ONE OF THE most studied benchmarks of the DX11 era is Heaven from Unigine. At GDC, they were showing off version 2.0 of the benchmark with more assets and features.
IF YOU WANT to learn about Nvidia's Tesla and GTX480 cards at GDC, don't ask Nvidia, they have problems with the truth. The real story is found with the users, and they have interesting things to say about the upcoming card's upward bound TDP.
AMD IS FINALLY doing what we have all been waiting for, promoting its developer relations program to the masses. With that in mind, it introduced three new logos to go along with the program.
3D API'S MIGHT not be the most exciting thing in the world, but without them we wouldn't have any kind of 3D graphics which would make computers a lot less fun and a lot less useful for many users around the world. Khronos has announced its latest version of OpenGL which simply gets a version bump to 4.0.
ONE QUESTION THAT a lot of the financial set are asking has to do with Nvidia and mobile. While the company is effectively out of mobile for 2010, there was at least one GTX480 based laptop at CeBIT.
IF YOU WANTED to see AMD's upcoming Magny-Cours boards or 4 GPU compute platforms at CeBIT, SuperMicro was the place to be. That is only the short list though, there were a lot of other interesting bits all over its corner at Hannover.
IT DIDN'T TAKE long before pictures of the GTX470 card without a heatsink appeared, following the tantalizing pictures of the GTX480 that came out on Tuesday. However, what's even more interesting is that early benchmark figures have finally leaked and it's not looking good for Nvidia.
MOST PEOPLE were amazed by Nvidia's Q409 results. How could it reap that much profit when it doesn't have any competitive high-end GPU products on the market? The answer is right in Nvidia's statements and the key is to understand what supply constraint means.
IT DOESN'T APPEAR as if Nvidia's secret police managed to keep Fermi, or shall we say GTX480 away from the prying eyes of the press, as Tweakers.net has scored no less than three pictures of Nvidia's latest and greatest creation, all undressed.
GIGABYTE HAS BEEN on a tear lately, releasing tons of USB3 based mobos around CES, so the new AMD 890 chipset had to hold the line. On the GPU front, things were a bit more interesting.
CeBIT 2010 High end GPUs, netbooks and mini-projectors
SAPPHIRE HAS STARTED to branch out from GPUs, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a large selection of high end GPUs to show off. New to the boys in blue this year are micro-projectors, netbooks and micro-ITX boards.
GRAPHICS CARDS HAVE quickly become the most power hungry device inside a PC and we haven’t seen a drop in the power demand of high-end graphics cards despite improved manufacturing capabilities. However, Fermi appears to be taking this to the next level, although this was sort of expected.
AMD'S LATEST IGP CHIPSET has been launched, and with CeBIT kicking off tomorrow we should be seeing a lot more announcements, but for now, ECS, Gigabyte and MSI have announced boards based on the 890GX chipset.
THE RUMORS AND bits about Intel's next generation core, Sandy Bridge, are starting to come out here and there, but several big chunks have still not been outed. Here are a few of them.
THERE ARE A lot of curious things coming out of TSMC lately, and they all seem to center around dodging real questions. The problem is yields on their 40nm process, but TSMC will not address half of the reported problems publicly.
SHUTTLE DIDN'T HAVE all too much to show at CES last month, but it seems like the company is getting ready to at least unleash something different at CeBIT next week where the company is set to unveil its new XS35 ultra-compact PC.
WHO WOULD’VE BELIEVED that Nvidia was willing create an exclusive card with one of its partners that would only go on sale in a single country. Well, it’s true and we have sourced proof from the exclusive online retailer that will be selling these very rare cards.
THE MAKING OF computer chips is a complicated business, not only for the chip designers but also for the foundries. TSMC’s senior VP of R&D, Shang-Yi Chiang has announced that the company is getting ready for 22nm trial runs towards the end of 2012.
FINNISH WEBSITE MUROPAKKETI has gotten its hands on a couple of pictures of Asus’ upcoming ROG Ares graphics card and to call this a monster card would be to put it lightly. Although it’s more or less an ATI Radeon HD 5970, Asus has tweaked the design and increased the clock speeds to be able to offer something out of the ordinary.
DETAILS OF AMD’s soon to be launched ATI Radeon HD5830 have made their way onto the web via the Chinese website IT168.com. Parts of a PowerPoint presentation have turned up alongside several pictures of partner cards.
NVIDIA HAS REVEALED when it will unveil “The world’s fastest PC graphics gaming technology” and it’s all going to happen on the 26th of March 2010 from 6 to 7PM at PAX East. Indeed, Nvidia is launching Fermi, sorry, the GTX480 and GTX470 at a glorified LAN party in Boston.
WE DON'T KNOW how accurate these first listings of GeForce GTX480 and GTX470 cards are, but SabrePC has listed cards from both XFX and PNY on its website for pre-order. The total lack of details makes us wonder if this is just a drive to get people to its website, or if it’s indeed the real thing.
NVIDIA HAS BEEN hinting about the performance of its upcoming GTX480 cards, and several of our moles got a lot of hands on time with a few cards recently. If you are waiting for killer results from the 'puppy', prepare for severe disappointment.
AMD APPEARS TO BE getting ready to unveil a couple of additions to its range of ATI Radeon HD 5000-series cards over the next few weeks. Although the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 has already been demoed, the Radeon HD 5830 is likely to end up very high on a lot of people’s wish list if the price is right.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, S3 graphics is getting ready to show off its first dual GPU card. However, the venue at which the company will be launching this card might give away that it’s not for gamers, but rather for those that need something a little bit out of the ordinary.
IT IS THAT TIME of year again, Nvidia's quarterly conference call for the financial set. Since the company gets pouty every time we try to ask it questions, we decided to publish an open list of questions for you, the people they have far less disdain for than SemiAccurate, to ask directly.
WITH ANOTHER LAUNCH of the Nvidia GT300 Fermi GF100 GTX480 upon us, it is time for an update on the status of that wayward part. Production parts have been coming back from TSMC for several weeks now, and the outlook for them is grim.
AMD HAS ANNOUNCED its latest Catalyst 10.2 drivers, which in itself isn’t really big news as AMD has been releasing graphics drivers on a monthly basis for quite some time now. However, what is the new is that AMD is aiming to offer monthly driver updates for those with a Radeon Mobility card in their notebook, which is a huge step forward.
WHAT DO YOU DO when your company does not have a competitive product in the most profitable market segment, your competitors are developing products that will kill your share in the high volume segments and the puppy in the pipeline is not looking that promising?
ISSCC 2010 Fine details abound but overviews lacking
AMD IS FINALLY starting to talk about its Fusion CPUs, specifically the first one called Llano. The bad news is that it is not saying very much, but there are some interesting bits that leaked out at ISSCC 2010 in San Francisco.
IT’S NOT EVERY day we’re impressed by some newfangled technology, but this time we have to give it to Nvidia, it's come up with a really good idea, with some caution. Although we’re not sure where Optimus comes into play. But hey, it’s as good a name as any, right?
IT SEEMS LIKE Biostar jumped the press release gun as the company posted details of its upcoming TA890GXE motherboard based on the AMD 890GX chipset on its website. The press release has since been taken down, but it has already spread all over the web. However, what makes it interesting is the fact that it includes the retail name for AMD’s upcoming hexa-core CPUs.
IT’S ALWAYS GREAT having a choice when it comes to colours, as how boring would it be if everything we owned was the same colour? Sony seems to have taken this to the extreme with its Intel Core i3 and Core i5 based Vaio E series of notebooks, since not only can you have them in a selection of six colours but they’re also available with optional coloured keyboard skins.
NVIDIA JUST BROKE its traditional naming scheme as the Fermi cards won’t be the bearing the GTX 380 and GTX 360 model names that have been floating around for some time. Actually, they won’t even have the number three anywhere in the model names. Isn’t that something.
THERE HAS BEEN a lot of talk recently about ATI's 'Grey Screen of Death' and almost all of it is hysterically overblown. Let's take a look at the problem in a bit more detail.
YESTERDAY NVIDIA RELEASED the 196.21 WHQL drivers for its graphics cards that add SLI support to several recent games - as well as some old ones - and bring a new version of the PhysX drivers along for the ride. However, it also killed most overclocking utilities at the same time.
TSMC HAS REPORTEDLY fixed its yield issues with its 40nm manufacturing process, you know the one that all the new GPUs from AMD and Nvidia rely on. This should hopefully mean that there won’t be any more shortages of GPUs, at least for the ones that are already in production.
NVIDIA'S GF100 ARCHITECTURE is falling into the same trap that G200 did, shooting for the moon at the cost of the parts that pay the bills. Let's take a look at the architecture and how it stacks up in the market once again.
IT LOOKS LIKE it's time for dueling product videos once again, with ATI and Nvidia both releasing their own 'viral' videos. ATI's is about upgrading to a DX11 card and Nvidia's is about the birth of Fermi GF10.
ONE OF THE worst kept secrets of the year, all 14 days of it, is that the ATI 56xx Redwood parts are coming out today. They are more than half of a Juniper 57xx series and have all the goodies that those chips do.
VESA HAS ANNOUNCED the latest iteration of the DisplayPort standard called 1.2 and the new version adds a couple of handy features and some that are more marketing spiel than actual features at the moment. However, with the announcement coinciding with CES, no one seems to have taken any notice of it.
EVGA TEASED US about a dual Intel Core i7 board a few weeks ago, and now it is showing that off. It is big, has lots of slots, and does indeed support two Intel Core i7 chips.
GLOBAL FOUNDRIES has been way ahead of the curve with process tech when compared to any other foundry on the market. Today, it somewhat accidentally cemented that lead by publicly displaying an unlabeled 28nm wafer.
WE SPOTTED THE picture below over at TweakTown and it shows off three GeForce 100 cards, also known as Fermi, running in SLI. This in itself is big news, as it shows that Nvidia has more than one card that’s working, but what really intrigued us were the ports on the cards.
ALIENWARE’S Optx AW2310 screen is the company’s first venture into the land of 3D video and the specifications aren’t too bad, for a 23-inch screen, that is. Although Acer beat Alienware to be the first company to announce a full HD 1080p 3D Vision ready display, it looks like Alienware might be the first one to ship units. Well, at least as long as you live in New Zealand or Australia that is, as it’s only listed on the local Alienware websites in those two countries.
ONE OF THE most studied benchmarks of the DX11 era is Heaven from Unigine. At GDC, they were showing off version 2.0 of the benchmark with more assets and features.
WHAT DO YOU get when you cross a human sized hamster ball with VR googles and a game engine? You have a Virtusphere, and it looks like a lot of fun.
IF YOU WANT to learn about Nvidia's Tesla and GTX480 cards at GDC, don't ask Nvidia, they have problems with the truth. The real story is found with the users, and they have interesting things to say about the upcoming card's upward bound TDP.
AMD IS FINALLY doing what we have all been waiting for, promoting its developer relations program to the masses. With that in mind, it introduced three new logos to go along with the program.
3D API'S MIGHT not be the most exciting thing in the world, but without them we wouldn't have any kind of 3D graphics which would make computers a lot less fun and a lot less useful for many users around the world. Khronos has 
ONE QUESTION THAT a lot of the financial set are asking has to do with Nvidia and mobile. While the company is effectively out of mobile for 2010, there was at least one GTX480 based laptop at CeBIT.
IF YOU WANTED to see AMD's upcoming Magny-Cours boards or 4 GPU compute platforms at CeBIT, SuperMicro was the place to be. That is only the short list though, there were a lot of other interesting bits all over its corner at Hannover.
GIGABYTE HAS BEEN on a tear lately, releasing tons of USB3 based mobos around CES, so the new AMD 890 chipset had to hold the line. On the GPU front, things were a bit more interesting.
SAPPHIRE HAS STARTED to branch out from GPUs, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a large selection of high end GPUs to show off. New to the boys in blue this year are micro-projectors, netbooks and micro-ITX boards.
AMD'S LATEST IGP CHIPSET has been launched, and with CeBIT kicking off tomorrow we should be seeing a lot more announcements, but for now, ECS, Gigabyte and MSI have announced boards based on the 890GX chipset.
THE RUMORS AND bits about Intel's next generation core, Sandy Bridge, are starting to come out here and there, but several big chunks have still not been outed. Here are a few of them.
THERE ARE A lot of curious things coming out of TSMC lately, and they all seem to center around dodging real questions. The problem is yields on their 40nm process, but TSMC will not address half of the reported problems publicly.
SHUTTLE DIDN'T HAVE all too much to show at CES last month, but it seems like the company is getting ready to at least unleash something different at CeBIT next week where the company is set to unveil its new XS35 ultra-compact PC.
FINNISH WEBSITE MUROPAKKETI has gotten its hands on a couple of pictures of Asus’ upcoming ROG Ares graphics card and to call this a monster card would be to put it lightly. Although it’s more or less an ATI Radeon HD 5970, Asus has tweaked the design and increased the clock speeds to be able to offer something out of the ordinary.
DETAILS OF AMD’s soon to be launched ATI Radeon HD5830 have made their way onto the web via the Chinese website IT168.com. Parts of a PowerPoint presentation have turned up alongside several pictures of partner cards.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, S3 graphics is getting ready to show off its first dual GPU card. However, the venue at which the company will be launching this card might give away that it’s not for gamers, but rather for those that need something a little bit out of the ordinary.
WHAT DO YOU DO when your company does not have a competitive product in the most profitable market segment, your competitors are developing products that will kill your share in the high volume segments and the puppy in the pipeline is not looking that promising?
IT SEEMS LIKE Biostar jumped the press release gun as the company posted details of its upcoming TA890GXE motherboard based on the AMD 890GX chipset on its website. The press release has since been taken down, but it has already spread all over the web. However, what makes it interesting is the fact that it includes the retail name for AMD’s upcoming hexa-core CPUs.
IT’S ALWAYS GREAT having a choice when it comes to colours, as how boring would it be if everything we owned was the same colour? Sony seems to have taken this to the extreme with its Intel Core i3 and Core i5 based Vaio E series of notebooks, since not only can you have them in a selection of six colours but they’re also available with optional coloured keyboard skins.
THERE HAS BEEN a lot of talk recently about ATI's 'Grey Screen of Death' and almost all of it is hysterically overblown. Let's take a look at the problem in a bit more detail.
VESA HAS ANNOUNCED the latest iteration of the DisplayPort standard called 1.2 and the new version adds a couple of handy features and some that are more marketing spiel than actual features at the moment. However, with the announcement coinciding with CES, no one seems to have taken any notice of it.
EVGA TEASED US about a dual Intel Core i7 board a few weeks ago, and now it is showing that off. It is big, has lots of slots, and does indeed support two Intel Core i7 chips.
GLOBAL FOUNDRIES has been way ahead of the curve with process tech when compared to any other foundry on the market. Today, it somewhat accidentally cemented that lead by publicly displaying an unlabeled 28nm wafer.
OSTENDO OFFERED CES something better than 3D. Easier on the eyes, and way more enjoyable. However, it has a price tag to match.
ALIENWARE’S Optx AW2310 screen is the company’s first venture into the land of 3D video and the specifications aren’t too bad, for a 23-inch screen, that is. Although Acer beat Alienware to be the first company to announce a full HD 1080p 3D Vision ready display, it looks like Alienware might be the first one to ship units. Well, at least as long as you live in New Zealand or Australia that is, as it’s only listed on the local Alienware websites in those two countries.