Posted 08/27/08 at 02:56:37 PM by Paul Lilly

While high end gaming cards like ATI's 4870 and Nvidia's GTX 280 hog all the spotlight, not everyone can afford (or needs) a top of the line card. Picking up the slack at the other end of the spectrum, Nvidia this week silently launched its entry-level 9400 GT graphics card.

The 9400 GT comes with 16 processor cores clocked at 1400MHz, a 550MHz graphics clock, and 512MB of memory chugging along at 400MHz. And thanks in part to the 128-bit bus, Nvidia claims the 9400 GT will run twice as fast as the comparable 8-series graphics card.

Nvidia has set the MSRP to $59, which buys support for DirectX 10, OpenGL 2.1, CUDA general-purpose parallel computing, and hardware HD video acceleration. A cursory glance around the web shows the 9400 GT as being a respectable overclocker, but even after pushing the clocks, it looks to be best suited for HTPC and light gaming duties.

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graphics, videocard, nvidia, gpu, build a pc, 9400 gt

Posted 08/27/08 at 11:32:11 AM by Paul Lilly

Nvidia's woes in the mobile graphics arena have been well documented, but here's a quick refresher for anyone who hasn't been following along. After several users complained of graphics glitches and outright failures in their 8M-based notebooks, Nvidia announced it would set aside a one-time hit of  $200 million to cover warranty and repair costs associated with the "abnormal failure rate." According to the graphics chip maker, the failures only affect a limited number of notebook GPUs produced from a bad batch, but just how limited the problem remains a point of contention. Charlie Demerjian from news and rumor site The Inquirer has been particularly outspoken on the issue, claiming the failures resonate into the G92 and G94 lineup, and according to rumblings, he might not be too far off.

Hit the jump to find out the latest speculation and just how many GPUs might be affected.

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graphics, videocard, mobile, notebook, laptop, nvidia, gpu

Posted 08/24/08 at 03:57:15 PM by Paul Lilly

Nvidia contnues to feel the pressure from a suddenly competitive ATI and will once again tweak one of its mainstream videocards. Back in June, Nvidia took its 9800GTX card based on the immensely popular G92 core and shrank the core from 65nm to 55nm, pushed the core, memory, and shader clockspeeds, and dubbed the resulting product the 9800GTX+. This time around its the GTX 260 that will undergo a revision.

Citing an un-named source, Expreview reports Nvidia will add another Texture Processing Cluster (TPC) to its GTX 260, bringing the total up from 8 to 9. By doing so, the revised card will sport 216 shader processors instead of the 192 found in the original GTX 260. As far as Expreview knows, core, shader, and memory clockspeeds will remain the same.

If the report holds true, look for the updated card to arrive in September.

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graphics, videocard, nvidia, gpu, build a pc, GTX 260

Posted 08/22/08 at 11:11:54 AM by Paul Lilly

3DFX changed the gaming landscape forever when it brought 3D graphics to the masses, and in a similar fashion, ray tracing technology looks to be the next big revolution on the horizon. The promise of photo realistic scenery has provoked both developers and gamers, but is real-time ray tracing in games anywhere close to being a reality?

In an interview with Tom's Hardware, Intel's Daniel Pohl talked about the API Intel is using to showcase ray tracing demos and what he thinks needs to happen before the technology will be ready for commercial development.

"Creating higher image quality even faster. That requires smart anti-aliasing algorithms, a level of detail mechanism without switching artifacts, particle systems that also work in reflections, a fast soft shadowing algorithm, adoption to upcoming hardware architectures. We have some topics to keep us busy," said Pohl.

In the case of ray tracing, it's a matter of the hardware needing to catch up with the software. Pohl and his team of ray tracing researchers have been "targeting future architectures that consists out of tens, hundreds, and even thousands of cores," noting an almost linear scaling of frame rates with the number of processor cores.

Intel isn't the only one looking to push ray tracing technology into the mainstream, with Nvidia putting on demonstrations of its own. Here's hoping the race to the finish line ends up resembling more of a sprint than a marathon.

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games, intel, Software, graphics, videocard, nvidia, Videogames, ray tracing

Posted 08/15/08 at 10:43:26 AM by Tom Edwards

The podcast gang supplies our listenership with gold-medal-worthy tech advice this week! We lead off with a discussion of what your email address says about you and then crown the winner of our Win a Dream Date with Norm competition. Unfortunately, the man of the hour was out of the office working on his high bar routine, but we sifted through the entries, judged each participant on a 10-point scale, and decided that one of the myriad contestants rose above all others!

The ol' No BS Podcast mailbox was overflowing with questions this week. We discuss the possibility of using an Nividia and ATI card in one rig, how to take care of your customer-service woes, and whether you should switch to 64-bit Vista. Gordon Mah Ung also takes the floor for a few minutes to supply us with another Rant of the Week!

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337

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videocard, asus, Podcast, doctor, dream date

Posted 08/14/08 at 01:46:59 PM by Paul Lilly

It's been a rough ride for Nvidia as of late, who not only has had to contend with a suddenly competitive ATI, but also finds itself battling a bad batch of mobile GPUs (which might turn out to be a bigger problem than initially stated). The struggles have turned financial with the graphics chip maker reporting a net loss of $120.9 million in the second quarter, or 22 cents a share. This is in stark contrast to one year ago when the company posted a profit of $172.7 million, or 29 cents a share.

The quarter's results include a $196 million charge Nvidia took to cover warranty, repairs, and other costs associated with an "abnormal failure rate" among its mobile GPUs. Nvidia executives are hopeful for a somewhat better third quarter, saying they expect revenue to grow "slightly."

"We didn't lose any share, the market just got soft on us," said chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang. And while Huang admitted that the second quarter results are "disappointing," the company still saw its shares rise by 10 percent after announcing a $1 billion boost to its stock buyback program.

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graphics, videocard, nvidia, gpu, financial

Posted 08/13/08 at 11:44:20 AM by Paul Lilly

Overclock.net forum member nitteo claims to have built a Folding@Home farm with no less than 51 GPUs, and he has the pics to prove it. In them are a mixture of 8800GT and 8800GS videocards spread out across a variety of MSI and Gigabyte motherboards. Final numbers are still be tallied, but nitteo estimates he'll pull in over 250,000 points per day on his new setup, and things only look to get better with the CUDA-based folding client.

That's all well and good for Overclock.net (and the Folding community in general), but that also means Team Maximum PC has to keep it kicked up into high gear. Maximum PC currently holds the 4th spot in team rankings and could use your help. If you want to Fold for your favorite magazine, add team 11108 to your client's profile, and drop by the forum for tips on how to optimize your production.

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graphics, videocard, gpu, overclock, Folding, build a pc, OC, folding@home, foh, proteins, farm

Posted 08/12/08 at 12:32:43 PM by Paul Lilly

No one has been more critical of Nvidia then rumor and news outlet The Inquirer, who recently declared that all of the chipmaker's G84 and G86 parts are bad. The extent of the problem is still to be determined, but here's what's known so far.

1. A batch of bad GPUs have found their way into the wild causing an "abnormal failure rate" among certain laptop models
2. To deal with the problem, Nvidia said it was setting aside a one-time hit of $150 to $200 million to cover warranty and repair costs associated with the faulty mobile parts
3. Both HP and Dell have released a list of notebook models potentially affected by the faulty GPUs and are encouraging owners to update their BIOS as a preventive measure (the newer BIOS kicks on the cooling fan earlier than it normally would). HP has also extended their warranty for the affected models.

Nvidia has since moved on to its 9-M series GPUs, and in the process has presumably solved whatever problem affected the previous generation parts, right? Not so fast, says the The Inq. According to the rumor site, the fundamental flaw in the manufacturing process still exists, and now G92 and G94 parts are reportedly failing. The Inq claims that no less than four partners are already seeing the new chips go bad at high rates, and believes that Nvidia "is simply stonewalling everyone" about the alleged problem.

If true, another batch of parts could be disastrous for the chip maker, who continues to lose graphics market share to Intel and has seen its stock price plummet in the wake of a disappoint 8-K filing.

Is the problem bigger than Nvidia's letting on, or will it be this latest rumor that ultimately turns out to be the dud?

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games, graphics, videocard, mobile, notebook, laptop, nvidia, gpu, Videogames, G92, g94