nvidia

Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Still Headed for a May 23 Release

Paul Lilly — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:33:48 +0000

Rumors point to the GTX 780 launching next week.

Near the beginning of the month, news and rumor site Fudzilla reported that Nvidia was planning to launch its GeForce GTX 780 graphics card on May 23 at 6:00 AM PDT. That date is now only a week away, and so far, things are looking good. Withing naming anyone, Fudzilla says it's now heard from "multiple sources" that the May 23 launch date is accurate, at which time Nvidia's hardware partners will debut reference clocked cards.

As with most video cards these days, overclocked versions will inevitably pop up, though most of them will come out "several weeks" after the initial launch.

Reference cards are said to be using a GeForce Titan cooler quality since it's a high quality design. You may even spot overclocked cards using the same cooler, though vendors typically like to slap on their own cooling solutions, which often do a better job than reference at whisking away heat and run quieter to boot.

According to Fudzilla, the GTX 780 part based on reference specs should sell for around 500 Euros. That's about $645 USD, though PC component pricing doesn't always follow a straight currency conversion from one market to the next.

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Nvidia Announces Project Shield Release Date, Price

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 15 May 2013 02:27:15 +0000

Company now accepting pre-orders for the handheld from the most eager "fans"

At a time when dedicated handheld gaming devices are struggling to remain relevant, Nvidia is pressing ahead with plans to launch a handheld of its own. The chipmaker on Monday made its Tegra 4-powered Project Shield (codename) handheld available for pre-order to those who took the trouble of signing up for Shield-related updates by clicking ‘Notify Me’ on the official Shield website.

The upcoming Android-running device, which it unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, will now be known simply as Shield and set consumers back $349, the company announced today. Nvidia will start taking pre-orders from the general public through Newegg, GameStop, Micro Center, Canada Computers and the Shield website on May 20, 2013, with the first units expected to reach customers in late June.

Shield runs what Nvidia says is “pure” Android (Jelly Bean). With Nvidia deciding against locking down the OS (à la Amazon Kindle Fire), gamers will have access to all the latest and greatest games and apps in the Play Store. In fact, a couple of games will come bundled with it.

However, it would be foolish to think that its console-esque controller is merely aimed at making the many touch-unfriendly Android games out there a touch (pardon the pun) more playable. Shield’s controller is sure to come in very handy when gamers choose to stream their favorite PC games from their GeForce GTX GPU-powered PCs to the handheld.

Here’s a quick rundown of its specs:

Processor: NVIDIA Tegra 4 Quad Core Mobile Processor with 2GB RAM
Controller: Console-grade controller with dual analog joysticks, a full-sized D-Pad, left and right analog triggers, full-sized bumpers and A/B/X/Y buttons
Display: 5-inch, 720p retinal multi-touch display
Audio: Integrated stereo speakers with built-in microphone
Games and Apps: Android titles in the Play Store and PC games via GeForce game streaming
Bundled Software: Google Play, TegraZone, Sonic 4 Episode II THD, Expendable: Rearmed, Hulu Plus, TwitchTV
Storage: 16GB Flash Memory
Wireless: 802.11n 2x2 Mimo Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS
Connectivity: Mini-HDMI output, Micro-USB 2.0, MicroSD storage slot, 3.5mm stereo headphone jack with microphone support
Motion Sensors: 3 Axis Gyro, 3 Axis Accelerometer
Battery: 28.8 Watt Hours

Has Nvidia put paid to Shield’s chances of success by pricing it in line with home consoles, or do you think that the handheld has enough juice to justify its hefty price tag? Do tell us what you think.

Nvidia Release Game Ready Beta 320.14 Driver for Metro: Last Light

Paul Lilly — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:29:25 +0000

Enjoy a free and easy performance boost in Metro: Last Light.

It doesn't matter if you're sitting pretty with a single Nvidia-based graphics card or rocking multiple GeForce parts in SLI, you should see better framerates in Metro: Last Light (launches tomorrow) after applying Nvidia's latest beta driver, version 320.14. Also included in the newest driver release are all of the performance optimizations and SLI profiles found in the recent 320.00 beta release, which benefits games such as Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, GRID 2, Tomb Raider, and several others.

Nvidia put a lot of time and effort into optimizing its code base for Metro: Last Light, and it also put together an extensive graphics and performance guide related to the 4A Games' title. To provide a single example of the performance boost you can expect by installing the beta driver, Nvidia says Metro: Last Light will perform up to 10 percent better on a single GeForce GTX 660 graphics card and up to 9 percent running two GTX 660 parts in SLI.

You can also expect double-digit percentage performance gains in Dirt: Showdown and Tomb Raider regardless of whether you're running a single GPU or multiple graphics cards.

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Nvidia's Revenue Slips 14 Percent, GPU Maker Eyes Return to Growth in Second Half

Paul Lilly — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:56:06 +0000

Compared to last year, Nvidia is moving in the right direction.

Nvidia reported revenue of $954.7 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2014 ended April 28, 2013. That's down 13.7 percent from $1.11 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, though up a little more than 3 percent compared to last year. A similar story played out with regards to Nvidia's net income (profit), which totaled $77.9 million for the quarter, down 55.2 percent sequentially but up 29 percent year-on-year.

"The success of Kepler-based GPUs within and beyond the PC helped drive another quarter of record margins," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of Nvidia. "Kepler is capturing share among gamers, strengthening our workstation and supercomputing segments, and will fuel new growth opportunities for our GRID server graphics solutions. With Tegra 4 devices and Tegra 4i certification on the way, we're gearing up to return to growth in the second half."

Nvidia had a few notable product launches last quarter, including its Tegra 4i SoC (System-on-Chip), it's first fully integrated 4G LTE mobile processor that it claims is three times faster and half the size of its nearest competitor. The GPU maker also launched the GeForce GTX Titan graphics card for desktops.

Like Apple, Nvidia is planning to line its shareholders pockets. Nvidia said it will return in excess of $1 billion this fiscal year to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and quarterly dividend payments.

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Purported Pictures of Nvidia GTX 780 and GTX 770 Emerge

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 08 May 2013 04:52:34 +0000

The 700-series graphics cards share the same cooling solution

The rumored Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 and GTX 770 graphics cards, which were said to be arriving in late May as of last week, have allegedly had their pictures leaked to the Web. The said pictures were posted on a Chinese forum on Monday.

Aesthetically, both cards are identical, save for the shoddy engravings of their names. Based on the leaked pictures, both cards seem to share the same NVTTM cooler found on the GTX Titan. But that is where the similarities end.

While the GTX 780 is said to be a GK110-based part (known internally as Titan LE), the GTX 770 is rumored to be a slightly higher-clocked variant of the GTX 680 that will be based on the GK104-425 core just like the archetype.

According to reports, the GTX 780 will cost somewhere between $699 and $759 and feature a GK110 core with 2496 CUDA cores, 208 TMUs, 40 ROPs, 5GB GDDR5 memory and 384/320-bit memory interface. The GTX 770 is expected to cost around $400 and pack a GK104-425 core with 1536 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 2GB GDDR5 memory and 256-bit memory interface.

Images Courtesy: Chiphell

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Getting Loco with Video Cards

Tom McNamara — Fri, 03 May 2013 18:28:11 +0000

Maximum PC's Best of the Best Updated

We're closing in on Cinco de Mayo, which celebrates Mexico's Battle of Puebla fought on May 5, 1862, a victory against overwhelming odds and an important step towards Mexican independence from European rulers. These days, it's a popular holiday for getting drunk, dancing and making loud noises, but maybe that's just me. I think I'm gonna play it low-key this year instead, and take the opportunity to update our Best of the Best with a couple new entries: the EVGA GeForce GTX Titan and AMD's Radeon HD 7850.

This time around, we're changing the "high-end video card" category to the best "Single-GPU video card." Every GPU category will be getting a refresh. Because at Maximum PC, we care about your wallet.

Below, there is more text and words that you may find informative and entertaining.

And as always, let us know in the comments what you think about our picks!

Nvidia Rumored to Release GeForce GTX 780 Graphics Card on May 23

Paul Lilly — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:49:03 +0000

The GPU wars are heating up.

Analysts can talk all they want about the demise of desktops and the rise of tablets, we're not buying it. And you know what? Neither are discrete graphics card makers. If they were, Nvidia wouldn't be getting to release a GeForce GTX 780 video card, which if the latest web chatter is true, will be launching in just a few weeks. After that, Nvidia has another GTX 700 Series card to unleash.

According to Fudzilla, the GTX 780 part is scheduled to launch on May 23, 2013 at precisely 6:00 AM PDT. Exactly one week later to the minute, Nvidia will follow that up by launching its GeForce GTX 770 graphics card, both of which will be sold by top tier vendors.

The GTX 780 is based on the GK110 architecture found in Nvidia's Titan cards, and the GTX 770 is based on GK104 425, which Fudzilla says is an improved version of the original 28nm part.

Other than those details, we don't know much about either card, though we expect both to be at least marginally faster than the 600 Series they're replacing.

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Nvidia GeForce 320.00 Beta Drivers Increases Performance Up to 20 Percent

Paul Lilly — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:17:54 +0000

Free performance gain, if you don't mind beta software.

If you like to live on the edge by installing pre-release software, risks be damned, and own an Nvidia-based graphics card, today's your lucky today. Nvidia just released new 320.00 beta drivers for GeForce graphics cards, and if you install them, the GPU maker says you can enjoy performance gains up to 20 percent. Most of the gains won't be quite as high, though several titles receive a shot in the arm from the new drivers.

The examples Nvidia shared all pertain to GeForce GTX 660 graphics cards and include the following gains for single card setups:

Up to 20 percent in Dirt: Showdown
Up to 18 percent in Tomb Raider
Up to 8 percent in StarCraft II
Up to 6 percent in Sniper Elite V2
Up to 6 percent in Metro 2033
Up to 6 percent in Far Cry 3
Up to 6 percent in Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Up to 5 percent in F1 2012

Nvidia also added several new SLI profiles, including ones for Alien Fear, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Dead Island: Riptide, Dragon Sword, and a bunch more.

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Nvidia Reportedly Prepping GTX Titan Ultra and Titan LE SKUs

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:38:19 +0000

Not one, but two new Titans said to be in the works

With AMD’s answer to the the $1,000 Nvidia GTX Titan expected to hit the market later this week, you need something special to prevent AMD’s upcoming dual-chip beast, the Radeon HD 7990 “Malta”, from hogging each and every ray of the spotlight that the tech media has reserved for graphics cards. The two-month-old GTX Titan has managed to do just that thanks to rumors that it is about to be turned into a mini graphics card brand.

Talk of a budget version of the two-month-old GPU, dubbed the GTX Titan LE, is nothing new, but German site 3DCenter.org is now reporting that a third, more powerful SKU, likely to be called either Titan Ultra or Titan II, is also on the cards and is expected to debut during the fourth quarter of 2013.

This SKU will reportedly utilize all of the GK110’s 15 SMX clusters, giving it an edge over the regular Titan which has one cluster disabled with a total of 2,688 CUDA cores and 240 TMUs. As as result, the Titan Ultra will boast the full quota of 2880 shader cores and 256 texture units. Further, as opposed to the original’s 837 MHz clock speed and 206-Watt power appetite, the Ultra will have a 950 MHz clock speed and a 225W TDP.

As for the Titan LE, it will reportedly have 2496 CUDA cores, 208 TMUs, 40 ROPs, 320-bit DDR memory interface, 5 GB of GDDR5 and a 180-190W TDP. As per the German site, the Titan LE is likely to come out sometime during “summer 2013.”

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Nvidia's May Launch GeForce 700 Series GPUs at Computex 2013

Paul Lilly — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:52:25 +0000

New graphics cards from Nvidia could be set for a summer debut.

Summer is just around the corner, and with it is the Computex computer expo in Taipei, Taiwan. Are you wondering what the event will introduce to the computing world? So are we, and word on the web is that Nvidia is planning to launch its next generation desktop GeForce 700 Series graphics cards at Computex. In addition to pushing the performance envelope, the GeForce 700 Series is said to be in response to AMD's aggressive game bundles.

We all know that the main reason to buy a graphics card is to improve game performance (or for design work), but for those on the fence in which direction to go, AMD has been tempting upgraders with its Never Settle software bundles consisting of triple AAA titles.

According to Fudzilla, Nvidia has seen enough and isn't about to let AMD wrestle a larger share of the desktop GPU market than it already has. As such, the GeForce 700 Series might even launch ahead of Computex, the news and rumor site reports, though we're skeptical Nvidia will be quite that ambitious. We're also reluctant to get our hopes up of a summer release, as previous rumors pegged the launch to take place in 2014 sometime after the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but we'll cross our fingers nonetheless.

As for the actual hardware, most assume the GeForce 700 Series will be based on a refreshed version of Nvidia's 28nm Kepler architecture.

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Dell Begins Selling Ubuntu Gaming Desktop

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 06:59:19 +0000

Wants gamers to blow off some “steam” on its Alienware X51 Ubuntu desktop

Dell’s long-standing affair with Ubuntu continues. The PC vendor has now joined the ranks of those backing Linux as a serious gaming platform, having recently announced a new Ubuntu-powered variant of its small-yet-powerful Alienware X51 desktop.

According to a post on the company’s official corporate blog, the decision to ship a new Alienware X51 variant with Dell’s favorite Linux distro on it was prompted by entreaties to this effect from potential Alienware customers. The company hailed this move as a “big step” for Linux gaming in the blog post.

“Some of the features that stood out to me were the performance/multitasking and how easy it was to load 3rd party apps like Steam,” wrote Dell’s Mark Obee of his own impressions of the Ubuntu-running desktop.

Not only is it easy to install Steam onto this Ubuntu PC, but it also comes with the latest Nvidia drivers pre-installed. However, as Obee acknowledged in his blog post, the dearth of AAA titles on Steam for Linux means that the platform isn’t quite ready for full-time gaming duties yet.

The Ubuntu-powered variant of the diminutive Alienware X51 desktop starts at $599, which is $100 less than the most basic Windows-based model. For this price you will get a 3.3GHz, dual-core Intel Core i3-3220 CPU, 6GB DDR3 RAM, 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 645 GPU, DVD burner, 802.11gn WLAN and a 1TB SATA hard drive. The top variant, which starts at $1,049, comes with a quad-core Intel Core i7-3770 CPU, 8GB memory, and a 1.5GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 GPU.

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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: Nvidia is ‘Bitter’ Over PS4 Snub

Pulkit Chandna — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 09:14:08 +0000

AMD exec touts PS4’s Jaguar APU as being more than just a run-of-the-mill x86 solution

From insisting that it was the one who dumped Sony to taking a jibe at the Playstation 4’s AMD supplied custom APU, Nvidia has been behaving a lot like a jilted lover ever since the Japanese company unveiled its eighth-generation console last month. But what does archrival AMD, which currently enjoys a near-monopoly in the console market, have to say about why it was chosen ahead of Nvidia for Sony’s next-generation console?

Our sister site TechRadar caught up with Neal Robison, director of ISV relations at AMD, at the recently concluded Game Developers Conference and got him to talk about what the chip maker likes to describe as the “first announced design win based on semi-custom AMD APUs.”

According to Robison, Sony wanted to improve its whole approach to hardware and that is when it turned to AMD. Nvidia, Robison told TechRadar, couldn’t provide the kind of integrated solution that his company could with its APUs.

"It's not just about an x86 solution, but it's about that Jaguar APU where it's a combination of the graphics and CPU together and being able to create something that's greater than just putting an x86 PC-like architecture together," he said.
When asked about his thoughts on Nvidia’s recent jibe at the PS4’s AMD-supplied innards, Robison said they were a bit bitter.

"For us, really by looking at that APU that we designed, you can't pull out individual components off it and hold it up and say, 'Yeah, this compares to X or Y,” Robison said in response to an Nvidia exec’s recent comment that PS4’s specs pale in comparison to even some slightly older gaming PCs.

"It's that integration of the two, and especially with the amount of shared memory [8GB of GDDR5, 176GB/s raw memory bandwidth] that Sony has chosen to put on that machine, then you're going to be able to do so much more moving and sharing that data that you can address by both sides,” he addded. "It's more than just a CPU doing all these amazing calculations and a GPU doing calculations. We are now going to be able to move certain tasks between the two."

Nvidia Gives Cost Conscious Gamers a 'GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost'

Paul Lilly — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:49:13 +0000

Meet the newest sub-$200 graphics card from Nvidia.

Sure, we'd all love to game on multiple top-shelf graphics cards, and while we're making a money-is-no-object wishlist, a toilet made of gold would be pimp as well. Most of us can't afford such luxuries, so we sit our backsides on porcelain and game on less expensive graphics cards. Luckily there are options, and if you have less than $200 to spend on a GPU, Nvidia hopes you'll consider its new GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost.

The new part is based on Kepler and equipped with 768 CUDA cores. There are two models available, one with 1GB of GDDR5 memory ($149) and another with 2GB of GDDR5 memory ($169). Either way, the memory is clocked at 6008MHz and shovels data through a 192-bit bus.

Nvidia claims the GTX 650 Ti Boost offers up to 40 percent better performance compared to the non-Boost variant introduced last year. It also includes features typically reserved for higher end cards, such as support for Nvidia's GPU Boost technology (hence the name of the card).

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB is available now, with availability of the 1GB model expected in early April.

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Nvidia Calls The PS4 “Low End”

Justin Kerr — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:40:53 +0000

Competition drives innovation and trash talk in equal measure

Nvidia didn’t say much when the PS4 was announced, but today they came out swinging. During an interview with Maximum PC’s sister site Techradar, Nvidia’s Tony Tamasi claimed that, "Compared to gaming PCs, the PS4 specs are in the neighborhood of a low-end CPU, and a low- to mid-range GPU. If the PS4 ships in December as Sony indicated, it will only offer about half the performance of a GTX680 GPU (based on GFLOPS and texture), which launched in March 2012, more than a year and a half ago."

Tamasi goes on to remind potential new console owners that these closed platforms aren’t upgradable, so you’ll be stuck with it for the next 5-10 years. "If history predicts the future, then these next-generation consoles, while being more powerful than the current ones, will very quickly end up more than an order of magnitude behind the PC."

Nvidia commands a ton of respect in the PC Gaming community, however it’s not hard to see that the company’s comments might be ever so slightly biased. AMD after all handed down a definitive spanking when it came to bidding on contracts for next generation consoles, leaving Nvidia completely shut out for the next several years. According to Tamasi however, losing the console business was intentional. "I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on," Tamasi told GameSpot, "and we came to the conclusion that we didn't want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay."

Some developers have actually been so bold as to claim the PS4 will outperform current PC’s due to its innovative use of fully integrated GDDR5 RAM, but only time will tell for sure. I think its safe to assume our dream machine 5 years from now will run circles around a PS4, but the real question is how it will stack up to current generation PC’s. Keep in mind the most popular GPU today as reported by Steam is an Intel integrated part, and two generation old Nvidia hardware is the runner up.

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