NVIDIA nTeresting Newlsetter - 27 July 2012

In this Issue:

· PC gaming is still growing strong.

· Dawn makes an appearance in a new demo.

· NVIDIA and Miracast create the ultimate in wireless HD streaming.

· Dell's Precision notebook lets you take 3D Vision Pro on the road.

PC Gaming - Alive and Kicking

I have a console and I love me some NCAA Football 2010. Console gaming is fun, but folks at NVIDIA are PC gamers from way back. With the better graphics and better physics PC gaming is just more engrossing. That is why when a major tradeshow rolls around all the hot new console titles are all demoed on GeForce PCs.

"But behind the scenes, the PC platform is the workhorse of E3. All the great-looking demos that were running during the show and wowing journalists and gamers - Watch Dogs, Star Wars 1331, Crysis 3, FarCry 3 (single player, anyway) - weren't running on console rigs, but on decked-out PCs. Developers continue to downplay the PC platform and concentrate their efforts on the easier, more marketable consoles, but the fact is, nobody wants to run their demos on hardware a half-decade old."

And the PC segment is the fastest growing segment of the gaming market.

"In a recent interview with CNBC, the CEO of Electronic Arts, John Riccitiello, said that the PC platform has the fastest-growing software revenues in all of gaming. "Just five years ago, people said that the PC game business was in a radical state of decline because NPD said it was down 10%, 20%, 30% year in and year out," he said.

And if you're a PC gamer, Popular Science has a gadget that should be at the top of your list.

"Speed Demon Gamers looking to upgrade their towers won't find anything more powerful than the GeForce GTX 690. NVIDIA engineers built the graphics card with 3,072 parallel-processing cores and housed the fan in magnesium alloy to more effectively dissipate the heat that the cores produce."

WASD, FTW!

Don't Call it a Comeback

One of the many tradeshow souvenirs that is hanging around my cube is an autographed picture of ‘Dawn', who is a character in one of the many cool demos produced here at NVIDIA to show off our graphic cards. Until recently I had no idea it was 10 years old. I know this now because Dawn has been updated.

"NVIDIA has released an update to its famous Dawn technology demo, putting the exhaustively rendered fairy in an environment that's as lushly portrayed as the original character. This latest version for GTX cards features full DirectX 11 tessellation, with over four million triangles making up the vines and forest bark. Dawn's hair is also shown in much more detail: The original version had 1,700 strands that couldn't move, and this version realistically renders 40,000 strands of hair, reflecting light at various angles."

Check it out on video here or download it to play on your GeForce GTX graphics card.

We're Riding on the Miracast Express

Imagine streaming HD movies, photos and the hottest mobile games directly from your quad-core tablet or phone to your HDTV - without a single cable or even a wireless network.

With the new Miracast wireless display standard from the Wi-Fi Alliance, consumers will be able to do this in a few short months. As a member of the Wi-Fi Alliance, NVIDIA is building support for Miracast right into our quad-core Tegra 3 chips so consumers can connect to a wider array of Miracast-certified devices and wirelessly stream their mobile content onto their big screens.

Get ready for the ultimate Miracast wireless display experience with Tegra 3, and check out what press are saying about a sneak peek of Tegra in action using Miracast:

"...Tegra 3 and its dozen GPUs can power through high-resolution graphics like a snowplow hustles through just an inch of snow. Gaming on a Tegra 3 device shows more detail and improved physics simulations than on most other tablets and smartphones I've used that run on competing chips."

"You can see from the quick demonstration by the folks at NVIDIA that their Tegra-powered devices are going to work wonderfully with this new and impressive standard."

"Integrating the Tegra 3 into said wireless display technology will provide a faster experience with lower touch latency and more."

"There's nothing to lose and everything to love about the advent of Miracast so we're glad NVIDIA will be pushing this technology once it launches."

"Get ready for some serious Tegra gaming action to come out of this."

Dell Lets You Take your 3D Vision Pro to Go

This past Tuesday, Dell announced two new Precision mobile workstations, including their M6700 model, the industry's lightest 17-inch mobile workstation, and the first to offer built-in NVIDIA® 3D Vision Pro^TM.

Another first on the M6700 is NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro, a combination of wireless active shutter glasses, an integrated RF communication hub, and advanced software. The technology automatically transforms various CAD/CAM/CAE, DCC, seismic visualization, life sciences and other applications into full stereoscopic 3D to improve the usefulness of the application, deliver better results and increase productivity.

Both the new M6700 and M4700 models include NVIDIA Optimus^TM technology, making it a very attractive mobile package for professionals on the go.

...remember that Intel Core chips have integrated graphics, and the Precision Workstations' NVIDIA Optimus technology is smart enough to automatically throttle itself down and move graphics processing away from the power-sucking graphics chippery when it's not needed. "It pushes your battery life numbers through the roof," senior product manager Mano Gialusis told us. "With Optimus enabled you get over 10 hours of battery with the internal nine-cell, and 20 hours with the slice," he said, referring to an optional external battery pack.