Cool Gadget: Zotac's Hardware OC Controller

Marco C — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:50:00 GMT

Due to the fact that the vast majority of NVIDIA’s partners sell graphics cards that are all essentially identical, save for their clock speeds or perhaps a custom decal, they all look for creative ways to differentiate their products from the competition. They usually do it by including a hot new game, offering a really long warranty, a low price, or maybe bundling in some other type of value-added software. But once in a while a company will take things a step further and do something a little more innovative.

Take Zotac for example. Zotac has developed a cool little device called the Nitro Hardware OC controller, which gives users the ability to monitor GPU temperatures and over- or under-clock their graphics cards on the fly, using a few buttons and a simple menu. The Nitro hasn’t been offered with any Zotac-branded graphics cards just yet, but the company is contemplating the prospect of including it with select AMP! Edition products at some point in the future. In the meantime, the Nitro is also being offered as a standalone product with an MSRP of $99.

I recently had the chance to play with the Nitro and have to say it’s a pretty cool gadget. Understand that this product isn’t for everyone. All of you uber tech-savvy HotHardware readers already know that NVIDIA’s nTune application already offers a host of overclocking tools for GeForce graphics cards--for free. But that doesn’t hinder the coolness factor of having a desk-bound gadget that lets you OC on the fly, from within any game or application without having to access the driver control panel. Would I buy one for a hundred bucks? Probably not. But we all know a geek or two that would love to sport one of these things on their desk.

The Nitro works in conjunction with Zotac’s Firestorm utility. Firestorm is a relatively simple, streamlined application (<400K download) that features sliders for GPU engine, Shader, and memory frequencies, and fan speeds. When the Firestorm application is installed and running, and the Nitro is plugged into an available USB port, the Firestorm utility itself or the buttons on the front of the Nitro can be used to alter frequencies or fan speeds on the fly--even if a game is already running. Profiles can be saved as well, and a graphical representation on the Nitro’s VFD gives a real-time temperature readout. I found the temperature read-out particularly interesting. Watching temperatures increase or decrease during game play was an intriguing way to monitor the load being placed on the graphics card.

Zotac includes a hefty stand, driver disk, user manual and USB cable with the Nitro. And it currently supports all Zotac-branded GeForce-based graphics cards. If you’re the type that likes to tinker though, there is a way to get the Nitro working with any GeForce. Simply hold the shift key when you launch the Firestorm app and ignore an error message (while still holding shift) and it will work with non-Zotac branded cards. Shhhh. You didn’t hear that from me though.

Experimenting With Badaboom

Marco C — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:03:00 GMT

When we first took at a look at the GeForce GTX 280 upon its initial introduction back in June, we also spent some time with an early beta build of a program called Badaboom, from Elemental Technologies. If you're unfamiliar with Badaboom, it's a user friendly media converter that leverages NVIDIA's CUDA technology to accelerate the conversion of digital video using a CUDA capable GPU. Badaboom takes advantage of ETI’s GPU-powered RapiHD Video Platform to offload many video encoding duties from the CPU, onto the GPU, to accelerate the process of converting video from a variety of formats to H.264 for portable media devices, like an iPod, Zune, or iPhone.

This past week Badaboom completed the beta phase and was officially released for public consumption, so we grabbed a copy of the final program to get a better feel for it now that it's done.

The first thing to understand about Bababoom is that it is not meant to be the end-all, be-all of video transcoding. It is a relatively small, streamlined application designed for casual PC users who want a fast video transcoder, that is not overly complex. If you've got a collection of video that you'd like to easily convert for use on your iPod, and you've got a CUDA compatible GeForce, Badaboom may fit the bill. On that level, Badaboom certainly succeeds. The final release of the program is a small <8MB download. And the program installs literally in seconds. Once launched, user's are greeted by a simple interface. On the left, you choose the input source, and on the right the output device. In the middle there is a simple slider to determine the output quality.

The Badaboom Interface

There are basic and advanced views in the program should you want a bit more control over the transcoding process. In basic view it has the simple slider to choose between "Smallest File" or "Highest Quality", that I've already mentioned. But advanced mode gives users the ability to alter settings like the output directory, and more advanced video encoder, picture quality, and audio settings.

To experiment with Badaboom, I converted a handful of videos from my collection to various output devices and had no trouble at all, provided I was using a supported file type (a list of supported video and audio formats is available here). Performance of the program on a 9800GX2 was very good, as I was able to convert most videos at over 100 fps. The HDNet video clip in the screenshot for example took only 1:27 to transcode at 103 fps. For reference, an 8-core Skulltrail rig could only muster about 70 FPS using Nero Recode and the process took twice as long. In addition, Nero isn't nearly as easy to use.

If you've got the need for a video transcoder like Badaboom, and you've got a CUDA-capable GeForce graphics card, you may want to hit the Badaboom website and check out the free trial. This is a handy little program that could save you a boatload of time transcoding videos.

Search results matching tag 'GeForce'

Cool Gadget: Zotac's Hardware OC Controller

Experimenting With Badaboom