NVIDIA nTeresitng Newsletter - 29 April 2013

In this issue:

· NVIDIA makes games better by working with developers and giving them tools to make their job easier. Fluid simulation is the latest NVIDIA tech to wow the gaming industry.

· A new benchmarking tool helps reviewers evaluate real game experience, including visible frame rate and smooth game animation.

· NVIDIA Titan boards are set up in two-way and four-way SLI configurations to set new world records.

Water That Rocks

When it comes to helping game developers make games better, NVIDIA takes it seriously. NVIDIA's Developer Relations team has been the driving force pushing technology forward in PC gaming for more than a decade. Case in point: NVIDIA's Position Based Fluids demo.

"Accurately modeling water has been notoriously difficult even with modern physics and graphics engines, but the "Position Based Fluids" method presented on the blog of PhysX programmer Miles Macklin is tremendously convincing."

NVIDIA has developed a new technique to simulate fluids using PhysX, and the results are pretty true-to-life. The demo is the result of research by Miles Macklin and Matthias Müller, who have published a paper (PDF) detailing their work. The bits will be available to game developers to add to their games in future versions of the PhysX software development kit.

"Ah, life-giving water! Nectar of the gods. Plaything of gamers. You've gotta check out the demonstration of this new liquid-rendering technology from PhysX, which has me really, really excited for the future of aquarium-punching sims."

By creating this technology and putting it in the hands of game developers, NVIDIA is helping make games better.

"The revolutionary new technology looks awesome and could be the future of water in videogames."

Check out the video and read more on the Miles' blog or the PhysX blog.

Benchmarking Evolved

For the last 12 years when it comes to gaming, frame rate - measured in frames per second, or fps- has been king. But reviewers are seeing a new light.

"We've noticed them at times when results from our FRAPS-based testing didn't seem to square with our seat-of-the-pants experience. The fundamental problem is that, in terms of both computer time and human visual perception, one second is a very long time. Averaging results over a single second can obscure some big and important performance differences between systems."

Thanks to a new set of tools from NVIDIA evaluating a real game experience, which takes into account visible frame rate and smooth game animation, just got easier.

"The question of how to best integrate frame latency results into benchmark analysis has become more complicated of late. NVIDIA has developed a set of tools it calls FCAT (Frame Capture Analysis Tool). Unlike Fraps, which captures data when the game engine hands a frame over to DirectX, NVIDIA's FCAT captures the final frame buffer output. NVIDIA has built a comprehensive set of tools to aid this capture process and from what I've seen thus far, it's an extremely sophisticated product. There's no question that FCAT gives us more data to play with. Is it better than Fraps? Not necessarily. Fraps shows us what's happening early in the pipeline, FCAT shows what completed output looks like. Long-term, I suspect both tools will be extremely useful."

AMD graphics card suffer under this kind of testing as it exposes their low quality frames.

"In the last year, stuttering, micro-stuttering, and frame interval benchmarking have become a very big deal in the world of GPUs, and for good reason. Through the hard work of the Tech Report's Scott Wasson and others, significant stuttering issues were uncovered involving AMD's video cards, breaking long-standing perceptions on stuttering, where the issues lie, and which GPU manufacturer (if anyone) does a better job of handling the problem. The end result of these investigations has seen AMD embarrassed and rightfully so, as it turned out they were stuttering far worse than they thought, and more importantly far worse than NVIDIA."

NVIDIA has no such issues because we added tech to stop it.

"NVIDIA's solution for getting around this potential problem with SLI was to integrate frame metering, a technology that balances frame presentation to the user and to the game engine in a way that enabled smoother, more consistent frame times and thus smoother animations on the screen. For GeForce cards, frame metering began as a software solution but was actually integrated as a hardware function on the Fermi design, taking some load off of the driver."

All in all, providing reviewers with better tools means gamers are the big winners.

"Speaking more directly however, FCAT is quite simply the frame interval analysis tool we have long wanted. It is the tool that will enable us to analyze stuttering, micro-stuttering, and more, in a manner consistent with our benchmarking methods and core beliefs in the scientific method. It's exceedingly rare that we say this, but we haven't been this excited by a new benchmarking tool in a very long time."

Titan Sets a World Record

3D Mark is a synthetic benchmarking tool. It is designed to determine the performance of a computer's 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. But you can have fun with them in other ways, too. Republic of Gamers' overclocking experts Andre Yang and Shamino have set new world records in 3DMark 11 and 3DMark Fire Strike using modified GTX Titans in four and two-way SLI configurations.

"Using overclocked, volt-modded and liquid nitrogen cooled GeForce GTX Titans paired with a Rampage IV motherboard and Intel i7-3870X processor, Asus' in-house overclocking experts Andre Yang and Shamino broke multiple records in 3DMark 11 and 3DMark Fire Strike.

Andre Yang used a staggering four GTX Titans to set scores of 36,658 marks in the Entry preset, 37,263 marks in the Performance preset, and 22,076 marks in the Extreme preset on 3DMark 11, whilst Shamino used 'just' two GTX Titans to set a score of 21,818 in 3DMark Fire Strike, FutureMark's most recent and demanding benchmark."

Records are awesome, but to test games performance NVIDIA thinks you should...well...test games, because you can't play synthetic benchmarks.