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Tag: GPUs

  • Nvidia Announces GeForce GTX Titan Z, Costs $3,000

    PC gamers are usually characterized as jerks with a superiority complex that are never happy with their current machines. While that may be true for some, the majority of PC gamers are quite happy with their modest setups that can play most games on max settings. The enthusiast PC gamer is out there though and Nvidia has just unveiled a new card aimed squarely at them.

    At its annual GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia announced its latest flagship GPU – the Titan Z. Just like the 790, the Titan Z combines two GPUs onto a single card. In this case, the Titan Z has two Titan Blacks crammed into a single card. Alongside the two GPUs, it also features 12GB of VRAM and a total of 5,760 processing cores. In other words, you’re not going to need a new GPU for a long time if you pick up the Titan Z.

    Well, that’s if you still playing on 1080p monitors. The Titan Z was engineered for those who want to play on 5K monitors or those who want to output to multiple 4K monitors.

    Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said it best – “If you’re in desperate need of a supercomputer that you need to fit under your desk, we have just the card for you.”

    In all reality, the Titan Z will probably be used more by scientists who make use of Nvidia’s CUDA technology to process complex calculations. Sure, some gamers are going to build some absolutely wild machines with the Titan Z, but it’s hard to see many PC gamers ponying up $3,000 for the opportunity.

    The Titan Z will go on sale in early April. You better start saving up your pennies now.

    Image via Nvidia

  • Here’s What AMD Has In Store For 2014

    Here’s What AMD Has In Store For 2014

    For the past several years, AMD has always played second fiddle to Intel when it came to CPUs. Recently, the company has been moving away from the CPU market to APUs – CPUs that have a GPU on the same die. At CES 2014, AMD remained committed to its new strategy.

    Gavin Gear from the Extreme Windows blog got a chance to check out all the AMD technology coming to PCs in 2014. While the company will likely never announce a successor its FX series of CPUs, its brand new APUs should be a worthy replacement for those looking for compute and graphics performance on a single chip.

    The new APUs – codenamed Kaveri – combine a Steamroller CPU with AMD’s new R7 graphics technology onto a single die. The company showed off a small form factor PC with one of the new APUs running Sid Meier’s Civilization V.

    The company also showed off some new graphics technology in the form of its new R290X discrete graphics cards. Using its new Mantle API, it’s able to run Battlefield 4 at 4K resolutions or multiple 1080p displays.

    Finally, AMD showed off a new Nano-PC concept that it’s working on. It runs off of a low power APU in a slim design that still packs a punch. It was able to run FIFA 14 in 1080p, and should be more than sufficient for those looking for an entertainment center PC.

    Image via Extreme Windows Blog

  • Surprise: Batman Arkham Origins Will Look Best On The PC

    Batman: Arkham City will not be getting a next-gen version when it releases later this year as the development team has decided to focus entirely on current gen consoles. That being said, there will be some next-gen features in the PC version of the game.

    In the latest Arkham Origins trailer, the developers show off the game running on Nvidia’s latest desktop GPUs. With PhysX enabled, players will be able to take advantage of next-gen features like a cape with movements dictated by natural movements instead of animations. The addition of PhysX also adds realistic fog to the game in which players can interact with.

    Batman: Arkham City set a new standard for PC ports of console titles when it came out in 2011 by adding all the features that PC gamers have come to expect from native PC titles. With Batman Arkham Origins, it looks like Warner Bros. Montreal will be keeping that tradition alive.

    When Batman: Arkham Origins launches on October 25, PC gamers will no doubt be getting a superior experience.

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti Comes With Free Borderlands 2

    Are you in the market for a new video card? Are you also looking forward to the release of Borderlands 2? Then does Nvidia have a deal for you.

    The graphics card manufacturer announced today that their mid-range 600 series GPU, the 660 Ti, is now available. The card comes with a MSRP of $299 and it’s by far the most affordable of all the Nvidia GeForce 600 series. The best part is that it doesn’t give up much in terms of performance compared to its peers like the 670 and 680. Here’s a comparison:

    Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti

    Here’s another comparison of performance across the line for all of Nvidia’s cards. You can see the 660 Ti is even a little bit more powerful than the 580.

    Nvidia GeForce 660 Ti

    To make the deal even sweeter, Nvidia has teamed up with Gearbox to offer a free copy of Borderlands 2 for all those who purchase the GTX 660 Ti from select retailers. They claim that players will be able to max out all settings in Borderlands 2.

    You can snag a GeForce GTX 660 Ti and a free copy of Borderlands 2 from most major online retailers. Newegg, Amazon and TigerDirect are all offering the promotion.

    Gearbox has made it clear that Borderlands 2 is going to much better than its predecessor on the PC. They’re putting in all the features that hardcore PC gamers crave and a free copy with a video card upgrade makes it even better.

    The GTX 660 Ti is available today from all major retailers. They don’t seem to be selling out either so it should be good to wait a few weeks on a purchase. I think we’re past the days of the 680 being perpetually sold out for months.

  • Nvidia Set To Launch GeForce GTX 660Ti In August

    Nvidia has been on fire lately. They have successfully launched the latest line of graphics cards in their 600 series and have continuously reduced the price of these cards through incremental downgrades that don’t seem to affect the performance whatsoever. Case in point: the 670 and 680 have negligible differences in power yet there’s a $100 price difference. The latest card looks to continue that trend.

    Nvidia’s latest card to hit based on the GK104 architecture will be the GeForce GTX 660Ti. WCCFTech says that it will be last card released to be based on the current architecture as Nvidia will probably start work on the 700 series. For now, we can bask in the glory of the full line of 600 series video cards from the beast that is the 690 to the mid-tier 660Ti that is still more powerful than the GTX 580.

    What are you going to get in the GTX 660Ti? It would be that it’s similar to the 670 in that it contains 1334 cores, but it’s memory would be limited to only 1.5GB. It will also be clocked a bit lower resulting in an eight to 10 percent drop in performance from the 670. That’s a small price to pay for its $100 price difference as the card will launch at a very affordable $299.

    WCCFTech says that Nvidia has already dropped the price of the GTX 570 to reduce stock so now’s your chance to grab a great 500 series for a cheap price as well. If you want to upgrade to the 600 series, like me, you’ll be able to get your hands on the 660Ti in August. With the amount of quality PC games hitting the market this year like Assassin’s Creed III and Darksiders II, it would be smart to upgrade to at least the 500 series if you’ve been holding out for the past few years.

  • ARM Announces Next Generation GPU For Android Devices

    The GPU is the driving force behind the games and video that people enjoy on tablets. Unfortunately, a good GPU can drive the price up of a tablet to unforeseen levels. While getting a cheaper tablet ensures that you’re going to have a bad time. ARM hopes to remedy both problems by offering performance at a good price.

    ARM announced today the immediate availability of the successor to the Mali-400 MP GPU. The newest GPU is called the Mali-450 MP and it’s built on the architecture of the previous GPU so that it can seamlessly integrate with established software. The GPU will be powering everything from Android device to smart-TVs.

    The Mali-450 is a pretty beefy upgrade from the Mali-400 by increasing performance up to 8 cores, while also doubling the vertex processing. The new GPU has also been redesigned to provide more performance while consuming far less power than its predecessors.

    All of this leads to the Mali-450 being the power behind the next wave of inexpensive tablets. Its ability to work with existing Mali-400 drivers makes it easy to implement into tablets. The reduced power consumption will also increase battery performance in lower end tablets.

    Speaking to Techworld, ARM’s Ian Smythe said that we can expect the Mali-450 to start showing in tablets starting next year. It will be capable of performing the basic tasks that every tablet owner demands – gaming and video. It’s important to note that the 450, while more powerful than 400, still won’t hold a candle to the far more powerful ARM Mali-T600 series that powers the more graphically intensive games on the Android platform.

    To get an idea of what the Mali-450 is capable of, look no further than Samsung’s Galaxy S II. It uses the Mali-400 so just image the Galaxy S II’s capabilities being doubled. The chipset should be perfect for anybody looking for an inexpensive yet robust experience on a handset or tablet. Too bad we have to wait until next year to see what it’s really capable of.

  • Linux Kernel Version 3.4 Now Available

    Linux Kernel Version 3.4 Now Available

    It’s always strikes me with awe whenever a new version of the Linux kernel is released. The hours of work that developers put into this product is just kind of mind blowing especially when you consider that a lot of the work is done by volunteers. With the newest release, Linux is once again moving forward at a pace unmatched by its open source peers.

    Linux 3.4 features a few updates to Btrfs. The first is the availability of a new data recovery tool called btrfs-restore. It’s worth pointing out that it doesn’t repair damaged filesystems, but rather attempts to pull files from damaged filesystems and copy them to a safe location. Btrfs can also support metadata blocks bigger than 4KB again. It can support blocks up to 64KB, but it’s recommended that you stick with 16 or 32KB blocks.

    Other general improvements for Btrfs come in the form of performance and error handling. The performance has been improved thanks to not only the increased metadata block sizes, but also a reworked Linux page cache and reduced CPU usage. Previous versions of Linux featured code functions that couldn’t handle certain unexpected conditions. During such an event, previous versions would just kill the system. In Linux 3.4, it’s been updated to handle these situations by shutting down current transactions and the filespace moving into read-only mode as is tradition.

    What has me personally excited is support for the new wave of video cards. The new version of Linux now has early support for the Nvidia GeForce 600 series. On top of that, the new GPUs (Radeon 7000 series) and APUs (Trinity) from AMD are now supported. The new release also adds experimental support for Intel GMA500 Medfield graphics.

    Support for new GPUs is especially good news since Valve has now committed to bringing Steam and their games to the Linux platform. EA has also brought some free-to-play games to Linux. More and more developers are seeing the value in developing for Linux and we may soon see a day where not only indie developers release Linux versions of titles, but major publishers do as well.

    One of the more interesting updates is the addition of a new X32 ABI. It allows users to run programs in 64-bit mode with the memory requirements of a 32-bit ABI. It was created because traditional 64-bit programs run in 64 bits of space. This causes performance slowdown, but switching back to 32-bit denies access to all the great features of 64-bit. The new ABI should make Linux users’ lives much easier.

    Other general improvements include x86 CPU driver autoprobing, a verifiable boot path, support for external read-only devices as origin source of a thin provisioned LVM volume, a new ‘Yama” security module, and read only support for QNX6 filesystems.

    To see more of the specifics with this latest release, check out the release notes for version 3.4. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with this latest release.

    [h/t: LKML via Softpedia]

  • Nvidia Reveals The GeForce GTX 690

    Did you know that Nvidia holds a gaming festival in China? Even if you did, you probably ignored its existence until the company started to post cryptic images on their Facebook page. The company was teasing some big announcements to come out of a keynote from Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun-Huang. Long story short: It was an embarrassment of a keynote with nothing really of note and the few games they did show off were old trailers being paraded around as new.

    While Nvidia was testing my patience and making me want to defect to AMD for their awful keynote, one announcement at the end did kind of make up for it. The company used the event as an excuse to announce the next video card in the Kepler line: the GTX 690. The card is the true successor to the GTX 590 by including two Kepler GPUs on a single card in a solid aluminum case.

    The card itself is really nice looking with a few unnecessary bells and whistles that undoubtedly drive up the price. The GPU in terms of hardware features some new tech including vapor chamber coolers with a fan that promises to remain silent even at 3,000 RPM. The unnecessary part comes by having an illuminated side with LEDs that spell out GeForce GTX 690. The card also makes a loud ping noise when it’s properly installed.

    Nvidia Reveals The GeForce GTX 690

    All in all, the GTX 690 looks to be a powerful card in the same vein as the GTX 590. The only issue is that supply will probably be limited and only available to those who can afford its massive price tag. Oh, about that price: the card will retail for $999. So have fun saving up your loose change to afford this beast. I think I’ll wait for the oft-rumored GTX 670 Ti.

    The other actual news from the show was the announcement of the GeForce Experience. Hsun-Huang explained it as a way to make finding the perfect settings easier for PC gamers who don’t know their SSAO from their MSAA. They have compiled a list of every game and every possible hardware configuration over the past five years to make the GeForce Experience possible. With this new tool, gamers can connect to the service and Nvidia will match their machine’s configuration with the game they’re wanting to play. From there, it will assign the most optimal settings to the game. It’s great news for the average PC gamer who just bought a laptop or a pre-built to play some PC games. I think the enthusiast PC gamers will stick with manually editing the config files to get the most out of our games.

    After its lackluster CES keynote, Nvidia fans should have probably expected disappointment. While the announcement of the GTX 690 was cool, it’s impossible to obtain for those of us without six-figure incomes. The GeForce Experience is somewhat disappointing as well for the hardcore PC gamer market who wanted to see something exciting from Nvdia. Oh well, there’s always E3 in June so hopefully we’ll hear something from there soon.

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 670Ti Specs Leaked

    Nvidia made quite a splash last month with the launch of its new GTX 600 series line with the GTX 680. It was an impressive card that added many new features to PC gaming including automatic voltage control for a better gaming experience. The 680 was just one card out of many though and we’re still waiting for details on the other cards in the series. Good news then that some details were leaked today.

    WCCFTech got the skinny on the specs for the GTX 670Ti, the next card in the 600 series to hit. It will be launching in May and is meant to replace the GTX 580/570. It’s also pegged as being the main competitor to ATI’s Radeon HD 7950.

    Here’s the leaked specs in full. Check them out and tell us what you think:

    Based on the Nvidia GK104 (3.54 billion transistors on 294mm ² 28mn chip area)
    DirectX 11.1, Kepler architecture
    4 Raster Engines (GPC)
    7 shader clusters (SMX)
    1344 (1D) shader units
    112 texture units (TMUs)
    32 raster operation units (ROPs)
    256-bit DDR memory interface
    2 GB of GDDR5 memory configuration
    Chip clock: 900 MHz or something more
    Memory clock: unknown, assumed ~ 2500 MHz
    PCI Express 3.0 (backwards compatible with PCI Express 1.x and 2.0)
    Estimated TDP ~ 160 watts
    Performance target by nVidia: GeForce GTX 580 – Radeon HD 7950
    Launch Date : May
    Price: £320 ($500)

    The regular GTX 670 is also set to launch sometime soon. It’s price is rumored to be anywhere between £320 and £240 ($500 and $380). The lower price means that the regular 670 would have lower clocks or a 192-bit DDR memory interface compared to the 670Ti’s 256-bit.

    Either way, these are going to be the more affordable options to the current GTX 680. You’re still better off waiting, however, as they are probably going to sell out as soon as they are released, just like the 680.

    Nvidia still has two cards up their sleeves if you’re still adamant about waiting for an upgrade. WCCFTech says that Nvidia should be launching the mid-range GTX 660 and the Dual GK104 GTX 690 sometime in Q2 of this year.

  • Gamers Pave The Way For Cheap Cancer Research

    Gamers Pave The Way For Cheap Cancer Research

    Gamers are somewhat reviled by the media and politicians as being violent psychopaths who use violent first-person shooters and other “murder simulators” to play out acts that may lead to real life consequences. Those extreme graphics causing all the violence, however, may end up saving lives.

    A research lab at Wake Forest University is using graphic processing units to simulate the inner workings of human cells according to ScienceBlog. Samuel Cho, biophysicist and computer scientist says that the use of the GPUs is furthering their research by leaps and bounds.

    “If it wasn’t for gamers who kept buying these GPUs, the prices wouldn’t have dropped, and we couldn’t have used them for science,” Cho says.

    The team uses the GPUs to see how cells live, divide and die. This will help them create targets for tumor-killing drugs.

    Cho recently created a simulation that shows the folding of a critical RNA molecule that’s part of the human telomerase enzyme. It gives scientists a better look at how these cells operate, including the revelation of hidden states in the folding and unfolding process.

    That big word up there, the telomerase enzyme, it’s only found in cancerous cells. It essentially keeps cancer cells from dying.

    “The cell keeps reproducing over and over, and that’s the very definition of cancer,” Cho says. “By knowing how telomerase folds and functions, we provide a new area for researching cancer treatments.”

    With their research, they should be able to create a drug that stops the reproduction of this molecule so the cancer cell dies.

    Now back to the gaming bit, they are using GPUs to research the bacterial ribosome – a molecular system 200 times larger than the telomerase molecule. They are using the GPUs to simulate the cell’s growth at a much faster rate.

    Cho estimates that this research would have taken them over 40 years to complete with traditional cell imaging. With the use of GPUs, it will only take them a few months.

    Next time you feel the need to chastise a gamer for their extreme habits or possibly ruining their marriage, just remember that the hardware they keep buying is helping to cure cancer.