major manufacturer might make several passes, create a physical clay model, and then make further refinements to the design. With our small staff and budget we need to do it all in one pass.”
When you want workstation performance and reliability out of your computer, you usually have to pony up over a grand for a high-end graphics card. However, NVIDIA has released four new Quadro graphics cards that come in many different flavors, including one option called the K600 that costs only $199.
The other three Kepler-based Quadro cards are the K4000, K2000, and the K2000D. The K4000 is the beast of the bunch, racking up 3GB of on-board memory and costing a whopping $1,269. The K2000 and K2000D are similar to one another, both of which are priced at $599 and come with 2GB of onboard memory, but the K2000D comes with native support for two dual-link DVI display connectors, which NVIDIA says is ideal for “interfacing with ultra-high-resolution medical imaging displays.”
Furthermore, the K4000 has 768 CUDA Cores, a memory bandwidth of 134 GB/s,and 1.246 teraflops. The K2000 has 384 CUDA Cores, 67 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and 733 gigaflops. The budget card of the bunch, K600 isn’t as fast, but for the money you’re paying, it’s not a bad deal. You’re looking at 192 CUDA Cores, a memory bandwidth of 29 GB/s, and 336 gigaflops.
Currently, the Quadro K5000 is the flagship card of the series, but for those who don’t need that much power out of their rig, you can grab cheaper versions that may be suited for more your speed. NVIDIA says these new cards deliver twice as much performance as previous-generation cards, and features larger and faster on-board memory to keep your graphics-intensive projects going strong.
NVIDIA has been showing a lot of love to its mobile division lately as it continually rolls out a new Tegra chip every couple of years and is even preparing itself to dominate the mobile gaming world with its Project Shield. Fans of the company’s PC cards might feel a little left out in the NVIDIA love, but with today’s announcement, you can be sure the company hasn’t forgotten of its everyday PC user.
NVIDIA may have announced its K500, but we’re sure a $2,249 graphics card might be a tad out of your gaming budget, so the company is announcing a new set of lower budget cards: the K4000, K2000 and K600. (more…)
Despite all the energy it’s been putting into mobile and gaming, NVIDIA hasn’t fallen out of love with its professional graphics customers. In fact, it’s in the process of trying to rekindle those sparks of romance through the clever use of chocolates, shoulder rubs and fresh additions to its Kepler-based Quadro lineup. We’ve already seen (and played with) the $2,249 K5000 flagship, but those of us on lower budgets will now be able to snag the K4000, K2000 or K600 as they begin to enter the retail channel.
Working from the top down, the $1,269 Quadro K4000 has 768 CUDA Cores, 3GB of RAM and a memory bandwidth of 134GB/s, which means it’ll crank out your architectural documents and video reels at a healthy 1.246 TFLOPs. The $599 K2000 has half the CUDA cores and memory bandwidth, with 2GB of RAM, and reaches a top speed of 733 GFLOPs. Lastly, the $199 K600 has 192 CUDA Cores, 1GB RAM, a memory bandwidth of 29GB/s and a top speed of 336 GFLOPs. If you’d like more details, you know where the PR’s at.
If you’ve been following along with our speaker announcements for Expand, you know we’ve already got a lineup chock full of some of the most interesting technologists at the forefront of innovation. You’ll also appreciate that this last batch is a bit of a doozy — consider this the big reveal before the Big Reveal of the full agenda, coming very soon:
Nate Mitchell: Vice President of Product, Oculus Rift
Jason Parrish: Director, Lenovo ThinkPad Strategy & Planning
NVIDIA never skimps on offering constant driver updates to its various graphics cards, and today the company released beta drivers that are optimized for the many games coming out this month, including SimCity, StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, Resident Evil 6, and Hawken PhysX just to name a few.
Version 314.14 brings optimization for upcoming games, as well as current games that could use a boost. Specifically, the new beta drivers deliver up to a 23% boost in Sniper Elite V2 and a 9% boost in Sleeping Dogs. In SLI mode, other games also get an increase in performance, including a 9% boost in StarCraft II and a 5% boost in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
Today’s update comes just a couple weeks after NVIDIA unleashed version 314.07 of its GeForce drivers, which increases performance for a handful of intensive games, such as Crysis 3, Assassin’s Creed III, Civilization V, and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Crysis 3 ended up with a 65% boost in performance, which is quite the improvement.
Other games that NVIDIA focused on for these beta drivers are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Just Cause 2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Batman: Arkham City, all of which received 4% to 5% performance boosts. If you already have the GeForce Experience installed, the drivers are available for automatic downloading and installing right now.
NVIDIA gives us a sneak peak at one of their “5 games optimized for the Tegra 4” by demoing it on their portable gaming device, Project SHIELD. The game, titled Burn Zombie Burn, is a title that originated from the PlayStation 3 and is now finding its way onto mobile devices. The game developer, Tick Tock Games, wanted to delve into the mobile gaming industry, and the NVIDIA Tegra 4 allows them to do that without needing to sacrifice quality. In fact, the NVIDIA Tegra 4 helps them add quality to their thrilling, zombie apocalypse game.
Burn Zombie Burn is a survival game where you fight endless waves of zombies, with each wave (of course) being harder than the previous. The goal is to reach the highest score you possibly can. You have a hefty arsenal of weapons that you can use to take out the hordes of zombies. From bats to machines guns to chainsaws to nukes, you have all the firepower you need to ensure your self-preservation.
NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD is NVIDIA’s own portable, Android gaming device running on their latest-gen processor, the Tegra 4. Project SHIELD is capable of running PC-quality like games and is set to revolutionize the mobile gaming industry. It was one of the highlights of the Consumer Electronic Show this year, and it has many people anticipating its Q2 launch. The device features a 5-inch LCD display and promises around 5-10 hours of gameplay per charge. The screen is attached to a console-like gamepad that should make gameplay feel more easier and familiar. Project SHIELD’s UI runs on Android Jelly Bean and there’s a ‘Tegra’ button on the physical controller that will bring you to your games menu.
Burn Zombie Burn is an intriguing title and one that should keep you entertained for hours. One thing that’s pretty noticeable is the FPS lag that happens occasionally during the gameplay demo. Hopefully NVIDIA or Tick Tock Games figures out the reasoning behind that before they officially launch the game. We don’t have an official release date, or the official pricing on the Project SHIELD, but we’ll let you know as soon as we do. For the latest news on NVIDIA, check out our NVIDIA Tegra Hub.
Mobile World Congress 2013 scrambles to a close, a week of new phones and tablets, a shiny new venue, and more questions as to whether the days of the big trade show are numbered. It’s been a show where the divisions between the mobile upstarts and the current key players have been sharply defined, with ZTE, Huawei, and Nokia all pushing to corner the market, while Samsung and HTC were notable by their relative absence of announcements, favoring their own, standalone events. Nevertheless, there’s plenty to wrap up, and seldom has a headline been so accurate in so many ways.
Samsung may not have brought the Galaxy S4 to MWC – we’ll have to wait until mid-March to see that – but the company still had one of the largest stands of the show. It’s key new product was the Galaxy Note 8.0, slotting in-between the Note II and the Note 10.1, and taking on the iPad mini. What’s interesting is that, while Samsung has been accused of slavishly copying Apple, the Note 8.0 does have a distinct difference from the Apple slate in the shape of the S Pen stylus.
Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 hands-on:
Over at LG, the company was unabashed at taking on the Note II with its new Optimus G Pro, a 5.5-inch slab of beautiful LCD display and 13-megapixel camera tech. No stylus – though the Korean-spec demo units did have a fetching pull-out antenna for the digital TV tuner – but a 1080p display and speedy processor. LG fleshed out its cheaper models with new L series and F series devices, though it had spoiled the surprise some by pre-announcing them ahead of this week’s show.
Nokia had been more secretive, and so its new phones – the Lumia 520 and 720, taking the Windows Phone 8 range to five, and some cheap devices, the 105 and 301 – came as a moderate surprise. On the smartphone side, Nokia’s range is starting to look more and more thought through, though we’re still sticking with our stance that the Lumia 620 is the best of the bunch. Meanwhile, Nokia hit new price lows with the 105, a €15 ($20) handset ideal for developing markets and festival-goers alike, yet which didn’t abandon the company’s distinctive color schemes.
Plucky upstarts ZTE and Huawei brought a brace of new devices along to Barcelona, though the reaction proved mixed. The ZTE Grand Memo played the big-screen card, overstepping the LG Optimus G Pro with a 5.7-inch screen, though arguably undermined it by opting for 720p resolution. Huawei made a similar schoolboy error with its Ascend P2, rocking high-end specifications everywhere but the number of pixels. ASUS, meanwhile, opted to go for confusion above all else, with the similarly-named FonePad and Padfone Infinit continuing to push the company’s modular strategy.
At the low-end, Firefox OS made its play for the developing market, with votes of support from eighteen operators worldwide and new handsets from Alcatel among others. At first glance, however, we’re less than impressed. The HTML5-based platform is sluggish on the cheap hardware, and it’s tough to see how – even with web apps – Mozilla plans to flesh out its portfolio in a way that legitimately challenges the ever-cheaper Android behemoth.
In chips, Qualcomm‘s Snapdragon 600 and 800 came out to flex their muscles, and were found in a number of the higher-profile phones of the week. NVIDIA had some chip news too, though the most exciting phone to use the new Tegra 4 was the Phoenix Developer Platform smartphone, which will allow coders and manufacturers to get to grips with Tegra 4i before it arrives later in 2013.
NVIDA Phoenix Developer Platform hands-on:
After two years of incredible public stands, Google took a more clandestine approach at Barcelona this year, holding a few private meetings rather than pushing people down an Android-themed slide like in 2012. We caught up with director of Android design experience Matias Duarte to talk Google Now and how it might just be the future of Android, as well as how it helped shape Google Glass. Duarte, unsurprisingly, has strong ambitions for Android, going so far as describing it as the “OS for humanity.”
Nonetheless, while MWC had its gems, the show felt more humble than in previous years. The new venue, a sprawling flow of halls joined by a serpentine hallway, is certainly far improved over the old location, but where the Congress of years past has seen flagships debut and companies stake their reputation, this year it felt a little like those same firms were holding their breath; saving their energies for individual events where they alone could control the news.
On a broader note, however, it’ll be interesting to see how the trade show calendar weathers the change in product launch strategy over the rest of the year. While smaller shows will happen in-between now and September, many eyes will be IFA 2013 early that month. The past few years, Samsung has used the Berlin show to debut several high-profile products – the Galaxy Note II and Galaxy Camera in 2012, for instance – but with the Korean firm withholding its big launches from CES and MWC, it’s unclear whether the Germans will get a headline-maker or not.
All this is just a sample of our coverage from this week; you can find all of our Mobile World Congress 2013 content in the show hub.
The folks at NVIDIA are teasing their latest Project SHIELD game title, Zombie Driver. That name may sound familiar for those rocking an Android device as Zombie Driver THD has been available for NVIDIA powered tablets and smartphones. Coincidentally, the THD release is currently selling at a deep discount — 75 percent off, or $1.75. Not to stray far off the track, but the Zombie Drive THD game had an update back in December that added improved controller support for devices such as the PowerA Moga.
Currently available release aside, the latest Android related Project SHIELD teaser is for Zombie Driver and we are given a brief look at the game running and we have learned that it will be given a “full HD over haul” that will bring “a ton of mind-blowing optimizations.” Given the current release is pretty solid on the Nexus 7, we are more than a bit excited to play this when it becomes available with Project SHIELD.
Otherwise, details of the Tegra 4 optimizations include teasers such as how it will contain “real-time dynamic lighting, per-pixel shading with custom per-material specular masks, custom blood splatter and double the zombies.” Again, this does nothing other than make us want to play now. But alas, we must wait for Project SHIELD to come available.
While we wait, make sure to checkout the demo video (embed above) where they not only show a bit of game play on Project SHIELD, but also give a side-by-side look at the non-Tegra 4 version as compared to the Tegra 4 optimized version. Bottom line, while both look (and play) pretty nice, the Tegra 4 optimized version of Zombie Driver looks that much nicer.
Nvidia made a big splash this week with the unveiling of its new, incredibly high-end, incredibly expensive GeForce GTX Titan graphics card. Despite the high cost of the Titan, gamers around the world have been salivating and many are ready to purchase. The good news if you have the funds to buy this new video card is that Asus has launched its branded version today in Europe.
The Asus GeForce GTX Titan is now available for $999. This is the most expensive video card aimed at computer gamers ever offered and should provide incredible performance for modern video games. The video card is optimized for DirectX 11.1 and PCI Express 3.0. Asus clocks the GPU at 876 MHz using the Nvidia GPU Boost 2.0 technology, the base clock is 837 MHz.
The Titan has 6 GB of GDDR5 video memory clocked at 6000 MHz. The Nvidia GPU Boost 2.0 interface will also allow owners of the Titan video card to change the clock speed, power consumption profile, and control the temperature of the GPU as they see fit. That means overclockers can tweak the GPU to get even higher levels of performance.
Titan has 2688 CUDA cores and features a 384-bit memory interface. Asus and Nvidia promised that the video card has the power to handle the most advanced games and features in resolutions above 2560 x 1600. Asus says that global release for its branded Titan will happen on February 25 and pricing can vary by location. The video card dimensions are 10.5-inches by 4.38-inches by 1.5-inches, so if you’re going to order be sure the video card will fit in your computer case.
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