Displaying items by tag: nVidia

Wow it looks like this month is the moth for leaks; we have seen early leaks on Intel’s Z77 chipset, nVidia’s mobile Kepler GPU and even early full reviews of Intel’s Ivy Bridge (this incident sent some at Intel over the edge). Now we have new leaks on nVidia’s Kepler. The first leak was a simple one that involved the early publishing of nVidia’s GTX 680 launch video. Apparently this was leaked on the eve of the launch (which if rumor is to be believed) is tomorrow some time.

There are more claims showing that the “New” iPad is more powerful than the Tegra 3. This time they are using some very interesting evidence to show this off. One site in question is claiming that they are able to calculate the difference using the benchmarks from the iPad2. Now some of you might be thinking that this could be true since the iPad and the “new” iPad share the same base GPU core. Both have Power VR SGX 543 GPUs inside. The iPad 2 had a dual core SGX 543MP2 and the New iPad has the quad-core SGX 543MP4.

Yesterday the internet had an unexpected (by some) show of nVidia’s Mobile 28nm Kepler GPU. This was done through the review of an Acer Ultrabook. Although the desktop flavor is still some time away (maybe end of April or early May) we now can start to make guesses about how kepler might compare. Of course the real performance of Kepler is anyone’s guess. We decided to continue on with our coverage of Windows 8 x64. This time we dive into the nVidia side of gaming with an nVidia GTX 470 dropped into our testing rig. We used the same games and, of course, we shot some video of how well it worked out.

Momentum is an amazing thing. When an object or company has it, it can seem like nothing can slow it down and indeed is can be hard to stop something that has built up momentum. For example, Apple has had a massive movement behind their company and products their momentum had built up over years of careful marketing and catchy products. To many analysts it seemed like nothing could stop Apple. However; when you are driving along passing cars with ease and you suddenly shift from fifth into third you will quickly find out how much of a bad day you are going to have and how easy it is to lose that momentum.

The internet was all a buzz with Apple’s announcement of “The New iPad” which is what Apple has decided to call the 3rd generation of the iPad instead of following a numerical progression or (as some thought) adding HD to the end. So far the technical specifications look impressive with a 2048 x 1536 display (with 264 ppi which is an odd number), a 5MP HD camera (1080p@ 30fps) and video stabilization, WiFi, and even 4G LTE capability. Under the hood Apple has an A5X SoC.

EVGA has built a name for itself inside the community of overclockers, gamers and other enthusiasts. Although they do not have the same volume as Gigabyte or Asus, they still put out some of the top boards when it comes to overclocking and performance. In fact as of this writing an EVGA Classified SR-2 Motherboard holds the number one slot in Futuremark’ s 3DMark 11 Hall of Fame. Unfortunately we do not have a Classified SR-2 in the shop for testing, but we do have an EVGA X79 FTW (151-SE-E777). This board features a matte black PCB, five PCI3 x16 slots and a lot more. So let’s take a look over the X79 FTW and check out both the design choices and features you can expect when you buy this board.

One of the all-time largest patent trolls RAMBUS (yes even bigger than apple) has finally settled a long running battle with nVidia and signed a licensing agreement with the GPU and SoC manufacturer. RAMBUS is famous for its underhanded dealings in the mid-90s when the company filed patents on technology that was being openly discussed at JDEC conferences.  RAMBUS then turned around and sued other members of the organization for violating their patent rights. The resulting legal battle made the Samsung Vs. Apple dispute look like a fight over the TV remote.

CES 2012 - Las Vegas Nevada; nVidia had their big press conference for CES 2012 and as has been the trend for the last three years it is all about Tegra. This time we had a look at Tegra 3; As most of you know Tegra 3 is nVidia’s Quad/Quint Core SoC and is hitting the market in the form of Asus’ Transformer Prime Tablet. This new SoC (System on Chip) has been seen as the major competitor for Apple’s A6 SoC (although some still feel that the A6 has better and more elegant caching instructions).

AMD has begun shipping their 28nm GPUs to OEMs in preparation for the official launch in January at the 2012 CES. This news is good for AMD as they have been promising to be first to market with 28nm for most of the year. It is also good to know that some of the issues with TSMC’s 28nm process that we have heard about are not going to slow things up.

It looks like mobile is the way to go these days; well really it has been for some time. Back in 2009 or so nVidia saw that and turned their attention toward the mobile world by developing the Tegra SoC (System on Chip) at the time many people slammed them for dropping out of the chipset business and fans of their GPUs became annoyed that this new product was taking priority over development of faster and better products for their games. Now, after a rocky start and three generations into it (plus a design win that could put Tegra on the moon), no one is laughing at the tiny little chip any longer.