NVIDIA nTerresting News 18-July-2010

In this issue:

GeForce GTX 460 is the new perfect product for $200.
3D Vision Surround is blowing gamers away, and it works with two year-old GPUs, that is some crazy good ‘graphics plus' that keeps on giving.
GeForce GTX 480, 470 and 460 are all well positioned for a red hot summer!
NVIDIA Fellow and former chief scientist Dr. David Kirk is next up for the GTC Live Chat Series.

GeForce GTX 460: Best $200 Graphics Solution, Period

Every once in a while you get a slam dunk product that everyone loves. The GeForce GTX 460 is one of those products. This week we launched the next great gaming GPU from NVIDIA.

"To put it simply, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 is a fantastic product...we have simply never seen such an incredible value in a $200 video card before."

The GTX 460 delivers unbeatable price/performance to the $199-$229 gamers' sweet spot.

"If you're in the market for a £200 graphics card, then the GTX 460 1GB is the sweet spot."

GeForce GTX 460 offers cool and quiet operation and a full complement of immersive gaming features such as NVIDIA PhysX and 3D Vision.

"What impresses you most must is the low power, low noise, and low heat that GeForce GTX 460 delivers. What's more, [it] delivers stunning overclocking performance."

And it puts ATI in a tough spot.

"This is also a massive blow to the ATI line up. It really ruins the value of the HD 5770, HD 5830 and HD 5850."

Reviews are in, the press have been nearly unanimous in their praise of the GeForce GTX 460.

Anandtech calls it the "$200 King," Guru 3D thinks it has "Serious bang for the buck" and Tweaktown believes it has "pretty much made the HD 5770 and HD 5830 from ATI redundant" There are some amazing games releasing in the second half of 2010, and the GeForce GTX 460 is launching just in time for gamers to get equipped for the hottest titles of the year.

3D All Around

NVIDIA talks a lot about ‘graphics plus'. Graphics plus means you get more than just killer frame rates when you buy GeForce, you get other cool stuff, too. Examples include CUDA, PhysX and 3D Vision.

"Combining PhysX with perfect 3D NVIDIA Technology support makes the smoke and the characters appear to jump out of the screen. Simply spectacular."

For even more ‘plus', we released a driver that enabled 3D Vision Surround. With a simple driver update you get more speed from your current GPU and unlock the ability to game in 3D on 3 monitors. The gaming experience is awesome!

"Beyond the technical details, there is no questioning that 3D Vision Surround is an awe-inspiring experience. We've gamed on big screens, small screens, and projection screens, but gaming in 3D across three full HD displays - that's reaching new heights in terms of immersion. The potential difference the angled screens and 3D make may sound insignificant, but in-use it is like night-and-day. We found ourselves stopping to take note of new details in a level or a map that we otherwise wouldn't have, and there is definitely a slight competitive edge in first-person shooters when you have such a good sense of depth and can pick out enemies amongst other environmental objects."

Gamers just love it.

"Today this is the most advanced 3D-gaming system available for home users. And not only for 3D gaming - it's just a dream of any extreme gamer. Panoramic view with maximum angle, monsters showery jumping out from the zone of peripheral attention, super resolution and extremely high level of immersion into the gaming reality."

But ‘graphics plus' features are not just for new GPUs. HardOCP tested 3D Vision Surround on 2 year-old GPUs.

"NVIDIA's two year old GeForce GTX 280 GPUs can provide you with a great multi-display gaming rig when used with its NV Surround technology. This will undoubtedly open the doors for many of you to move to NV Surround with a lower cost of entry than you will find with AMD's Eyefinity. If you already have a GeForce GTX 280 video card, you are already well on your way to making affordable NV Surround a reality.... NVIDIA deserves a pat on the back and a cold beer for doing the right thing for the gaming and hardware communities and allowing those groups to experience this technology without having to purchase a shiny new $500 video card."

Jon Peddie sees GPUs with features like 3D Vision Surround making high-end visualization systems more affordable, the same way GPU computing did for supercomputers.

"The three-screen system we are testing (see Mt. Tiburon Testing Labs this issue) takes us back to the future of high-end visualization pioneered by E&S and SGI but it's cheap in comparison. What we have in the lab right now is 5760 pixel wide stereo visualization system. Ten years ago a comparable system would cost over $100,000-ours can be had for $4,000 or less. Now, combine this $4,000 visualization system with a sub-$10k super computer. Now you've got a lab, a two-machine system as powerful as behemoths that used to sell for $1 million or more. It's under your desk, and you don't have to share it with anyone.

That, is freakin amazing! And I think will revolutionize the visualization industry."

3D Vision Surround let's you span games across three monitors in full 3D stereo for an incredibly immersive gaming experience. 3D Vision Surround is available for both GeForce GTX 400 Series and GeForce GTX 200 Series GPUs. Learn more about 3D Vision Surround from NICX.

GeForce Comes Strong

Now that the GeForce GTX 460 is the "$200 King", PC Perspective takes a closer look at the product stacks for enthusiasts from AMD and NVIDIA.

"There had been a prevailing thought that with the GTX 460 coming in at the sweet spot price for PC gamers on a budget and the GTX 480 being the "king" of the single GPU graphics cards, the GeForce GTX 470 would be lost in the shuffle. Based on our performance testing in the graphs above that isn't the case - the added performance you can get for the $80-100 price jump is noticeable, especially in a game like Metro 2033 that is using every available resource to render."

GeForce GTX 480, 470 and 460 are all well positioned!

Talk Parallel Programming and GPU Architectures with NVIDIA's David Kirk on the GTC Live Chat Series

What's the latest with parallel programming? Where's the GPU going to be in 10 years? What needs to happen to make GPUs more general purpose?

These are a few of the hot questions that the next installment of the GTC Live Chat Series will cover on July 22. The chats are previewing the most-talked about topics at the upcoming GPU Technology Conference (GTC), just ten short weeks away.

Dr. David Kirk, NVIDIA Fellow and former chief scientist, will be talking about the latest and greatest on parallel programming and GPU architectures with the community. David co-authored a new book with Dr. Wen-mei Hwu - Programming Massively Parallel Processors: A Hands-on Approach -designed to teach students and professionals how to program within a massively parallel environment and includes many case studies. Portions of the content have been part of the curriculum at universities worldwide.

If you missed our first chat, you can still check out how NVIDIA's Ian Buck covered CUDA and high performance computing on the NVIDIA blog.

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