Not much is known about the above screenshot but the folks who were behind creating the infamous SLI Patch are working on ATI Physx implementation right now. This is going to port the NVIDIA Physx to ATI GPUs,
At a recent NVIDIA event, when questions about porting PhysX to ATI GPUs came up, representatives from NVIDIA said there is nothing stopping anyone from downloading the CUDA SDK and doing the necessary work.
Source: Hothardware.com
Bit-tech has just reviewed the Asus Radeon EAH3870 X2 1GB.
UK Price (as reviewed): £242.33 (inc. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $399.99 (ex. Tax)
Core Clock: 825MHz
Memory Clock: 1,800MHz
Warranty: Three years parts and labour
I have to say that I’m impressed with the Asus EAH3870 X2 graphics card – it’s quite a step away from the reference design and innovation like this should be encouraged. The inclusion of four DVI ports will be a welcome addition for anyone looking to run more than a couple of monitors on their workstation and what makes it even better is the fact that, unlike Nvidia’s SLI, ATI CrossFireX technology scales across multiple displays.
If you are interested in learning out exactly how NVIDIA has implemented it's cutting edge technology into this amazing graphics card, head over to bit-tech.net to get a full scoop of the Geforce GTX 280 architecture along with a review.
Source: bit-tech.net | Review - GT200: Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 analysis
In 2006 we all heard that AMD would be discontinuing the manufacture of ATI All in Wonder cards due to growing problems of incompatibility with Windows Vista Media Center and the tuning/capture devices on the cards. However, HotHardware.com is reporting that AMD is planning to resurrect the series with a TV Wonder 650 with a Radeon HD 3650 GPU.
Cards will sport a hardware MPEG-2 encoder, native HDMI connections along with DVI outputs, composite video inputs and outputs, component outputs, and support OTA HD, Clear QAM digital cable TB tuning (some of the connectors are on a separate daughterboard that connects via a small ribbon cable). Of course, all of the features inherent to the Radeon HD 3650 GPU will be exposed as well, as will the features of the ATI Theater 650 chip. We should also note that unlike previous AIW cards, this new version will be fully compatible with Windows Vista.
Source: HotHardware
Here are more reviews for AMD's latest offering:
This puppy by Point of View has been reviewed over at Guru3d.com. To read the full review click here. The card is priced at $399 and provides excellent performance.
Performance wise this is just a very fun product, playing Race Driver: GRID at 1920x1200 with 4x MSAA enabled at 55 frames per second is just brilliant. When we take S.t.a.l.k.e.r. with every possible image quality setting enabled including Dynamic lighting we still push 52 frames per second on average and these are just really good numbers. The one card the GTX 260 consistently came close with (performance wise) was actually the diminished GeForce 8800 Ultra.
Gamespot.com has also taken the new 4850 and 4870 cards for a spin and have posted some benchmarks from the cards. To read the full article, click here.
HotHardware.com have put up an excellent review of the new 4870 on their website. The card is priced at a reasonable $299 and it seems that it actually gives the Geforce 260 card a run for it's money which is actually a hundred dollars more expensive than the 4870.
Here is a benchmark for Unreal Tournament 3 from the HotHardware.com review
NVIDIA launched a new set of drivers aimed at Geforce 6,7,8, and 9 series of GPUs.
Note: Quad SLI technology with GeForce 9800 GX2, 3-way SLI technology, and Hybrid SLI technology are only supported on Windows Vista.
You can download the drivers by selecting your graphics card on NVIDIA's website and hitting search. You can do that by clicking on the link below.
Guru3d.com has posted an excellent review of the XFX Geforce 9800 GTX Black Edition
The card is priced at $249. Here is a snippet from the review,
I stated it in a previous Black Edition review as well, once you go black you never go back. And it's the truth in this case as well. The black edition clocked products are pre-selected and tested products that next to a bundles items are guaranteed to run at high clocks absolutely stable. It's therefore very hard to resist the XFX 9800 GTX BE as it definitely is the fastest product in within its product category.
To read the full review, click here.
SANTA CLARA, CA—JUNE 20, 2008—LAN Party gaming will reach a new level during a Guinness World Record-setting attempt at the NVISION® 08 event on August 25 in San Jose, California. The aim of the event is to make history as the world’s “Longest Non-Stop LAN Party.”
“This will be one of the most exciting gaming record attempts of the year. I’ve been really impressed with the enthusiasm of the NVISION team and I look forward to being the official adjudicator for this great event,” commented Gaz Deaves, records manager, Guinness World Records.
“I have faith and confidence in the NVIDIA gaming community, one of the most loyal, energetic, and enthusiastic core audiences of NVIDIA since we were a startup, ”said Sheryl Huang, NVIDIA marketing director and veteran of countless LAN events. “At NVIDIA events in the past, these guys have been up all night anyway. Their energy is incredible. I’m looking forward to them setting this record and earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s glory time.”
In order to book a seat at NVISION 08 LAN party, follow the link below
AMD released the Radeon HD 4800 Hotfix for Radeon 4850/4870 today. You can grab the hotfix drivers from the following link.
The information in this article applies to the following configuration(s):
- Radeon™ HD 4870 series
- Radeon™ HD 4850 series
This Hotfix improves overall performance and stability. The Hotfix includes the Display Driver and Catalyst Control Center.
The drivers are available for both Windows XP 32 bit and 64 bit as well as Windows Vista 32 and 64 bit versions.
The price of Geforce 9800 GTX has already been dropped down to $199 in competition with ATI's excellent release of the similarly priced Radeon 4850.
Head over to NewEgg to grab your 9800 GTX for $199 today!
Click here to download the motherboard/GPU performance tweaking utlity
System tuning and monitoring support: 
Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) support:
GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring support:
The fine folks over at Nvnews.net have reviewed the EVGA Geforce GTX 280 Edition.
To read the full review click here.
The GeForce GTX 280 outperformed the GeForce 8800 GTX at the resolution of 1920x1200, but delivered the best bang for the buck at 2560x1600 and with high quality (16xQ) antialiasing at 1680x1050. Overall increases in the average frame rate at these settings ranged from 57% to 92%. While the increase in performance at these extreme settings will command a premium price, NVIDIA has finally delivered a true successor to the awesome GeForce 8800 GTX.
The nice people over at PC Perspective got their hands on an NVIDIA Geforce 9800 GTX+ which is supposed to hit the market by the mid of July. From the performance point of view, it is a tiny amount faster than the 9800 GTX as well as the Radeon 4850 but it also is priced at $229 which is 30 dollars higher than the Radeon 4850 as well as the 9800 GTX. It's launch date however is going to be around the mid/end of July which gives AMD ample time to gain some important market share with their latest graphics card, the Radeon 4850.
Specs:
My only gripe from the card was it's power consumption. Since it is basically an overclocked version of the 9800 GTX, the load requirement of 310 watts and idle requirement of 204 watts may be alarming considering the Radeon card only consumes 179/285 watts for idle and load requirements respectively.
To read the full review from PC Perspective, click here.
If you cannot wait for the official release of the Physx enabled drivers, here is the link to download them and I saw this over at hardforum.com
Nvidia Forceware 177.39 for Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit) - [DOWNLOAD]
Nvidia Forceware 177.39 for Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit) - [DOWNLOAD]
Nvidia Forceware 177.39 for Microsoft Windows XP Professional / Windows Server 2003 (64-bit) - [DOWNLOAD]
Nvidia Forceware 177.39 for Microsoft Windows XP Professional / Home Edition (32-bit) - [DOWNLOAD]
Nvidia PhysX Driver 8.06.12 (All Windows O/S) - [DOWNLOAD]
Download links courtesy gamebeat.net and for [H]ard|OCP / [H]ard|Forum only This combination of drivers should enable Geforce accelerated PhysX support on all G92 and GT2XX cards. Support for older G80 cards is said to be coming in a future driver release.
[EDIT: Apparently these drivers only support the 9800GTX, 9800GTX+, and GT2XX 'out of the box' as it were. If you want to use them with older G92 based cards you'll need to modify the .inf]
Information on exactly what PhysX titles are currently supported seems sketchy at best at the moment. As of this post I know that it works for 3DMark Vantage (ugh!) and Unreal Tourney 2K3 (with PhysX patch).
The amount of heat generated by modern graphics cards can easily reach 90 degrees Celsius and that is staggering. But what do you do with so much heat dissipation? Fry an egg of course! Enjoy the video!
Got these stats from over at Hothardware.com and they show how much of a performance boost NVIDIA cards would be getting after the release of their ForceWare 177.39 driver which will enable Physx processing on the GeForce 9800 GTX, 9800 GTX+, and GTX 260/280. An introduction for the other cards in the Geforce 8/7 series will be slowly introduced after that.
The really good news: PhysX for the GeForce 9800 GTX, 9800 GTX+, and GTX 260/280 cards will be enabled by the ForceWare 177.39 driver, timed to launch with the GTX+. And NVIDIA says it will gradually roll out PhysX support to the full GeForce 8/9 line. As the above graph shows, GPU accelerated PhysX could offer a significant performance increase, in games that support the technology. The UT3 PhysX map pack for example, which was used to gather the data above, shows a major boost with GPU accelerated PhysX enabled.
I was checking out the review of this card over at AnandTech and noticed the amazing performance it delivers in Bioshock. It even destroys the Geforce 260 in the benchmarks and that card is twice its price.
Here is a snippet of the Bioshock performance from the review,
AMD's new 4850 just destroys its competition and just about everything else in this test. Not even the new GTX 260 which costs twice as much can touch this card in Bioshock. Performance here is simply incredible.
Guru3D has an excellent 20 page review for the new Radeon 4850 graphics card. It's a real bang for the buck and in crossfire mode it obliterates competition 2x times it's price.
The power consumption for the card is excellent too at a mere 169 watts. The site reviews include 2 graphics cards, one by Force3D and the other one is by PowerColor
So I'm not going to make this conclusion any longer than needed. The Radeon HD series 4850 are just stuffed with good features and offers tremendous amount of performance for your bucks. Surely NVIDIA reacts by lowering the price on the GeForce 9800 GTX .. but mark my words, a month from now the Radeon HD 4850 will already sell for prices like 169 USD. And at this moment in time as a consumer it just can't get any better than this.
The cards also received the coveted Guru3D Gaming Essential award.
To read the full review, click here.
The first review for ATI Radeon 4850 is out at whatifgaming.com
The results are extremely impressive for a sub 200 dollar card! Looks like AMD/ATI may have hit the homerun with this one. (NVIDIA - D'oh!!)
The ATI Catalyst version 8.6 has been released to the public. To download the drivers click here. Here are the highlights from the release notes.
Performance improvements
With the imminent release of Ati's Radeon 4000 series, NVIDIA is announcing the Geforce 9800 GTX Plus edition which is basically going to be an overclocked version of the 9800 GTX but the good thing about it is that it's going to have a street price of $229. On top of that, the original 9800 GTX's price is going to be dropped to $199. The competition makes things so much better for consumers!!!
The folks over at Guru3D have done an excellent review of the new Geforce GTX 280 by BFG which is actually an overclocked version and comes with an excellent warranty for 10 years, yes 10 years!! That's excellent value for money considering the fact that it is sold at the same price as the other models.
Rounding it up, the GeForce GTX 280 OC that BFG offers is a frickin beast that cranks up the performance ladder another notch or two. Additional value is to be found in the slightly higher overclock and far-fetched warranty. Though something as simple as including a HDMI cable, just brings a smile to my face as well. It's good to see that stuff, and exactly where BFG rocks, hey it's built for gamers.
The card also received the coveted Guru3D "Top Pick" award.
Sharkyextreme has a nice review of the new PNY XLR8 Geforce 9800 GX2 graphics card.
Before setting up the card, you should remember that PNY recommends a whooping 580W power supply before you can get this baby up and running. You can red the full review
The PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB is a definite high-end video card, and it allows enthusiast gamers to scale to unheard of heights. The beauty of one-card SLI is that it's like having an extra GPU-on-demand, ready to push to a higher resolution or greater detail level, all without losing much in the way of framerates. This card will not blow you away at lower resolutions, and pretty well requires a high-end system and LCD configuration just to make sense. But for those with the necessary supporting hardware, the PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB will supply both eye candy and silky-smooth game play.
Tomshardware has an excellent article regarding NVIDIA's CUDA and it also tries to answer the question if NVIDIA's CUDA could mean an end to CPUs. Check out the article here.
The Geforce GTX 260 and 280 have been reviewed over at HotHardware. The Geforce GTX 280 is almost as fast, and in some case even faster than a 9800GTX2 SLI setup!
A little snippet from the review,
NVIDIA has done it again and raised the bar for that can be considered an ultra high-end GPU. The GT200 series GPU at the heart of the GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 offers more brute force performance than anything else to come before it. Though producing such a massive GPU, does have its drawbacks, which are evident when you consider its die size and when looking at power consumption characteristics, the fact remains NVIDIA has produced the most powerful and fastest graphics card we have ever tested - yet again.
Here is an extremely useful link to a list containing benchmarks for all avaiable GPUs on the mobile platforms and all the models are ranked according to their performance. It's really useful if you are planning to buy a new notebook and also want to play some games on it. Check it out.
The folks over at Sharky Extreme have written a nice review for an ATI Radeon HD 3870 which is aimed at the sub $200 mainstream performance graphics cards category.
The card also ships with a really nice Zalman cooler and can be easily removed to install other 3rd party coolers if you wish.
It's still not quite up to challenging the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. It's more of a GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB killer, and does so with low power usage and cool thermals. It also presents a noticeable upgrade to the lower-clocked Radeon HD 3850, and at not much of a price premium. This is a very good performer for its class, and Gigabyte offers a very competitive card
To read the full review, head over to Sharky Extreme.
No news on how much the machine is going to cost though, but it's revealed specifications include a 3GHz dual core Intel CPU which will be overclocked, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX with turbo cache VRAM, dual high-speed 7200RPM hard drives of 200GB each for a total of 400GB, up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 17 inch WSXGA+ with 1680 x 1050 resolution. It also packs a couple S/P DIF and REGZA link HDMI ports and a four speaker Harmon Kardon stereo speaker system with subwoofer.
What puzzles me though is that out of all the colors, they had to choose pink! Why pink??? =(
The following announcement comes from AMD that they have achieved a new milestone in the mobile graphics industry by being the first in the industry to reach OpenGL® ES 2.0 conformance certification. They issued the following statement,
“We are pleased to be the first technology provider to achieve OpenGL ES 2.0 certification from the Khronos™ Group,” said Mikko Saari, senior director of design engineering for AMD’s Handheld division. “This underscores our commitment to building and nurturing the mobile gaming ecosystem to thrill consumers while providing our OEM customers and the mobile gaming community with a competitive advantage.”
To achieve conformance, the AMD OpenGL ES 2.0 implementation met key feature requirements while being rigorously tested and reviewed by the Khronos Group, the independent industry consortium responsible for the development, promotion and certification of the OpenGL ES standard.
“We congratulate AMD as the first organization to achieve certification for its OpenGL ES 2.0 implementation,” said Khronos Group president Neil Trevett. “OpenGL ES 2.0 enables fully-programmable 3D graphics on embedded systems. With the support of leading suppliers such as AMD, OpenGL ES 2.0 will usher in a new generation of devices that will enable revolutionary applications, ultimately driving consumer demand.”
Working closely with leading chipset suppliers, OEMs and application developers, AMD aims to unleash a new world of mobile entertainment experiences. By delivering a standards-compliant platform, AMD helps software developers to rely on a given set of features and functionality, reducing design cycles and freeing them to focus on developing games that look and play great.
“With all of the vast differences between mobile phone device hardware, operating systems and networks, it is essential that we have a single graphics standard,” said Xavier Carrillo-Costa, CEO of Digital Legends Entertainment, a leading developer of games for mobile devices. “AMD has demonstrated strong leadership and commitment to the industry while developing a fantastic graphics and gaming architecture.”
If you are still among the people who own an AGP port based 3d card, Tomsharwardware has an interesting article consisting of benchmarks for the current available AGP graphics cards (the latest being the Radeon 3850 from ATI). Follow the link to read the full article.
You can grab the latest drivers for your ATI cards from the
following link.
ATI Catalyst™ 8.5 Display Driver for Windows XP Media Center Edition
ATI Catalyst™ 8.5 Drivers and ATI Multimedia Software for Windows XP Media Center Edition
ATI Catalyst™ 8.5 Display Driver for Windows XP Media Center Edition - Motherboard/IGP Drivers
ATI Theater™ 8.5 Drivers for Windows XP Media Center Edition
ATI TV Wonder™ 600 USB 8.5 Drivers for Windows XP Media Center Edition
ATI TV Wonder™ 650 Combo USB 8.5 Drivers for Windows XP Media Center Edition
ATI Catalyst™ 8.5 Display Driver for Windows XP Professional/Home Edition
ATI Catalyst™ 8.5 Drivers and ATI Multimedia Software for Windows XP Professional/Home Edition
ATI Catalyst™ 8.5 Display Driver for Windows XP Professional/Home Edition - Motherboard/IGP Drivers
ATI Catalyst™ Mobility 8.5 Display Driver for Windows XP Professional/Home Edition
ATI Theater™ 8.5 Drivers for Windows XP Professional/Home Edition
ATI TV Wonder™ 600 USB 8.5 Drivers for Windows XP Professional/Home Edition
ATI TV Wonder™ 650 Combo USB 8.5 Drivers for Windows XP Professional/Home Edition
The latest version of DirectX has been released by Microsoft and is available for all versions of Windows including Windows Vista. This latest DX 10 upgrade can be downloaded from the following link.
nHancer is an excellent utility for NVIDIA cards which lets you tweak the performance for each individual game you run based on their profiles. It also lets you tweak many advanced settings to optimize your card's graphics performance. The utility also explains every technical jargon it uses for it's settings to the users in great detail so that even newbies can easily understand what each setting exactly does for the visual quality and performance.
You can download nHancer from the following link. If you like the utility, don't forget to donate to the utility's author at his website.
The most used utility to overclock graphics cards is probably RivaTuner. The name of the utility may be "Riva" (probably taken from NVIDIA's earlier offerings like the Riva TnT and TnT 2), but that doesn't mean it can only handle overclocking for NVIDIA based graphics cards, in face, RivaTuner also supports ATI based graphics cards.
If you want to read the FAQ about the software, head over to the following
You can download RivaTuner from the following
link.There is also a useful fan speed and overclock guide that you might want to take a look into for RivaTuner.
NVIDIA has acquired Rayscale, a ten year old startup and it's development crew includes few key people at the University of Utah.
Rayscale is currently in the beta phase of their first product release with support for the following features:
NVIDIA will probably try to integrate the knowledge gained from the new company for real-time rendering purposes for their GPUs. Raytracing can provide some serious eye candy. To read more about what Raytracing is, head over to this wikipedia link.
I saw this over at the nvnews.net forums and decided to talk about it here! =) Enjoy the post!
FPS Creator X10 
Crysis 
Alan Wake 
Unreal Tournament 3 
Flight Simulator X 
EVE Online (w/ patch) 
Hellgate: London 
World in Conflict 
Warhound 
BioShock 
Company of Heroes (w/ patch) 
Age of Conan 
Chrome 2 
Lost Planet 
Call of Juarez (w/ patch) 
Guild Wars 2
Unannounced Ritual Title 
