Items tagged with Kepler
We were first given a taste of NVIDIA G-SYNC technology over a year and a half ago and it was definitely quite a sweet dish. Like competing solutions from AMD (FreeSync), G-SYNC aims to rid gamers of synchronization-related maladies like VSync input lag, stuttering and screen tearing, providing instead a buttery smooth gaming experience. For an in-depth look at G-SYNC, you can take a look at Marco’s excellent article about the technology right here. Up until this point, G-SYNC has been solely aimed at desktop gamers, but NVIDIA today is extending its reach by bringing a new implementation of G-SYNC to notebook computers. On the desktop side things, gamers are required to have both a Kepler-based...
Read more...
When we evaluated NVIDIA’s Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 750 and 750 Ti a few weeks back, we lauded the GPUs for their competitive performance and class-leading power efficiency. The GeForce GTX 750 and 750 Ti are mainstream products that didn’t tear up the benchmark charts like a bleeding-edge high-end GPU would, but their Maxwell-based GPUs competed well with similarly priced products and they did so at much lower power levels. The power efficiency of NVIDA’s Maxwell architecture make it ideal for mobile applications, so today’s announcement by NVIDIA of a new top-to-bottom line-up of mobile GPUs—most of them featuring the Maxwell architecture—should...
Read more...
We've known for several years that the next GPU architecture after Kepler would be codenamed Maxwell. NVIDIA revealed as much in a roadmap as far back as September 2010 when Fermi was the top dog, and though it will arrive just a tad behind the GPU maker's original schedule, Maxwell parts are right around the corner. Back in 2010, NVIDIA expected to be pushing out 20nm GPUs by now, though the reality is TSMC isn't up to the task of transitioning to 20nm territory at an acceptable yield. If NVIDIA decided to push the issue, costs would likely jump up dramatically on the manufacturing side, which would result in higher priced graphics cards. With AMD already being so aggressive with its pricing...
Read more...
NVIDIA’s G-SYNC technology keeps the output from a Kepler-based GPU in sync with a monitor regardless of framerates and irrespective of whether or not V-Sync is enabled; the result is a butter-smooth GPU-controlled display that essentially obviates fixed vertical refresh rates. (You can read a detailed primer on G-SYNC here.) There are some G-SYNC-enabled displays coming, including at least one from ASUS (the 27-inch ROG SWIFT PG278Q at 2560x1440), but for a limited time, eager modders can upgrade an ASUS VG248QE display already with a DIY G-SYNC kit from NVIDIA. There’s a handy installation video and an accompanying instructional PDF, and NVIDIA says that you can perform the mod...
Read more...
Back in September at a press event held in Montreal, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced what he called “one of the most important works NVIDIA has done for computer graphics.” The technology was called G-SYNC. G-SYNC is an end-to-end graphics and display architecture that starts with a Kepler-based GPU and ends with a G-SYNC module within a monitor. To put it simply, what G-SYNC does is keep a display and the output from a Kepler-basd GPU in sync, regardless of frame rates or whether or not V-Sync is enabled. Did we mention that G-SYNC is also compatible with 4K resolutions? It is, and we hope someone manufacturers will make a 30-inch+ 4K display with this new NVIDIA technology on...
Read more...
Amazon is expanding its cloud reach into the world of graphically intensive, 3D, GPU-accelerated applications in fields such as media creation, design, and even gaming with its Amazon AppStream. AppStream runs on Amazon’s EC2, which includes NVIDIA’s Kepler-based GRID GPUs (a G2 instance), and is designed to make it possible to run applications on devices that would not necessarily be able to handle the processing required. The service deploys and renders applications in the cloud and streams them to just about any device, including PCs, tablets, and smartphones. Currently, the Amazon AppStream SDK supports streaming from Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 to devices with Microsoft...
Read more...
A few days ago, an unheard-of NVIDIA device showed up in some GFXBench benchmark results alongside the NVIDIA SHIELD (which we reviewed here); the device, which is apparently dubbed the NVIDIA Tegra Note Premium, has a resolution of 1280x736 (which indicates a smallish tablet form factor), and the German site that found the results said that the processor was a Tegra 4 (1.8GHz) chip, and it was running Android 4.2.2. It may also come with a stylus of some kind. NVIDIA Project SHIELD The assumption is that this mystery device could be a purely NVIDIA-branded 7-inch (or so) tablet, and now it appears that NVIDIA may also be developing a high-end tablet with its own name on the box. FUDzilla, citing...
Read more...
Nvidia is showing off a bit more of the capabilities of its upcoming Kepler-based mobile GPU at SIGGRAPH this week, and the next-generation chip should be a quantum leap over what Nvidia is shipping currently. Then again, that's scarcely difficult -- Tegra 4 is based on 2005-era graphics hardware with some L2 cache and a few feature enhancements here and there. It doesn't support CUDA, DirectX 11, OpenCL, OpenGL ES 3.0, and it while it packs far more pixel shader and vertex pipelines than Tegra 3 offered, it was disappointing to those of us that hoped to see a Kepler-based design this generation. Tegra 5 supposedly fixes all this. The next-generation core will offer cutting-edge support for all...
Read more...
For the last 20 years, NVIDIA has developed and used its own graphics IP in-house. While the company engaged in several prominent cross-licensing deals with companies like Intel, those deals never resulted in an Intel-branded graphics card or an equivalent product from another company. Today, that changes -- NVIDIA has announced that henceforth, it will license its graphics designs to other companies. In a blog post today, company spokesperson David Shannon writes: "our next step is to license our GPU cores and visual computing patent portfolio to device manufacturers to serve the needs of a large piece of the market... We’ll start by licensing the GPU core based on the NVIDIA Kepler architecture,...
Read more...
It's Computex time again in Taipei, which means it's time for a whole lot of companies to unveil/launch a whole lot of products, all at once. With Haswell waiting in the wings, NVIDIA has jumped all over that bandwagon -- the GTX 770 launched earlier today, the 780 launched last week, and the company is taking the wraps off its new 700M series of mobile GPUs right now. Like the previous GTX 600M family, the GTX 700M cards are all based on Kepler and are built on a 28nm process. What's new about the 700M family is that some of the relative positioning has changed. This is relatively unusual for NVIDIA or AMD -- while the companies make no promises about cross-series comparisons, both manufacturers...
Read more...
With the release of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780, there’s a flurry of features to discuss (which we’ve done), but one intriguing new addition worth mentioning is NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience software, including ShadowPlay. Simply put, ShadowPlay lets users easily record and save game footage, which you can then share on YouTube or other video sharing channels. The technology relies on Kepler’s built-in H.264 encoder and allows 20 minutes of game recording at 30 FPS with 1080p, which you can easily save to a file. It’s designed to run in the background and uses RAM for storage. GeForce Experience, which has been in closed beta for months and is now available to the masses,...
Read more...
It’s (delightfully) evident how powerful mobile processors and graphics have become, but NVIDIA’s Senior Vice President of Content and Technology Tony Tamasi believes that mobile firepower is about to outpace the popular Xbox 360 and PS3 gaming consoles. “The PS3 and Xbox 360 are barely more powerful than mobile devices,” Tamasi told Bit-Tech. “The next click of mobile phones will outperform [them].” Specifically, he’s referring to the Tegra 5 mobile processor, which will follow the new Tegra 4 chip. Reportedly, Tegra 5 will feature CUDA 5 and boast a Kepler-class GPU and support Open GL 4.3. Tegra roadmap It’s not all that hard to imagine that...
Read more...
A couple of days ago, we showed you the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan in all its glory—almost. While we were able to reveal the card itself, discuss its new features and specifications, and talk about some of the new systems it will be powering, we weren’t able to post any performance data. Fortunately, that all changes today. We’ve been able to test NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan in a number of different configurations, including SLI and in a multi-monitor setup, and have the goods for you here today. And yes, we’ve got some Crysis 3 action on tap as well... NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan Benchmarked: Yes, It CAN Play Crysis 3...
Read more...
A couple of days ago, we showed you the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan in all its glory—almost. While we were able to reveal the card itself, discuss its new features and specifications, and talk about some of the new systems it will be powering, we weren’t able to post any performance data. Fortunately, that all changes today. We’ve been able to test NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX Titan in a number of different configurations, including SLI and in a multi-monitor setup, and have the goods for you here today. And yes, we’ve got some Crysis 3 action on tap as well. If you haven’t already done so, we suggest checking out our initial preview of the GeForce GTX Titan....
Read more...
NVIDIA is launching a new, ultra high-end graphics card today, the long rumored GeForce GTX Titan. Although the card itself and a couple of its features are new to the consumer graphics card market, many details of the GPU powering the GTX Titan, namely the NVIDIA GK110, have been previously covered here. In fact, NVIDIA revealed the GK110 at GTC 2012 in May of last year and released its first Tesla-branded products based on the GPU a few months later. The GK110 is also a key component of the GeForce GTX Titan’s namesake, the Titan Supercomputer, which uses almost 19,000 of the GPUs in tandem to crunch numbers at a brisk 20 petaflops. Products designed for the HPC space are somewhat different...
Read more...
NVIDIA is launching a new, ultra high-end graphics card today, the long rumored GeForce GTX Titan. Although the card itself and a couple of its features are new to the consumer graphics card market, many details of the GPU powering the GTX Titan, namely the NVIDIA GK110, have been previously covered here at HotHardware. In fact, NVIDIA revealed the GK110 at GTC 2012 in May of last year and released its first Tesla-branded products based on the GPU a few months later. The GK110 is also a key component of the GeForce GTX Titan’s namesake, the Titan Supercomputer, which uses almost 19,000 of the GPUs in tandem to crunch numbers at a brisk 20 petaflops. Products designed for the HPC space...
Read more...
Numbers from Jon Peddie Research on the current state of the graphics market point to Nvidia as the big winner of Q3 2012, against both Intel and AMD. Intel's share of desktop and notebook sales both dropped roughly 8%, while AMD took a much smaller hit in desktops (2%) and a far greater hit in notebooks, sliding a whopping 17%. For Sunnyvale, the bad news doesn't stop there. JPR reports that quarter-on-quarter sales of desktop APUs fell 30%, notebook APUs slid 4.7%, and overall PC graphics shipments were down 10.7%. It's too early to tell if AMD's Trinity and Vishera launches have had much impact on the company's recent sales; both product families are in stock at NewEgg. The A10-5800K has hit...
Read more...
When Nvidia launched the consumer-oriented GK104 earlier this year, the company made it clear that the enthusiast-oriented GPU was the first iteration of a two-GPU strategy. K20, we were told, would launch later in the year, with certain features aimed at accelerating supercomputing and HPC workloads. Today, Nvidia is taking the wraps off that second GPU. As expected, it's a monster; the Nvidia K20, based on the GK110 GPU weighs in at 7.1B transistors, double the GK104's 3.54B. GK110 keeps Kepler's basic SMX structure. Each SMX unit contains 192 CUDA cores, 32 load/store units, 16 texture units, and 4 warp schedulers. There are 15 SMX units per die as compared to Kepler's eight. Neither...
Read more...
AMD has announced a new FirePro graphics card at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis conference today (hereafter abbreviated as SC12). It's aimed at server workloads and data center deployments, but it's also the most powerful GPU Sunnyvale has ever deployed, bar none. Rumors of a dual-core Radeon 7990 have floated around since before the HD 7000 series actually debuted, but this is the first time we've seen such a card in the wild. Say hello to the S10000. How does this card fit into AMD's product roadmap? That's a bit complicated. Nvidia has explicitly prepped the K20/K20X for servers and workstations and spent years establishing itself...
Read more...
Calling the Alienware M18x R2 a laptop is like referring to a Harley Davidson as a bicycle. Both have handlebars and ride on two wheels, but when the rubber hits the road, the Harley's going to leave a Schwinn in the rear-view mirror. So it goes with the Alienware system we abducted from Dell. Technically, it's a gaming laptop, but more accurately, it's one hell of a desktop replacement that leaves lesser systems in the dust. Large and in charge, the 2012 model M18x retains the same spacious 18.4-inch LCD panel from last year, but is updated with an Ivy Bridge-based Intel Core i7 processor clocked and two Kepler-based NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M graphics cards in SLI. It's a potent one-two combo...
Read more...
For those of you who missed it, Apple earlier today introduced a brand new version of its iMac all-in-one (AIO) desktop with an exceptionally skinny profile and upgraded components throughout. Despite the ultra-thin profile of the new iMac systems, the hardware Apple crammed inside makes them up to 60 percent faster than last year's models, and some of the credit for that belongs to NVIDIA. Both the new 21.5-inch (1920x1080) and 27-inch (2560x1440) iMacs sport NVIDIA GeForce GPUs built around the graphics chip maker's Kepler architecture. It represents another bid of confidence in NVIDIA, which is quick to note that its Kepler GPUs also power Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display model....
Read more...
The practice of bundling games with video cards dates back to the earliest days of the 3D business, when partnering with board vendors was the best way of ensuring that the customer would have at least one game that took advantage of the shiny new card. Much of the time, the question of what game publisher to work with is left to the individual board vendor, though AMD cut a massive (and somewhat infamous) deal with Valve to distribute The Orange Box several years back. When Nvidia announced that its Kepler-based GTX 660 would be shipping with copies of Borderlands 2, it was seen as a move that could substantially boost the card's uptake. AMD, already smarting and on the defensive in the GPU...
Read more...
