graphics

AMD Bills New Radeon 8970M as World's Fastest Mobile GPU

Paul Lilly — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:01:00 +0000

There's a new mobile sheriff in town.

Mobile gamers rejoice, for AMD hasn't forgotten about you. On the contrary, the Sunnyvale chip designer just unveiled its Radeon 8970M, which AMD claims is the fastest laptop GPU on the entire planet. And not only is it smoking fast, it's also more efficient than previous designs, which means you can expect longer battery life, according to AMD.

AMD's 8000M series falls into three different tiers, including Mainstream (Radeon 8500M and 8600M Series), Performance + Gaming (Radeon 8700M and 8800M Series), and Enthusiast (Radeon HD 8900 Series). The 8970M part being launched today sits at the top of the mobile GPU totem pole and boasts 1,280 stream processors, an 850MHz engine clock (900MHz with boost), and 1,200MHz memory. That translates into 2304 GFLOPS of single precision compute power and 144 GFLOPS of double precision compute power.

Speaking of which, AMD tells us the 8970M is engineered for compute with support for OpenCL and GPU acceleration. DirectX 11.1 is obviously part of the package, as is improved image quality and video playback.

As for gaming performance, AMD provided a handful of benchmark comparisons that shine a positive light on its mobile part. For example, according to AMD's testing (Intel Core i7 3770K, 4GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM, Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive), a Radeon HD 8970M is 54 percent faster than a GeForce GTX 680M in Tomb Raider running at 1920x1080 with TressFX turned off (53.6 fps versus 34.8 fps). In Bioshock Infinite (also at 1920x1080), the 8970M benched 63.29 fps, which is 42 percent faster than the GTX 680M chip (44.52 fps). And so it goes across the board.

One of the first notebooks to feature the 8970M will be MSI's GX70 gaming laptop, which is an upgraded version of the GX60 AMD's latest and greatest mobile part. It will come with a copy of Crysis 3.

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AMD Catalyst 13.4 Update Addresses Latency Performance in Several Games

Paul Lilly — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:43:11 +0000

AMD promises a significant reduction in latency in titles like Skyrim and Tomb Raider.

A new driver package is available for AMD Radeon, Mobility Radeon, and PowerXpress GPUs. It's AMD's Catalyst 13.4 update and it's supposed to "significantly" improve latency performance in Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, Tomb Raider, and Hitman Absolution, according to the release notes. it also offers performance gains in several titles across the entire range of Radeon HD 7000 Series graphics cards.

Specifically, Radeon HD 7000 Series card owners can expect the following:

Batman Arkham City (1920x1200): Performance improvements up to 5 percent
Borderlands 2 (2560x1600): Performance improvements up to 10 percent
Quake Wars (1920x1200): Performance improvements up to 13 percent
Hitman Absolution (2560x1600): Performance improvements up to 11 percent
Wolfenstein MP (1920x1080): Performance improvements up to 11 percent
Civilization V (2560x1600): Performance improvements up to 5 percent

In addition to all the above, AMD resolved a bunch of known issues, but the latency claim is the one gamers are likely to pay the most attention to. The latency issue is something we noticed when benchmarking AMD's Radeon HD 7990 graphics card, which can best be described as micro-stutter.

Are you planning to install the new driver package?

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AMD Radeon HD 7990 First Look

Josh Norem — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 07:05:06 +0000

Nvidia’s GTX 690 finally has some serious competition

Today the embargo is lifting on the AMD Radeon HD 7990 that was teased back at GDC, so here’s the TLDR version; yes it’s just as fast and a tiny bit quieter than the Nvidia GTX 690, and it includes a mega bad ass eight-AAA-game bundle and costs the same price as its nemesis, making it quite a tempting package for those with the budget for it. Whether or not that will be enough to convince anyone to actually buy it remains to be seen of course, but at least AMD can no longer be knocked for conceding the $1,000 GPU market to Nvidia. It also signifies somewhat of a resurgence for AMD, who first came off the bench late last year and early this year with its totally righteous Never Settle game bundles, then attacked the midrange recently with the surprisingly powerful and quiet Radeon HD 7790 card, and is now going for the jugular with the dual-slot and triple-fan HD 7990. Whether AMD wins or loses that battle is slightly less important than the overall significance of this introduction, as in our minds its designed to not only beat Nvidia’s offering, but also to send a very clear signal to hardcore PC enthusiasts everywhere — AMD is still in the game, and doesn’t intend to give an inch of ground to Nvidia any time soon.

Spec Speak

Let’s start with the card’s basic specs: It features dual HD 7970 Tahiti GPUs clocked at 1,000MHz, which is a bit higher than we expected them to be, and higher than the clocks on a stock HD 7970 (925MHz) and the GTX 690 (915Mhz). Each GPU sports 3GB of GDDR5 RAM and has 2,048 Stream Processors, and the two connect to each other and the motherboard via a PCIe Gen 3 PLX bridge chip. The card takes up two slots, is 12 inches long, has a triple-fan cooler with copper heatpipes, and sports a semi-high TDP of 375w. For comparison, the GTX 690’s TDP is 300w. Power is provided by dual eight-pin PCIe connectors, which is the same requirement of the GTX 690, and one less than what was required on the dual-Tahiti PowerColor Devil 13 board. The board supports five displays with its four Mini DisplayPort connectors and single Dual-Link DVI port. The card will cost $999 and includes an eight-game bundle featuring: Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, and Deux Ex: Human Revolution. We thought Battlefield 4 would be included as well since the game was demo’d at GDC on the HD 7990, but that deal appears to have fallen through. The card should be available two weeks from the day this is published from all the standard add-in board partners such as Sapphire, HIS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc.

Benchmarks

When it comes to performance, the card performs just as well as you would imagine, if you were imagining that AMD would only bring this to market when it was sure it could beat Nvidia’s card. To do otherwise would be a fool’s errand, so naturally the HD 7990 is faster than the GTX 690 in most tests that we ran, but not in all of them (see benchmark chart below). Overall performance with both the GTX 690 is very close though, enough to effectively call it a draw. It's not as fast as the overclocked and water-cooled Asus Ares II, however, but nobody can buy those cards so the point is somewhat moot. When compared to a CrossFireX setup, the results are in favor of the HD 7990, but the CrossFireX results were achieved last month with an older driver, so it's quite possible that two cards would be a tiny bit faster than the HD 7990 if using updated drivers. Even more surprising is the card's lack of noise and heat, as the other dual Tahiti boards we've seen so far have either been water-cooled (Ares II) or so loud and hot as to require earplugs and heat shields (Devil 13), but not the HD 7990. It got up to about 85C in gaming and was a tiny bit audible, but not "loud" at all, which is an amazing development for AMD. We'd say all in all it's probably just a bit quieter than the GTX 690, and gets about as hot.

Benchmarks

Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus P9X79 motherboard with 16GB of DDR3/1600 and a Thermaltake ToughPower 1,050W PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows Ultimate. All games are run at 2560x1600 with 4X AA except for the 3DMark tests.

Frame Latency and micro-stutter

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about ditching frames per second as a standard for how “smooth” a game runs on given hardware, and instead examining frame latency or frame times instead. The reason why is that sometimes frames per second can be misleading, as we all equate anything over 30fps to be “smooth” when in fact a game can be run at even 50fps and still be somewhat choppy if the frames aren’t being delivered on a consistent schedule. For example, if the GPU alternatively sends frames to the system at 20ms and 100ms or higher throughout a test, it’s possible to still have an average framerate above 30fps, but to have it feel like you’re dropping frames. This is not usually something that you notice when running a single GPU, but it’s more prominent in multi-card setups since both cards are sending individual frames to the system, hopefully in concert with one another. This has been a bee in AMD’s bonnet lately, and when we sat down for the briefing on this card in particular AMD mentioned it, and acknowledged it. They called it “micro stutter,” which is fitting, as it’s an almost imperceptible stutter/lag that you can feel but barely see when playing certain games on specific configurations of GPUs and CPUs.

As far as the HD 7990 goes, here is the situation. Yes this card and the latest drivers we used (13.5 beta 2) suffered from micro stutter, but it was imperceptible in most games with one major exception — Far Cry 3. We’re not sure what it is about Far Cry 3, but it runs like crap on this setup at 2560x1600 with 4xAA. We mean it feels like you are running through molasses the whole time, and when examining the frame time output from FRAPS it is easy to see why, as the latency between frames fluctutates wildly. When examining the frame time charts from other games the delivery times look pretty consistent, with only Crysis 3 showing some anomalies. AMD has told us it is working on a fix for this situation, but the remedy will most likely be a software implementation rather than a hardware fix. We have yet to receive and test a final software fix for this issue, and will sure to update you when we have tested it.

Final Thoughts

On the one hand, we’re pretty pumped to see the HD 7990 finally arrive, as it’s more than a year late to market, and its absence made a lot of people question AMD’s commitment to the uber high-end PC gaming market. Since AMD has sort of abandoned the high-end CPU market, having them leave the same GPU market would mean nothing but bad things for a lot of consumers, so we're stoked to see them join the fight. The card itself presents a very strong option for buyers looking to drop a large bill on a GPU given the fact that it includes over $500 of Kick Ass games. If the bundle wasn't included, we'd say you could flip a coin over whether or not to get this card or the GTX 690, but the gaming bundle clearly gives AMD a significant advantage against its competitors.

Now that the HD 7990 has launched, we have to wonder whether or not Nvidia will counter AMD's launch with the rumored GTX Titan Ultra, but it sure seems likely the way the two have been going at it lately. This effectively means the GPU cold war that has existed throughout 2012 is now largely over, with the two companies fired up and ready to wage war this summer. All we can say to that is "bring it on!"

AMD Doesn't Think DirectX API Has a Future Beyond DX11

Paul Lilly — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 18:20:17 +0000

There will never be a DirectX 12 API, AMD says.

An executive working for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) doesn't believe DirectX 12 will ever see the light of day. His name is Roy Taylor and he's the Vice President of Global Channel Sales for the Sunnyvale chip designer that's very much involved in PC graphics hardware and software. AMD is on the front lines, so to speak, so it's interesting to hear someone from the company say that DirectX is dead in the water.

Taylor made the prediction during an interview with German magazine Heise.de. He was asked about the inclusion of top titles like Bioshock Infinite in AMD's Never Settle bundles, and that's when he dropped the bombshell, if you care to view it as one. As far as Taylor is concerned, the days of refreshing the DirectX API are over, and there will never be a DirectX 12, not for Windows 8, Windows Blue, or any other version of Windows.

Rather than rely on the dead-end API, Taylor says AMD's next-generation GPUs will integrate "other technologies" to take its place, though he didn't divulge any info on what those technologies might be.

Taylor's comments may stem from an email that was supposedly sent from Microsoft to its XNA and DirectX MVP members earlier this year stating that as of April 1, 2014, "XNA/DirectX will be fully retired from the MVP Award Program." The email went on to state that "DirectX is no longer evolving as a technology." Microsoft issued a statement denying the accuracy of the email.

"I can confirm that the original comunication sent to MVPs yesterday was inaccurate," Microsoft stated. "Microsoft has issued a follow-up communication to the DirectX/XNA MPVs reaffirming that DirectX is very much an important and evolving technology for Microsoft."

Unless Microsoft has changed its mind in the last couple of months, we'd venture to say DirectX 12 has a future.

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Nvidia Gives Mobile Graphics a Boost with GeForce 700M GPU Line

Paul Lilly — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:30:20 +0000

Five new notebook GPUs comprise the GeForce 700M family.

Ron Burgundy once said you have to keep your head on a swivel when you find yourself in a vicious cock fight, but the same is true when wading through tech news on April Fool's Day. That said, everyting (Edit: almost everything) we post today is real, or believed to be real, starting with Nvidia's rollout of five mobile GPUs based on its new GeForce 700M line. We actually spoke with Nvidia last week about these new chips and were told the 700M line runs up to 30 percent faster, on average, than their 600M line.

The five new SKUs include the GeForce GT 750M, 745M, 740M, 735M, and 720M. Nvidia says the three higher SKUs are aimed at the performance segment and the two lower ones are for the mainstream market.

All five are based on Kepler and utilize Nvidia's updated GPU Boost 2.0 technology, which intelligently gooses GPU clockspeeds to run up to 15 percent faster than stock. They also take advantage of Nvidia's Optimus technology so that the GPU isn't unnecessarily draining battery life when all you're doing is typing an email.

Finally, the 700M line will take advantage of GeForce Experience, a cloud-based service that analyzes your system hardware and automatically adjusts in-game settings to their optimal values.

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AMD's TressFX Technology Cures Bad Hair Days

Paul Lilly — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:40:47 +0000

Tomb Raider features the world's first real-time hair rendering technology.

AMD, in partnership with Square Enix studio Crystal Dynamics, is determined to end the era of "totally unrealistic hair" in video games. Yes, we're serious. As AMD explains, we've all been duped in the 3D era by short haircuts, updos, and even non-removable helmets, all of which are attempts to disguise the problem of unrealistic hair. Oh, the outrage! Fear not, fellow gamers, AMD's "TressFX Hair" technology signals an end to those hideous hair days.

All jesting aside, the result of AMD's efforts is more realistic looking hair. It's achieved by utilizing DirectCompute to perform real-time physics simulations for TressFX Hair. It's already featured on Lara Croft in the 2013 release of Tomb Raider.

"This physics system treats each strand of hair as a chain with dozens of links, permitting for forces like gravity, wind and movement of the head to move and curl Lara's hair in a realistic fashion," AMD explains in a blog post. "Further, collision detection is performed to ensure that strands do not pass through one another, or other solid surfaces such as Lara’s head, clothing and body. Finally, hair styles are simulated by gradually pulling the strands back towards their original shape after they have moved in response to an external force."

DirectCompute isn't exclusive to AMD, and as such, the technology works on any DirectX 11 graphics card. Of course, AMD believes its own hardware is best suited, pointing out that cards featuring the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture are particularly well-equipped for these kinds of tasks because of fast on-chip shared memory and massive processing throughput. Nevertheless, if Nvidia wanted to, it could also support TressFX Hair.

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Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan – The Benchmarks

Josh Norem — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Not quite the fastest single-card, but definitely the fastest GPU

On Tuesday we posted our preview of the GK110-based Geforce GTX Titan from Nvidia, and like all of yall we were eager to stuff the Titan into a test system to see what it could do in both single-card and dual-card configurations. Now that the dust has settled and our initial testing is complete, we have to say we think we misunderstood what Nvidia was said to us when we asked them how the Titan compares to the GeForce GTX 690. The Titan is one hellishly fast single GPU, but it's not the fastest single-card solution for gaming. That title still rests comfortably with the dual-GPU GTX 690.

According to notes we took at the initial briefing, when we asked them how the Titan compares to the GTX 690, the rep answered by saying the two cards were "eye-to-eye." At the time we thought he was talking about performance, but now that we’ve tested the cards and learned the two cards share the same $999 price tag, we’re beginning to think he meant the two cards both basically compete for the same customer, not that their performance is the same. Looking at our notes he said there are times when the 690 is faster, and times when the Titan is faster, but that's not what our benchmarks show. Oh no, they show the the GTX 690 is still the fastest single-card GPU available.

Double-trouble: Two Titans in SLI is total overkill for single-display gaming. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

On the one hand, this is a bit of a letdown since everyone (including us) always wants to see a new champion crowned. And with all the excitement over the Titan launch, a lot of people wanted to see the Titan arrive on a shiny horse and lay down the law in Benchmark-ville. And it certainly has for single-GPU comparisons, but as the benchmark chart clearly shows the GTX 690 is still faster in every test, as it should be since it has dual GPUs. The Titan is clearly the fastest single-GPU card available though, and with AMD announcing its HD 7000 series cards will remain "stable throughout 2013" it doesn't look like there will be a challenge from AMD to the Titan's supremacy any time soon, or at least not until Q3 at which time AMD has spoke of new products coming, but we have no idea if a replacement for the HD 7970 is one of them. That does not mean the Titan is worth more than double the cost of a Radeon HD 7970 though.

So let's examine the numbers. First we tested the Titan against all of the other single-card flagships available, including the GTX 680 and 690, and the HD 7970 (non-GHz) and the malevolent HD 7990 from PowerColor. We began testing with an Asus Radeon HD 7970 TOP GHz card but it had some issues with a few benchmarks, so it was scrapped in favor of a non-overclocked card from Asus, which was unfortunate. We also added a few new tests this time around and removed several aging tests such as Stalker, Far Cry 2, and Just Cause 2. We used the latest "official" drivers for both Nvidia and AMD, and this gave a clear advantage to Nvidia as it had just released version 314.07 as we began testing, while AMD is still using its 13.1 drivers that were released in January. Nvidia made a Titan specific driver available to us for testing that was deemed "final" that was numbered 314.09. We should also mention that AMD pointed out that its Catalyst 13.2 Beta driver offered improvements in Far Cry 3, Crysis 3 and other titles, but we didn't use it due to its Beta status. We really wished AMD had made that driver final, as we would have loved having a new driver for our tests.

In single card tests the GTX 690 remains the card to beat, beating the Titan in every test by a decent margin. In some tests such as Far Cry 3 and Crysis it was relatively close, but the GTX 690 was always faster. It traded blows in testing with the dual HD 7970 card from PowerColor, which is about to go into the rig and hands of the winner of our Devil 13 Giveaway (stay tuned for the official announcement soon).

So what we see here is a continuum of performance when it comes to Nvidia GPUs that starts at the GTX 680 and then goes up quite a bit to the GTX Titan. Anyone upgrading from the GTX 680 to the Titan will see a performance boost, but it's not quite the doubling of performance we expected from the Titan's almost doubling of specs from the GTX 680. Performance improves even more going up to the GTX 690, which is almost double the horsepower of a GTX 680 both literally and in terms of the benchmark performance. So the old guard remains — the GTX 690 is still the card to beat if you just need one card to get the job done.

That said, the GTX 690 is too big and too expensive for most users. The same can also be said about the Titan, at least in terms of expense, but it's smallish 10.5-inch form factor will allow it to slide into most ATX cases and even some SFF cases with fewer issues than the GTX 690, making it a very compelling option for folks with smaller cases. There's also the SLI issue, as we all know that SLI or CrossFireX isn't always a walk in the park, as demonstrated in our testing. You have to wait for drivers to fully take advantage of it with the latest games and benchmarks, and that is highly annoying. At least with a single card none of that monkey business ever occurs.

GeForce GTX Titan: Single-card Benchmarks

Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus P9X79 motherboard with 16GB of DDR3/1600 and a Thermaltake ToughPower 1,050w PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows Ultimate. All games are run at 2560x1600 with 4XAA except for the 3DMark tests.

*This score is indicative of only one GPU being recognized due to drivers not being compatible with this particular benchmark.

Hit the next page for dual-card benchmarks, Titan versus SLI/Crossfire Configs, and our closing thoughts.

Now we move onto dual-card configurations, and it's here the Titans in SLI show their dominance, but not in every test. The Titans reigned supreme over GTX 680 SLI in a majority of the tests we ran, but a combination of virgin drivers and brand-new benchmarks did cause some wonky results. For example, the Radeon HD 7970 cards were unable to show any improvement in the new 3DMark Fire Strike test and Catzilla, as the benchmark simply didn't see the other GPU. We expected the Titans to whoop all over the GTX 680s and the HD 7970s, but it was closer than we thought it would be, and the GTX 680s in SLI still beat out the newcomer in several tests including Batman, Crysis 3 and Heaven 4.0, proving it can still punch with the best of them. For most GTX 680 owners out there, the best upgrade path will be to get a second card and SLI them if their case and PSU allows it.

Dual-card Benchmarks

*This score is indicative of only one GPU being recognized

Titan Versus SLI and CrossFireX

When it comes to pitting the Titan versus dual-card setups, the Titan loses every battle. This is particularly interesting considering a pair of GTX 680s will cost just a bit less than the $1,000 Titan (though are a bit noisier), and dual HD 7970 cards will only run you about $800 these days, which is a smokin' deal. The Titan holds its own though, but we were shocked to see it only manage 22fps in Crysis 3, though the 4XSMAA setting we ran really hits these cards in the family jewels. It did look amazing though.

*This score is indicative of only one GPU being recognized

Closing Thoughts

In the final analysis the Titan changes the game for a very specific sub-set of gamer - those who need maximum firepower in a small enclosure, and those who want to run multiple monitors. For the rest of the gamers with $1,000 burning a hole in their credit card's pocket, the GTX 690 remains the go-to card for maximum frame rates, just like before. It certainly sets a new high-water mark for single-GPU video cards though, and for that we give Nvidia copious kudos for pulling this off. As we wrote in our preview we never thought we'd see a GK110 GPU for gaming, and we weren't alone in that observation judging by the comments left on our site to the rumors of such a card existing. Nvidia claims it made this GPU just because it could as it already had the GK110 deployed in super computers, and it wants to support the enthusiast gaming crowd. Those all sound like good reasons to us, but Nvidia also mentioned that system builders were asking for a shorter card for SFF systems since the GTX 690, so for that scenario the Titan is as good as it gets both in terms of performance, acoustics and design, so Nvidia has done an excellent job on that front. We can see it kicking off an entirely new wave of custom builds coming from the usual boutique suspects.

Overall, Titan is a breakthrough card for single-GPU performance, form factor and acoustic control. We certainly hope AMD picks up the gauntlet and returns fire soon, but all indications are that it's totally satisfied by the performance of its HD 7970 lineup for now, and that Tahiti will remain its flagship for most of 2013. It would argue the Titan is simply too expensive and rare for it to worry about at this time, which is valid. The Titan is expensive and out of reach for most consumers. That said, we still love an old fashioned GPU war like we had in the good old days, so maybe the Titan's arrival will cause AMD to shuffle its roadmap a bit.

Intel Gains Graphics Market Share at the Expense of AMD, Nvidia

Paul Lilly — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:28:57 +0000

Discrete graphics shipments dipped 16 percent sequentially in Q4, according to data by Jon Peddie Research.

Intel increased its share of the graphics market by 3.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 to claim nearly two thirds of the market at 63.4 percent, the latest data by Jon Peddie Research (JPR) reveals. AMD, meanwhile, dropped from 21 percent in Q3 to 19.7 percent in Q4, and Nvidia gave up nearly 2 percent and remains in third place with a 16.9 percent share of the market. All three vendors saw graphics shipments decline last quarter.

There were 28.8 million discrete GPU shipments in Q4, down nearly 16 percent over the previous quarter, and down 9.7 percent compared to a year ago. There was an 8.2 percent decline in overall graphics shipments in Q4 compared to Q3, news of which was "disappointing for every one of the major players," JPR said.

Nvidia, which just launched its GeForce GTX Titan graphics card, saw quarter-to-quarter desktop discrete shipments fall 15.1 percent from last quarter, and the company's mobile discrete GPUs declined 18.4 percent.

"The turmoil in the PC market has caused us to modify our forecast since the last report; it is less aggressive on both desktops and notebooks," JPR said. "The popularity of tablets and the persistent recession are the contributing factors that have altered the nature of the PC market. Nonetheless, the CAGR for PC graphics from 2012 to 2016 is 3.2 percent, and we expect the total shipments of graphics chips in 2016 to be 549 million units."

According to JPR, more and more users are finding that embedded graphics, such as those found in Intel's and AMD's processors, are "good enough."

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Nvidia Unleashes the Titan

Josh Norem — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 14:00:05 +0000

A massive GPU that’ll be hard to find, and even harder to beat

Today Nvidia is pulling the wraps off the GK110-based GeForce GTX Titan, a single-GPU card that is expected to easily capture the title of Baddest Ass GPU in the world when benchmarks are released this Thursday, February 21st. The Titan is Nvidia’s “Big Kepler” GPU, and has double the transistors and almost double the CUDA cores of the mid-range GK104 chip found in its flagship GeForce GTX 680 GPU. Though it runs at a lower clock speed in stock trim, it should still offer a sizable performance improvement over the already capable GTX 680.

Behold the Titan, the Big Kepler GK110 GPU we've all been waiting for.

The GK110 has been in use for over a year in the super-computing world, most notably in the Tesla K20X GPUs used by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan supercomputer, which is currently the fastest super computer in the world. Though benchmarks for the Titan haven't been posted just yet, Nvidia tells us it should be neck-and-neck with the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690, which is currently the fastest single card GPU in existence. In other words, the Titan should be almost fast as dual GTX 680s in SLI, but from a single GPU. Oh, and guess what? It's actually quieter than both of them, even under load (yes, we've heard it).

So let's talk specs. The GTX Titan features a whopping 2,688 CUDA cores in 14 SMX units, 6GB of GDDR5 memory running at 6GHz, a core clock speed of 836MHz with a boost clock of 876MHz, 7.1 billion transistors, a 250w TDP, 384-bit memory interface, and a single-fan cooling unit. Power is provided by an eight-pin and a six-pin connector, and the price is a surprising $999, the same as the GTX 690. The card is 10.5" long and comes wrapped in an aluminum shell, as opposed to the magnesium alloy shell used by the GTX 690, and like that card, Nvidia is not allowing any changes by add-in board manufacturers, so all Titans will look just like the one shown here.

The Titan sports an aluminum casing and a polycarbonate window to show off its cooler.

Perhaps even more impressive than the card's raw specs is how quiet it is thanks to technology Nvidia is calling GPU Boost 2.0. When we first sat down to check out the card in an undisclosed location in San Francisco, we were shocked to find out that not only was a Titan running a mere 3 feet from where we sat and made no noise whatsoever, but another machine just a few feet from us to the right was running Battlefield 3 using three cards in SLI, and was also as quiet as a whisper. The secret isn't just how Nvidia designed the single-fan cooling apparatus, though that obviously plays a huge role, but rather in how it designed the card's software to work with the card. Put simply, you can now control the maximum temperature you want the card to reach, and it will throttle itself to remain at that temperature though a combination of fan speed, voltage and clock speeds. This lets you tweak the card to run any way you want — overclocked with a loud fan, stock speeds and relatively quiet, or underclocked and totally silent. You can adjust all these variables in real-time too through the software provided by the add-in card manufacturers, most likely Asus and EVGA if the same precedent set by the GTX 690 is followed.

Nvidia used a new thermal paste that is twice as effective at conducting heat as that used in the GTX 680.

Aside from the new temperature, voltage and clock speed controls (yes, you can over-volt the card), a new feature that is exclusive to the Titan will let you overclock your display's refresh rate when running Vsync, so you could theoretically achieve 80fps even when using a 60Hz panel, and the same goes for 120Hz panels as well. Nvidia told us the GPU simply "lies" to the panel and tells it to run at a rate higher than it's supposed to, with the caveat that not all panels will allow this, but the only way to find out is to try.

Another interesting feature is the color and status of the GeForce GTX logo that is lit up on the side of the card can now be controlled through software. We didn't get to see it in action, but Nvidia tells us you'll be able to tweak it to perform a range of stunts including changing color based on temperature, you can have it "breathe," or just be a different color to match your rig's mood lighting.

You can set the GTX logo to change color based on temperature now, among other nifty tricks.

We never thought Nvidia would do this, simply because tradition dictates mild, incremental advancements in its GPU lineup year-to-year, especially when it's not introducing a new architecture. Plus, since Nvidia already held a narrow performance advantage over the AMD HD 7970 card (at least in terms of power consumption), it would stand to reason that we'd see a modest 20 percent performance boost in the GTX 780 card, or something along those lines. Nobody expected a card to be released that promises almost double the performance. In fact, we stated as much in our 2013 Tech Preview article in our Holiday 2012 issue of the magazine when we wrote about the prospect of the GK110 showing up in gaming trim, stating, "It would be totally uncharacteristic of Nvidia to double performance in the next generation, particularly when the competition doesn’t warrant it." It looks like we were wrong, and we couldn’t be happier about it.

So why would Nvidia release this card, especially when it's already largely considered to be the leader in the single-GPU space? We have two opinions on that issue. The first is that it wanted to have a definitive lead, not just the lead in heat output, noise and energy consumption. We all know the GTX 680 consumes less power and produces less heat and noise than the HD 7970, but the two cards are so close in benchmark performance now that AMD has the GHz edition of the card circulating that in most tests it's either a tie or AMD has a slight advantage. That obviously didn't sit well with Nvidia, especially when it had all this horsepower lying around in the form of the GK110. Our guess is that Nvidia decided to end this pussy-footing around with the mid-range GK104 and just release the hounds once and for all.

During our demo we saw three-way SLI in action and it was barely audible even standing next to the open test machine.

The second reason for the Titan's deployment is the sudden interest in the new generation of Small Form Factor rigs such as the Falcon Northwest Tiki, iBuyPower Revolt, Digital Storm Bolt and others. The GTX 690 was a bit too long to fit inside these cases, but the Titan fits perfectly being about an inch shorter despite having roughly the same width. This will allow system builders to construct tiny boxes with no-compromise graphics performance, and will also allow home builders to stuff the Titan into most ATX cases without any issues as well, providing they survive the sticker shock and can find one in stock.

The Titan was built to fit (barely) inside SFF enclosures like the Falcon Northwest Tiki. It also supports 3-way SLI.

That's our quick glimpse of the new GeForce Titan. Check back in two days for full benchmarks in both single-and-SLI configs. We can hardly wait to show them to you.

Specs:

*Nvidia and AMD report "cores" in a different way so this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison.

Nvidia's Full Year Revenue of $4.28 Billion is a Record High

Paul Lilly — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 23:08:33 +0000

Compared to a year ago, Nvidia's sales figures are looking mighty strong.

The transition to mobile is barely affecting Nvidia's bottom line, which raked in $1.11 billion last quarter. That's a decrease of 8.1 percent sequentially, but an increase of 16.1 percent year-on-year, the GPU maker said. Furthermore, Nvidia's full year revenue reached a record high of $4.28 billion, jumping more than 7 percent compared to a year ago. Between its GPU and Tegra sales, which grew 7 percent and 90 percent, respectively, from a year ago, Nvidia is firing on all cylinders.

"This year we did the best work in our company's history," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of Nvidia. "We achieved record revenues, margins and cash, despite significant market headwinds.

"We grew our GPU and Tegra processor businesses. We are sampling production silicon of the Tegra 4 platform which includes our 4G LTE modem. And we created new pillars for long term growth with Project Shield and Nvidia Grid -- first-of-their-kind devices that will extend our leadership in visual computing into mobile and the cloud."

Nvidia's profits fell 3.2 percent compared to last year, though it still came out ahead by $562.5 million, or $0.90 per share, compared to $581.1 million, or $0.94 per share one year ago.

Looking ahead, Nvidia expects its fiscal 2014 revenue to reach $940 million, plus or minus 2 percent

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Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC Review

Josh Norem — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:00:32 +0000

Kepler's Swan Song arrives with a GTX badge

Nvidia has been popping out Kepler cards like a circus clown car since the company launched its 6-series GPUs in early 2012, and now we finally reach the bottom of the GTX barrel with the $150 GeForce GTX 650 Ti. This card slots in right below the $230 GTX 660 and has less of everything—less CUDA, less memory (and a narrower memory bus width), and less PCB.

Though a 6-inch PCB is certainly not small—cough—it makes the 650 Ti the smallest card we’ve tested in a while. Since this particular board is overclocked, Gigabyte has bolted on a dual-fan cooling mechanism that adds three inches to the card’s length. Gigabyte has also doubled the card's RAM allotment over the reference design to 2GB. The extra RAM and cooling adds $20 to the price tag, as well.

Don't let its size fool you: Underneath the massive cooling shroud lies a wee 6-inch PCB.

In addition to the down-spec’d nature of the GTX 650 Ti, it’s also missing two performance-related features: SLI for dual-card gaming and GPU Boost functionality, so the board won't overclock automatically during gaming. To its credit though, Gigabyte ships this card overclocked by 107MHz, and you can crank it up even further via the company’s OC Guru II software. Given its massive cooling apparatus, we're sure the card can handle it.

In testing, the little gipper outperformed AMD cards in a similar price range, besting both the Radeon HD 6850 and HD 6870 by small-to-medium margins. However, our target is 60fps at 1920x1200, and when using that standard the card fell short. Granted, we turn everything up to Ultra or High and enable 4x AA, so we could have dialed things down a bit and probably hit 60fps in Dirt 3, Batman, and Just Cause 2. Since we're already at 77fps in Far Cry 2, that would mean possibly reaching our goal in four out of eight games; not bad for such a small video card. The trouble is that the Radeon HD 7850 costs just $20 more, has CrossFire support, and was faster in almost every test we ran, making a final choice slightly more difficult.

If you have a rock-solid $150 budget, we have no reservations recommending a stock GTX 650 Ti, and the Gigabyte version is even better for an extra $20. But if you have even $10 more you should go with the Radeon HD 7850 since it's a faster card.

Price $170, www.gigabyte.us

Note: This review was taken from the Holiday 2012 issue of the magazine.

GeForce Titan May be Faster Than Previously Thought

Paul Lilly — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:24:46 +0000

Nvidia's upcoming GeForce Titan could end up faster than a GeForce GTX 690.

More information is starting to trickle out about Nvidia's GeForce Titan, an upcoming consumer-grade graphics card based on the company's Kepler GK110 silicon. Initial reports stated it would offer around 85 percent of the performance of a dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690, which is mighty impressive for a single-GPU part, but it could actually end being even faster than Nvidia's flagship graphics card.

Credit goes to WCCFTech for digging through the web and uncovering new details on a Chinese language forum, which seems pretty adament the new part will simply be called GeForce Titan and won't be part of Nvidia's GeForce 700 Series.

The GK110 chip that Titan is based on has only appeared in Nvidia's professional-grade Tesla line. It's believed the architecture wasn't mature enough to serve the consumer market, and while manufacturing has improved, it's likely Titan will be available in limited quantities. At $800, it's a luxury part, anyway.

WCCFTech uncovered another Chinese-language website posting what it claims is a 3DMark 11 benchmark run for the Titan. It scored 7,107 in Extreme mode, compared to GTX 690, which typically scores around 6,000.

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Win a PowerColor Devil 13 HD 7990 GPU!

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:23:14 +0000

The entry period for this giveaway is now closed

If there’s one thing readers of Maximum PC can appreciate, it’s a ludicrously sized GPU like the PowerColor Devil 13 HD 7990. This unholy video card combines the power of two Radeon HD 7970 GPUs along with 6GB of RAM into a massive, power-sucking, case-hogging, and benchmark flogging bad mamma-jamma. Notable features include one-touch overclocking, a triple-fan cooling solution that takes up three PCI-E slots, and a custom assortment of tools from legendary tool-maker Wiha, and a support stand to hold the muscle-bound video card in its PCI slot. Yes, it's that big.

All in all, it’s the fastest, most powerful, and most over-the-top AMD-based GPU package money can buy, and now that we’re done testing the card we are going to give it away to one lucky Facebook fan. That is correct. You—yes, you—could win the PowerColor Devil 13 HD 7990 video card that we tested and reviewed in our February Issue, and have it inside your case in the very near future, provided your case can hold this 12” long monstrosity and you have a CrossFire-capable power supply with at least three eight-pin PCI-E connectors. We have the card all boxed up and ready to ship, and are even leaving the used Wiha tools inside the box too, despite Gordon’s insistence that we just say they got “lost” somehow. This bad boy is ready to ship, so get to entering, GPU aficionados. If you’d like to own the used PowerColor HD 7990 video card, all you have to do is…

How to Enter:

“Like” or already be a fan of Maximum PC on Facebook, and write an email to contests@maximumpc.com with the subject “PowerColor Devil 13 HD 7990” and in the body put your complete name, address, city, state, zip code, birthdate, and phone number. One prize winner will be randomly selected on February 8, 2013. This giveaway has rules, so please read them below. Also, this giveaway is regrettably only available to readers in the USA. The giveaway includes the PowerColor 7990 Devil 13 video card, wiha screwdriver set, video card stand, and the PowerColor Devil 13 box.

This sweepstakes has rules — read them in the next page please.

OFFICIAL RULES

NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING.

1. SPONSOR: This promotion (the “Sweepstakes”) is sponsored by FUTURE US, INC., 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080 (“Sponsor”), is in no way sponsored, endorsed, or administered by, or associated with, Facebook, Inc., and is subject to the following terms and conditions. Contest is being administered by Future US, Inc. (“Future US”), 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080, +1 (650) 872-1642.

2. ELIGIBILITY: Sweepstakes open to legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and District of Columbia, excluding where prohibited or restricted by law. Entrants must have attained the age of majority in their state of residence (usually at least eighteen (18) years of age) at time of entry, and possess a valid form of unexpired government-issued photo identification and must have a valid email address. Invalid or ineligible entries shall be excluded from consideration. Employees of Sponsor, its respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliated companies, advertising, promotion, or production agencies, any companies who are promotional participants or prize providers, web masters and web suppliers, and the foregoing employees’ household or immediate family members (defined as parent, spouse, child, sibling, or grandparent) are NOT eligible to enter Sweepstakes. By their submission of entry, entrants warrant they are legally entitled and authorized to make such submission, either on their own behalf, or as to information submitted upon the express authorization of another on whose behalf the information is submitted. In the event of a dispute as to the winner’s identity for online entries received from multiple users having the same email account, entries will be deemed made by the authorized subscriber of the mail account associated with the entry. The authorized account subscriber is the natural person who is assigned the email address by the internet service provider (ISP), on-line service provider, or other organization responsible for assigning email addresses.

3. TIMING: Sweepstakes begins at 9:00AM Pacific time on January 28, 2013 and ends at 12:00PM Pacific time on February 8, 2013. Sponsor’s computer will be the official time clock for the Sweepstakes. Online entries must be received by Sponsor by 12:00PM Pacific time on February 8, 2013 to be eligible.

4. HOW TO ENTER: Enter online by liking or already being a fan of Maximum PC’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/maximumpc.com and then emailing us at contests@maximumpc.com with the subject “PowerColor Devil 13 HD 7990” and your complete name, address, city, state, zip code, birthdate, and phone number in the body. LIMIT ONE ENTRY PER HOUSEHOLD, REGARDLESS OF FORM OF ENTRY. Use of automated devices or methods of submission are not valid forms of entry. Any attempt at alternative entry is void. Entries become the property of the Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned.

5. PRIZES AND ODDS:

One grand prize will be awarded in this Sweepstakes. The grand prize consists of a used PowerColor Devil 13 HD 7990 video card (which is 12” long and requires a CrossFire-capable powersupply with at least three eight-pin PCI-E connectors to use), along with a set of used Wiha tools (custom assortment of 10 screwdriver, torque and hex wrench “blades” that fit inside an included handle, all in a soft carrying case, originally included in video card package) (“Prize”). The grand prize package has an approximate retail value of $1,000. The grand prize must be delivered to address listed on the winning entry, and delivery may take six to eight weeks.

The odds of winning will be determined by the number of eligible entries received.

The prize cannot be transferred, assigned, substituted, or redeemed for cash, and must be accepted as awarded, but Sponsor reserves the right to substitute any prize with a prize of equal or greater value should the advertised prize become unavailable for any reason. The prize will not be fulfilled outside the United States and District of Columbia, and will not be fulfilled in Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, U.S. military installations in foreign countries, or in any other U.S. territories or possessions or wherever else prohibited or restricted by law. The winner will be responsible for all taxes (federal, state, and local) and all expenses not listed herein related to acceptance and use of any prize. Any person winning $600 or more worth of prizes from Sponsor in a calendar year will receive an IRS form 1099 after the end of the calendar year in which the prizes were awarded, and copy of such form will be filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Limit one Prize per household.

6. DRAWING: One potential winner will be selected by random drawing from all valid eligible entries received. Drawing will be held on or shortly after February 8, 2013. Drawing will be conducted by Sponsor, whose decisions on all matters related to the Sweepstakes shall be final and binding and within its sole discretion. Winning is contingent upon compliance with all terms and conditions set forth in these official rules; any entry drawn or any potential winner identified thereby found at any time to fail to comply with these official rules will be held invalid and ineligible for award.

7. NOTIFICATION: Potential winners will be notified by email by February 15, 2013. Potential winners so notified must complete, execute and return the provided Affidavit, Waiver, Release and Indemnity Agreement including, where lawful, a Publicity Release (plus any additional documents required at the discretion of Sponsor), as well as an IRS Form W-9, within three (3) business days of attempted notice of prize award. If a potential winner fails to comply with the requirements of this paragraph, or if the prize notification or prize is returned as non-deliverable, or if the potential winner is found to be ineligible or not in compliance with these Official Rules, such prize will be forfeited, in which case the prize will be awarded to an alternate winner by random drawing.

To obtain any legally-required winners list, send a self-addressed envelope with sufficient prepaid postage to: Winners/PowerColor Devil 13 HD 7990 Sweepstakes, c/o Future US, Inc., 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080. (Residents of Vermont do not have to include return postage.)

8. PRIVACY POLICY: By participating in the Sweepstakes, you acknowledge and agree that Sponsor may collect the personal information submitted by you and use the information pursuant to Future US’ standard privacy policy, the terms of which can be found at http://www.futureus.com/privacy.php , which terms and conditions entrants accept and agree to by submission of entries pursuant to these official rules.

9. RELEASE: By participating in the Sweepstakes and/or accepting a prize, an entrant/winner agrees to defend, release and hold harmless the Sponsor, TUL Corporation, Wiha Quality Tools, Willi Hahn Corp USA, Facebook, Inc., and each of their respective parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, divisions, advertising, production and promotion agencies, any companies who are promotional participants or prize providers, web masters and web suppliers, and the foregoing companies’ officers, directors, shareholders, employees, representatives and agents (collectively “Releasees”) from and against any actions, claims and/or liability for injury, loss or damage of any kind to persons, including death, or property (including the violation or infringement of any proprietary or personal right of any individual or entity) resulting in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, from participation in the Sweepstakes, and/or the use, acceptance, or possession of a Sweepstakes prize, and/or participation in a Sweepstakes prize-related activity, including any action, claim or liability arising from the unauthorized submission of any information, and/or for any printing, production, technical, typographical, human or other error in the printing, offering or announcement of any prize.

By participating in the Sweepstakes and/or accepting a prize, an entrant/winner consents to and gives the Sponsor the right to use, publish, and display a winner’s (and where applicable an entrant’s) name, likeness, city and state, and prize awarded, for the purpose of advertising, trade, publicity and promotional purposes in any media now known or hereafter discovered, worldwide, and on the Web, in perpetuity, without review, notification or approval, and without additional consideration, unless prohibited by law. Each entrant/winner also understands and agrees that he/she is providing information to Future US, Inc. and not to Facebook, Inc.

10. LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY: Entrants agree that by participating in the Sweepstakes they release the Releases from any liability in connection with: (a) Entries that are ineligible as a result of being lost, late, illegible, damaged, incomplete, inaccurate, delayed, unintelligible, non-delivered, stolen, postage due, or misdirected, or the failure to capture any such information; (b) Any typographical or other human or technical errors in the offer or administration of the Sweepstakes, including but not limited to errors in advertising, these official rules, the selection and announcement of a winner(s), or the distribution/awarding of a prize(s); (c) Any omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay, misdirection, damage, availability, accessibility, miscommunications, injury, technical malfunctions or traffic congestion on the Internet/telephone network, or at any website, satellite, computer, telephone, cellular or cable transmissions or lines, or any combination thereof; (d) The unauthorized access to, or alteration of entries; (e) Jumbled, scrambled, delayed, or misdirected transmissions, computer hardware or software malfunctions, failures or difficulties, or for any other errors of any kind, whether human, technical, mechanical, electronic or network, including, without limitation, any errors which may occur in connection with the administration of the Sweepstakes or in any Sweepstakes-related materials; and (f) Damage to en entrant or other person’s system or equipment occasioned by participation in this Sweepstakes or downloading materials from the Sweepstakes website, or any combination thereof. Persons who tamper with or abuse any aspect of the Sweepstakes or website, as solely determined by the Sponsor, will be disqualified (and all associated entries will be void), and Sponsor reserves the right to terminate such entrant’s eligibility to participate in this or any other promotion offered by Sponsor. Entries generated by robotic, programmed, script, macro or other automated means or by any means which subvert the entry process will be disqualified.

Sponsor reserves the right to modify these rules for clarification purposes without materially affecting the term and conditions of the Sweepstakes. In the event that the Sweepstakes is infected by a computer virus/worm/bug, or is not capable of running or being executed as planned (as a result of but not limited to an error, omission, defect, delay, misdirection, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, action of entrants, or technical failure) or any other cause which in the sole opinion of Sponsor corrupts or affects the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of the Sweepstakes, Sponsor reserves the right in their sole discretion to disqualify any suspect entry or entrant and to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Sweepstakes. In the event of such cancellation, termination, modification or suspension, notice thereof will be posted at the entry website(s) mentioned above, and winner(s) will be determined solely by Sponsor in a random drawing from among all eligible non-suspect and/or non-disqualified entries prior to action taken or as otherwise deemed fair and appropriate by Sponsor. In such event, Releasees shall have no liability to any entrant who is disqualified due to such an action. Failure to enforce any term of these official rules shall not constitute a waiver of that provision.

IN NO EVENT WILL THE RELEASEES BE RESPONSIBLE OR LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR LOSSES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF YOUR ACCESS TO AND USE OF THE WEBSITE OR DOWNLOADING FROM AND/OR PRINTING MATERIAL DOWNLOADED FROM THE ENTRY WEBSITE(S) MENTIONED ABOVE, OR ANY OTHER WEBSITE ASSOCIATED WITH SPONSOR. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, EVERYTHING ON THE ENTRY WEBSITE(S) IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, SOME JURISDICTIONS MAY NOT ALLOW LIMITATIONS OR EXCLUSION OF LIABILITY FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES SO SOME OF THE ABOVE LIMITATIONS OR EXCLUSIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. CHECK YOUR LOCAL LAWS FOR ANY RESTRICTIONS OR LIMITATIONS REGARDING THESE LIMITATIONS OR EXCLUSIONS.

11. LAW: Subject to all federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Void where prohibited or restricted. All issues and questions concerning the construction, validity, interpretation, and enforceability of these Official Rules, or the rights and obligations of entrants or Sponsor in connection with any drawing or award, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with the laws of, the State of California, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any cause of action by you with respect to the offer (and/or any information, products or services related thereto) must be instituted within one (1) year after the cause of action arose or be forever waived and barred. All actions shall be subject to the limitations set forth in above. The language in these official rules shall be interpreted as in accordance with its fair meaning and not strictly for or against either party. All legal proceedings arising out of or in connection with the offer of these official rules shall be brought solely in San Mateo County, California. You expressly submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of said courts and consent to extraterritorial service of process.

CES 2013: Haswell Integrated Graphics vs Geforce GT 650M [Video] Updated

Paul Lilly — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 18:02:23 +0000

Can you tell which one is which?

Just how good is Intel's integrated graphics on Haswell (codenamed GT3), the successor to Ivy Bridge? In due time, we'll answer that question with some numbers and a hands-on evaluation, but in the meantime, we've put together a little challenge for our readers. Maximum PC Deputy Editor Gordon Mah Ung captured on video a pair of systems running DiRT Showdown. One was equipped with a Haswell part running integrated GT3 graphics, and the other was rocking an Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge processor paired with a discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 650M GPU. Let's see if you can tell the difference.

There are two monitors in the video, one hooked up to the Haswell system and the other running Nvidia's discrete graphics. As you watch the video, pay no attention to which one loads first. The slight delay between the left and right monitors isn't because of the GPU, it's due to hitting play on one before the other, so that's not going to help figure out which is which.

Instead, pay attention to the graphics and gameplay footage. As Gordon notes in the video, "it looks pretty close." Have a look for yourself:

So, which one do you think is Haswell and which is running the GeForce GT 650M? Post your guess in the comments section below and we'll reveal the answer later today!

~EDIT 1/11/13~

We know we said we'd update this post last night, but the guesses kept coming so we decided to hold off a little bit on revealing the answer. So, which is which?

LEFT: Intel Haswell with integrated GT-3 (codename) graphics
RIGHT: Inte Core i7 with Nvidia GeForce GT 650M

The responses we received were fairly split, which is very encouraging for Haswell/GT-3.

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Leaked Slide Reveals Nvidia Tegra 4 Details

Paul Lilly — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:28:53 +0000

Tegra 4 will reportedly feature a 72-core GPU.

A Chinese website posted what appears to be a legitimate slide of Nvidia's upcoming Tegra 4 architecture. Codenamed "Wayne," Tegra 4 will bring a 72-core GPU to the mobile fight, providing some powerful competition to Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors and Samsung's Exynos line. It will be built on a 28nm manufacturing process and sport the same "4-plus-1" core design featured in Tegra 3, which is basically a quad-core chip with a fifth battery saver core.

Tegra 4 will support resolutions up to 2560x1600, so it will have no trouble running "Retina Display"-like screens (to borrow a term from Apple). It will also support 1080p output at 120Hz.

According to the slide, performance will be 20X greater than Tegra 2 and 6X better than Tegra 3. It will support dual-channel DDR3L, LPDDR2, and LPDDR3 memory, as well as USB 3.0, which hints at the SuperSpeed USB port making an appearance on next generation smartphone and tablet devices.

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graphics

AMD Bills New Radeon 8970M as World's Fastest Mobile GPU

There's a new mobile sheriff in town.

AMD Catalyst 13.4 Update Addresses Latency Performance in Several Games

AMD promises a significant reduction in latency in titles like Skyrim and Tomb Raider.

AMD Radeon HD 7990 First Look

Nvidia’s GTX 690 finally has some serious competition

Spec Speak

Benchmarks

Frame Latency and micro-stutter

Final Thoughts

AMD Doesn't Think DirectX API Has a Future Beyond DX11

There will never be a DirectX 12 API, AMD says.

Nvidia Gives Mobile Graphics a Boost with GeForce 700M GPU Line

Five new notebook GPUs comprise the GeForce 700M family.

AMD's TressFX Technology Cures Bad Hair Days

Tomb Raider features the world's first real-time hair rendering technology.

Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan – The Benchmarks

Not quite the fastest single-card, but definitely the fastest GPU

GeForce GTX Titan: Single-card Benchmarks

Dual-card Benchmarks

Titan Versus SLI and CrossFireX

Closing Thoughts

Intel Gains Graphics Market Share at the Expense of AMD, Nvidia

Discrete graphics shipments dipped 16 percent sequentially in Q4, according to data by Jon Peddie Research.

Nvidia Unleashes the Titan

A massive GPU that’ll be hard to find, and even harder to beat

Nvidia's Full Year Revenue of $4.28 Billion is a Record High

Compared to a year ago, Nvidia's sales figures are looking mighty strong.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC Review

Kepler's Swan Song arrives with a GTX badge

GeForce Titan May be Faster Than Previously Thought

Nvidia's upcoming GeForce Titan could end up faster than a GeForce GTX 690.

Win a PowerColor Devil 13 HD 7990 GPU!

The entry period for this giveaway is now closed

How to Enter:

CES 2013: Haswell Integrated Graphics vs Geforce GT 650M [Video] *Updated*

Can you tell which one is which?

~EDIT 1/11/13~

Leaked Slide Reveals Nvidia Tegra 4 Details

Tegra 4 will reportedly feature a 72-core GPU.

CES 2013: Haswell Integrated Graphics vs Geforce GT 650M [Video] Updated