Tech Olive

Wow, it seems like yesterday when Nvidia released its first-generation Fermi cards, and now a year later, here we are admiring the second coming of Fermi in the form of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. This hunk of a beast boasts 384 CUDA processing cores, 822 MHz graphics clock, 1.6 GHz processor clock, 4.0 GHz memory clock, and a full gig of GDDR5 memory. Prices will start at $250 at numerous online retailers. Coincidentally, AMD lowered the price of their HD 6870 to $220 and the HD 6950 down to as low as $270. AMD also outed a new, different model of the HD 6950 to directly compete with the GTX 560. The price on that card will start at $260.

Hot Hardware has an in-depth, 12-page review of the new GTX 560 here. It’s worth the read if you’re considering such a card, but if you’re pressed for time, here’s their no-nonsense summary:

“The GeForce GTX 560 Ti, whether in its stock or overclocked configurations, performed very well throughout out testing. In comparison to its closely related cousin, the GeForce GTX 460, it’s no contest—the GeForce GTX 560 Ti smokes the GeForce GTX 460 across the board. It’s harder to summarize the 560 Ti’s performance versus competing cards from AMD, however. In some circumstances, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti is actually faster than the more expensive Radeon HD 6970 (Far Cry 2, Lost Planet 2). Other times the GTX 560 Ti hangs right alongside the new Radeon HD 6950 1GB (Unigine, Just Cause 2). In the rest of the games and apps we tested, the Radeons came out on top. Suffice it to say, the new GeForce GTX 560 Ti is a strong competitor to similarly positioned graphics cards from AMD.”

[Press Release]

That’s right, folks. That right there is the world’s first wireless graphics cards. It doesn’t have any DVI or HDMI ports on it, just five antennas meant to push out full 1080p video to your HDTV or monitor. This KFA2 Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 has a range of about 100 feet (30m) and works with pretty much any display thanks to its included 5GHz WHDI receiver. Other than its crazy wireless capabilities, it’s still the same old GTX 460 video card that we all know.

It’s said the card will go on sale in Europe, but it’s not known exactly when or how much it’ll cost.

[KFA2 via Bit-Tech]

That’s right, folks. In the midst of the CPU battle between Intel and AMD, Nvidia has decided to join in, but at the same time, move away from the x86 architecture. They’re currently “developing” the CPU in partnership with ARM and they’re calling it “Project Denver.” It will be a CPU/GPU combo chip just like AMD’s Fusion and it will be ARM’s first processor made for high-performance computing for desktops and laptops.

“Denver frees PCs, workstations and servers from the hegemony and inefficiency of the x86 architecture.  For several years, makers of high-end computing platforms have had no choice about instruction-set architecture.  The only option was the x86 instruction set with variable-length instructions, a small register set, and other features that interfered with modern compiler optimizations, required a larger area for instruction decoding, and substantially reduced energy efficiency.”

The project seems like it’s still in the drawing-board phase, so it’s mostly just ideas and goals being laid out by Nvidia. The big picture for the company is to provide a combination of high performance and power efficiency for both consumers and enterprises. Seems like a typical goal, but we can’t wait to see what the green team has in store for us.

[Nvidia Blog]

It’s said that AMD‘s upcoming Radeon HD 6900 series will hit store shelves in just a couple of days, but if you have down on your wishlist, you might want to consider scratching it out because several rounds of tests done by Fudzilla have indicated that the upcoming “video card of all video cards” is slower than Nvidia‘s current flagship offering. In one of the tests done in 3DMark 2011, the HD 6970 scored just below an 8000 while the GTX 580 scored 8700. In some of the tests, the slightly less-powerful GTX 480 almost stood nose-to-nose with the HD 6970.

via [Fudzilla]

Image Credit: Fudzilla

While Call of Duty: Black Ops might be getting all the attention today, Nvidia has released their new flagship GPU, the GeForce GTX 580 (purposely on the same day as Black Ops). A couple days ago, Nvidia spoke about some of the details of the card and even demoed what the card is capable of. Today, the rest of the details are let loose. This new card sports a 772MHz clock speed, 1.5GB of 384-bit GDDR5 memory clocked at an effective 4GHz, as well as 512 processor cores. The card is now available for purchase at select retailers if you happen to have at least $500 laying around. There’s no reason not to Tri-SLI this puppy.

[Press Release]

So, Nvidia didn’t really announce the video card itself, but they did announce some details about the card and the technology that it uses. They didn’t reveal the name of the card, nor did they let anyone physically see the card (even though it was being used in a PC surrounded by a large crowd of hardcore geeks). They claim its their coolest and quietest card yet, thanks to their new vapor chamber cooling system. Trapped water within the chamber (a.k.a. heatsink) gets boiled by the heat dissipated from the GPU, which forces it to transfer heat away and then eventually cooling off and returning to the bottom again. This makes the card quieter than the GTX 285, according to Nvidia.

After they got the facts out of the way, they showed off some impressive tessellation demos, as well as the first public showing of Call of Duty: Black Ops PC gameplay. Watch the full 10-minute video after the break.

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Fancy this. Nvidia will start manufacturing and selling their own video cards. Foxconn will be the lucky company to build the Nvidia-branded GPUs and Best Buy will be the only place that you can buy them. While Nvidia hasn’t yet officially announced bringing their own GPUs to the market, the guys over at Legit Reviews ended up spotting some of the cards on Best Buy shelves a little early. More specifically they spotted a GTX 460 for $299, while another Best Buy location across town had it for $199.

[Legit Reviews]

While it could turn out to be a simple mistake, it seems that Nvidia has accidentally leaked the details that the currently PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain will release on PC in the near future. On Nvidia’s page that lists the current and upcoming PhysX-enabled games, there is a line that reads “Heavy Rain – Quantic Dream – PC” as a game title, developer, and platform, respectively.

We contacted Quantic Dream for comment on this. We’ll keep you updated.

via [Destructiod]

An anonymous reader asked on our Formspring page:

When the nvidia logo is fading in during opening credits (in games like borderlands). What do the green letters on the sides say?

Sadly, the text you see in their splash screen does not make up some secret message. Instead, it’s just Nvidia tootin’ their own horn. After taking magnifying glasses to our screens and nearly going blind, we have managed to make sense of the following words:

“EXTREME GAMING”
“DONE EVERY PLATFORM”
“SLI READY GPUS”
“PURE VIDEO HD EXPERIMENT”
“GEFORCE UPGRADE”
“POWERING 3D GRAPHICS”

Spaces were added here to ease readability. Original text offers no spaces

If you have no idea what we’re talking about, here’s the Nvidia splash screen:

Nvidia’s newest creation gets put to good use by CyberPower when they take four EVGA GeForce GTX 480 cards and cram them into one system. Sadly, we don’t have any more details except for a few photos that are posted on CyberPower’s Facebook fan page. However, we do know that they used an EVGA X58 Classified motherboard to cradle the 4-way SLI setup. It’s said to be the only motherboard that supports 4-way SLI and EVGA is the only company to release a 4-way SLI bridge. techPowerUp specially notes that 4-way SLI is not the same as quad-SLI.

“4-way SLI is not to be confused with Quad-SLI, which is also a four-GPU SLI configuration, but involves a 2-way SLI connection between two dual-GPU graphics cards (such as GeForce 9800 GX2, GTX 295, MARS).”

via [techPowerUp]