40124005
submission
Vigile writes:
Nintendo has never been known to be very aggressive with its gaming console hardware and with today's release (in the US) of the Wii U we are seeing a continuation of that business model. PC Perspective spent several hours last night taking apart a brand new console to reveal a very simplistic board and platform design topped off with the single multi-chip module that holds the IBM PowerPC CPU and the AMD GPU. The system includes 2GB of GDDR3 memory from Samsung and Foxconn/Hon-Hai built wireless controllers for WiFi and streaming video the the gamepad. Even though this system is 5 years newer, many analysts estimate the processing power of Nintendo's Wii U to be just ahead of what you have in the Xbox 360 today.
39121701
submission
Vigile writes:
AMD is today releasing its latest flagship processors on the AM3+ platform. Vishera is the codename of the Piledriver enabled desktop chips that contain upwards of 4 Piledriver modules and 8MB of L3 cache. While AMD has struggled mightily as of late, perhaps the new FX-8350 will at least be a competent and competitive part against Intel's sub $230 lineup. AMD has increased IPC for these parts, as well as lowering power consumption. This combination has allowed AMD to release a 4GHz four module part with performance that should keep up very well in highly threaded applications.
38596861
submission
Vigile writes:
NVIDIA completes their lineup of Kepler architecture GPUs today with the release of the GeForce GTX 650 Ti but as PC Perspective's review points out, every dollar in the crowded sub-$200 space matters. The GTX 650 Ti falls between AMD's Radeon HD 7770 1GB ($119) and the HD 7850 1GB ($179) perfectly though performance leans towards the HD 7770 in most cases. NVIDIA as also removed staple features like SLI support and the new GPU Boost that was available on all previous GTX 600 cards that dynamically clocked the GPU based thermal headroom for each application, taking away some of the spark of the Kepler architecture. The saving grace for this release might be the Assassins Creed 3 bundle; getting a $50 game with a $150 graphics card is a great deal but once that promotion is over the GTX 650 Ti will need to drop in price slightly to stay relevant.
38277619
submission
Vigile writes:
Desktop APUs based on the Trinity architecture from AMD are finally out after months of availability in the mobile markets. PC Perspective has reviewed both the A10-5800K and A10-5600K with some interesting results that start with a positive showing in the integrated graphics department where the design was expected to win out. It does so, by a noticeable margin in many cases over the HD 3000/4000 of Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge. The CPU results aren't as positive though with the combination of higher clocks and the new Piledriver core design only equating to ~20% better performance compared to Llano. With prices starting in the $125 range, the A10 APU should be an interesting choice for HTPC and super low cost gaming builds but will fall well behind Intel's x86 performance in Ivy Bridge.
38098199
submission
Vigile writes:
Even though we have seen Intel's Medfield processor find its way into a few cell phones in the European market, the first real test for Intel's push into the SoC world comes with the release of Windows 8 this fall and the barrage of tablets that will launch using the new Atom Z2760 processor. Based on the Clover Trail design, the Z2760 is a dual-core HyperThreaded x86 in-order part running at 1.8 GHz and using a low power DDR2 memory controller at 800 MHz. Built on the HKMG 32nm process technology, the latest Atom has a lot to live up to in order to compete with the ARM-based Windows RT tablets being released in the same window though Intel claims that its battery life will rival the best current Android devices can offer, using some normalized battery benchmarks as evidence.
37950091
submission
Vigile writes:
With a faster, more optimized ARM Cortex R4 controller and NAND flash pushing data at 400 Mbps per channel, the Samsung 840 Pro has risen the bar yet another notch even while the competition was still trying to catch up to the 830 Series. If pricing can achieve parity with other SSDs out there, Samsung is sure to have a winner on its hands. The non-pro variant of the 840 will utilize TLC flash (triple level cell), which should offer a decent reduction in cost/GB for a minor dip in performance and endurance, which promises to make some form of 840 available to anyone seeking performance in the 100,000 IOPS range.
36388307
submission
Vigile writes:
NVIDIA is finally releasing the GeForce GTX 660 Ti to gamers today after much speculation and swirling rumors. Interestingly, the new card is based on the exact same GPU configuration as the GeForce GTX 670 but lowers the memory bus width from 256-bit to 192-bit, resulting in a 35% drop in available memory bandwidth. Even with the same number of shaders and the same clock speeds, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti falls about 15-20% behind its bigger brother in texture-limited games though at $299 it is more than capable of competing with AMD's Radeon HD 7950 3GB card that sells for $50 more. This version of GK104 continues to have the GPU Boost technology, Adaptive VSync and Frame Rate Target features and was overclocked to 1215 MHz in PC Perspective's review. Oh, and you get a free copy of Borderlands 2 with the GeForce GTX 660 Ti as well. Not a bad addition!
33985881
submission
Vigile writes:
Today AMD made an announcement that is the first step of a drastic transition for the company by integrating an ARM Cortex A5 processor on the same die with upcoming Fusion APUs. Starting in late 2013, all AMD APUs (processors that are combinations of x86 cores and Radeon SIMD arrays) will also integrate an ARM Cortex A5 processor to handle security for online transactions, banking, identity protection and DRM integration. The A5 is the smallest Cortex processor available, and that would make sense to use it in a full APU so it will not take up more than 10-15 square mm of die space. This marks the first time AMD has licensed ARM technology and while many people were speculating a pure ARM+Radeon hybrid, this move today is being described as the "first step" for AMD down a new road of dexterity as an IP-focused technology company with their GPU technology as “the crown jewel”. So while today's announcement might focus on using ARM processors for security purposes, the future likely holds much more for these two partners.
33087239
submission
Vigile writes:
Hot on the heels of the new GK104 chip inside the GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, NVIDIA used its GPU Technology Conference in San Jose to announce and discuss the upcoming GK110 GPU that will be available on Tesla cards in Q4 of this year. Sporting 7.1 billion transistors and likely a ~550 square millimeter die size, this upcoming GPGPU targeted product includes 15 of the new SMX processing divisions each containing 192 CUDA cores for a theoretical total of 2,880 cores. NVIDIA did say that shipping products would likely have only 13 or 14 SMX modules enabled but even still the company claims to have crossed well into the 1 TeraFLOPs level with FP64 double precision math. NVIDIA still has some time to bring this product out on time but there are some that worry about NVIDIA's ability to make enough of these chips for the HPC market, let alone the gaming market down the road, based on the current availability of the GTX 680 and similar consumer cards. But I guess being able to charge $8000 for a GPU helps the bottom line.
33056249
submission
Vigile writes:
NVIDIA today announced a new technology partnership with Gaikai, an on-demand gaming company that competes with OnLive, that brings GeForce GRID to the cloud gaming ecosystem. GRID aims to increase both the visual quality and user experience of cloud gaming by decreasing latencies involved in the process, the biggest hindrance to acceptance for consumers. NVIDIA claims to have decreased the time for game stream capture and decode by a factor of three by handling the process completely on the GPU while also decreasing the "game time" with the power of the Kepler GPU. NVIDIA hopes to help both gamers and clould streaming companies by offering 4x the density currently available and at just 75 watts per game stream. The question remains — will mainstream adopt the on-demand games market as they have the on-demand video market?
32573481
submission
Vigile writes:
When NVIDIA launched the GTX 680 last month, it was the fastest single GPU graphics card on the market, bypassing the Radeon HD 7970 card released in January. NVIDIA was late to this generation of GPU but they are definitely targeting the high-end gamer by releasing the GeForce GTX 690 today — a dual-GPU variant based on the same GK104 chip as the GTX 680. This card features a total of 3072 shader processors, 4GB of GDDR5 memory running at 6 Gbps and a cooler made of magnesium alloy and trivalent chromium plating. While the price tag is $999, the performance of the card simply blows away anything else on the market including the dual-GPU GTX 590 and HD 6990 cards.
30390373
submission
Vigile writes:
A new Acer Ultrabook, the Aspire Timeline Ultra M3, went on sale yesterday in Asia with a little surprise: NVIDIA's unreleased Kepler GPU inside. This is NVIDIA's first 28nm architecture and will compete against AMD's Radeon HD 7000 series of graphics cards. The version of Kepler found in the Acer Ultrabook only sports 384 CUDA cores and that is a noticeable jump up from 96 cores found in the 540M, and yet the GT 640M provides gaming performance comparable to the GT 555M. Plenty of details are still needed for a firm grasp of NVIDIA's latest GPU but showing off a high-powered discrete graphics solution in an Ultrabook indicates a step forward in performance per watt.
30153819
submission
Vigile writes:
In a talk earlier this year at DICE, Epic Games' Tim Sweeney discussed the state of computing hardware as it relates to gaming. While there is a rising sentiment in the gaming world that the current generation consoles are "good enough" and that the next generation of consoles might be the last, Sweeney thinks that is way off base. He debates that claim though with some interesting numbers including the amount of processing and triangle power required to match human anatomical peaks. While we are only a factor of 50x from the necessary level of triangle processing, there is 2000x increase required to meet the 5000 TFLOPS Sweeney thinks will be need for the 8000x4000 resolution screens of the future. It would seem that the "good enough" sentiment is still a long way off for developers.
