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ATI CrossFireX versus NVIDIA SLI: performance scaling showdown
We know who the daddy is when it comes to single-card graphics performance, and we've even witnessed NVIDIA and ATI duking it out with multiple cards before, but this here roundup is what you might call comprehensive. Comparing a mind-boggling 23 different configurations, the Tech Report guys set out to determine the best bang for your DirectX 11 buck. Their conclusion won't shock those of you who've been following the recent love affair between reviewers and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460: a pair of these eminently affordable cards regularly outpaced the best single-GPU solutions out there. Slightly more intriguing, however, was the discovery that its elder siblings, the GTX 470 and 480, have improved in performance to the point of being markedly ahead of ATI's Radeon HD 5870, with the blame for this shift being put squarely on the shoulders of NVIDIA's driver update team. Hurry up and give the source a read while it's still fresh, we can't imagine ATI letting this be the status quo for too much longer.
The Road to Mordor: Enedwaith Exploration Expo
E3 is always an exciting time full of announcements, reveals and hundreds of journalists attempting to leech every last drop of information from crafty studios. It's pretty much insane, and if your head isn't exploding from all of the news, trailers, screenshots and surprises, then I'm going to have to ask you to hand in your gamer card. For Turbine, this year's E3 has been a crucial moment in the company's history. Not only are we seeing them under the Warner Bros. banner in public, but they had to step up and both defend and build off of the revelation of Lord of the Ring Online's new business model. They were smart not to save the announcement itself for E3, because the gaming public and the press needed a bit of time to both digest the news and get past the initial emotional reaction so they could bring the studio thoughtful questions. Turbine's undoubtedly enjoying its fair share of press coverage at E3 because of this, and that's saying something considering all of the other heavy-hitters like Star Wars: The Old Republic, Final Fantasy XIV and Warhammer 40K that are making appearances. No matter what your feelings are on the F2P model, Turbine's got a lot more for LotRO gamers than just that -- in fact, they've been bombarding us with so much good new stuff that it's hard to know where to start. So let's take a quick tour through 10 exciting additions and updates to the game that they've revealed.
E3 2010: Lord of the Rings Online Vol 3 Book 2 preview of Enedwaith [Updated]
Massively sat down today with the Turbine team at E3 in Los Angeles to take a look at the new Lord of the Rings Online free-to-play content that went into closed beta earlier today. Along with the new cash shop, we got a look at the new playable area Enedwaith that will go live with the Volume 2, Book 3 launch this Fall. The blurred version of the new land map is for those of you who don't like spoilers. Full map and all the details about the next patch after the jump!
ATI FirePro V8800 takes Cypress core into workstation woods, emerges victorious
ATI has just let loose the first professional tier card based on its Cypress XT core, which in itself is part of the company's highly successful Evergreen series of 40nm chips. Boasting 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1.15GHz, 1,600 stream processors and an 825MHz core clock speed, the FirePro V8800 is very much an HD 5870 adapted to the demands of the digital creation world, and as such it's no surprise that it also requires the same pair of 6-pin auxiliary power connectors. It also supports DirectX 11 and the fresh new OpenGL 4.0 standard, something those business crazies seem to appreciate, but its killer feature is most probably the price, which -- although steep by common standards -- is $300 less than the $1,800 FirePro V8750 predecessor. Oh, and this card can drive 4 simultaneous displays, but we're kinda used to that by now with ATI -- the real question is how this pup ranks relative to its forebears and NVIDIA competition. The answer, according to the commonly used Maya, SolidWorks and 3ds Max applications, is that the FirePro V8800 simply destroys the V8750 while also generally outpacing the aging Quadro FX 4800. Feels pretty nice to have a straightforward conclusion, doesn't it? Check out the links below for the full disclosure.
NVIDIA GTX 480 makes benchmarking debut, matches ATI HD 5870 performance (video)
We're still not happy with NVIDIA's failure to publish anything on its site alerting users about the doom that may befall them if they switched to the 196.75 drivers, but the company's making an effort to get back into our good books with the first official video of its forthcoming GeForce GTX 480 and even a benchmark run against ATI's flagship single-GPU card, the HD 5870. It looks like you'll need to jack in a pair of auxiliary power connectors -- one 8-pin and one 6-pin -- to power the first Fermi card, as well as plenty of clearance in your case to accommodate its full length (stop giggling!). NVIDIA's benchmarking stressed the GTX 480's superior tesselation performance over the HD 5870, but it was level pegging between the two cards during the more conventional moments. It's all well and good being able to handle extreme amounts of tesselation, but it'll only matter to the end user if game designers use it as extensively as this benchmark did. As ever, wait for the real benchmarks (i.e. games) before deciding who wins, but we're slightly disappointed that NVIDIA's latest and greatest didn't just blow ATI's six-month old right out of the water. Benchmarking result awaits after the break, along with video of the new graphics card and a quick look at NVIDIA's 3D Vision Surround setup. Go fill your eyes.
AnandTech goes behind the scenes of ATI's RV870 / Evergreen GPU development
Anyone familiar with the constantly shifting release dates and delays that characterize GPU refresh cycles will have been impressed by ATI's execution of the Evergreen series release. Starting out at the top with its uber-performance parts, the company kept to an aggressive schedule over the winter and can now boast a fully fleshed out family of DirectX 11 graphics processors built under a 40nm process. The fact that NVIDIA has yet to give us even one DX11 product is testament to the enormity of this feat. But as dedicated geeks we want more than just the achievements, we want to know the ins and outs of ATI's resurgence and the decisions that led to its present position of being the market leader in features and mindshare, if not sales. To sate that curiosity, we have our good friend Anand Shimpi with a frankly unmissable retrospective on the development of the RV870 GPU that was to become the Evergreen chips we know today. He delves into the internal planning changes that took place after the delay of the R5xx series, the balancing of marketing and engineering ambitions, and even a bit of info on features that didn't quite make it into the HD 5xxx range. Hit the source link for all that precious knowledge.
Metro 2033 supports DirectX11, as evident in eight new screens
click to enable hardware embiggenation Even if you don't know your tessellation from your displacement mapping, there's no denying that these freshly delivered screenshots of THQ and 4a Games' upcoming FPS Metro 2033 look stunning, thanks to the game's support for "a number of advanced DX11 features with the latest generation of DX11 graphics cards." These effects include the aforementioned tessellation, which produces rich detail from simple 3D surfaces, and some mighty-impressive depth of field camera focus effects. NVIDIA is using Metro 2033 as an example of what's possible with its latest DX11-compliant GPUs, saying that "The 4A Engine is one of the most advanced game engines we've ever worked with, and with DX11 enabled, Metro 2033 is undoubtedly one of the best looking PC games of 2010." We agree -- it is very pretty in action, and the PC version we've seen wasn't yet employing any DX11 voodoo. Also, remember: In Soviet Russia, hardware tessellates you! %Gallery-85836%
NVIDIA Fermi / GF100 architectural details revealed
Fermi hardware might still be two months away, but NVIDIA has done the sage thing and released some tantalizing numbers and architectural details to keep the fanboys chirping in the meantime. The GF100 will signal the end of tiresome rebadging and clock speed massaging, and early adopters will find 512 CUDA cores, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface sprawled across three billion transistors. Big changes are also afoot in how the card will do its work, with a reorganization toward a more parallel workflow leading to promises of up to eight times better geometry performance than on the GT200. HardOCP reports that anti-aliasing results have improved "notably," while the video we've got stashed after the break for you shows the GF100 beating the GTX 285 handily in a Far Cry 2 benchmark. Still, the PC Perspective crew expressed some apprehension about the massive die size and how it could impact yields given the still young 40nm production process -- a sentiment echoed by other publications who questioned whether NVIDIA would not have been better off trying for a less ambitious, more gaming-oriented board. We should all know that answer soon enough. Read - AnandTech Read - Hot Hardware Read - PC Perspective Read - HardOCP Read - Tom's Hardware
NVIDIA Fermi pushed back to March, ATI prepping midrange refresh for early Q1?
Considering the present date, it's no longer a mystery that Fermi won't be seeing the glaring lights of store shelves this year, but now DigiTimes reports that the delay might be even longer than feared. Sources from within board manufacturers have been informed by NVIDIA that the launch of the 40nm GPU will be pushed back to March 2010. Though NVIDIA's flagship DirectX 11 card has yet to get out of the starting blocks, ATI -- already the proud papa of a litter of DX 11 parts -- is said to be preparing a renewed onslaught on the mainstream market with two new releases slated for late January or early February. The HD 5670 (Redwood) and HD 5450 (Cedar) will slot in alongside the unannounced HD 5570 and HD 5350 to flesh out the lower and middle portions of ATI's Evergreen refresh. So that's one whole family of DirectX 11 parts from ATI, and one long wait from NVIDIA.
AMD's 40nm DirectX 11-based Evergreen GPUs could be ready for bloom by late September
Looks like AMD's heading off trail with its upcoming 40nm DirectX 11-based Evergreen series processors. The Inquirer's dug up some details, and while clock speeds are still unknown, the codenames for the lineup include Cypress at the top of the pile, followed by Redwood, then Juniper and Cedar for the mainstream crowd, and finally Hemlock for the lower end. The series could reportedly be ready by late September, which gives a month of breathing room before DX11-supporting Windows 7 hits the scene. Could this give AMD its much-desired lead over NVIDIA? Hard to say, but things should get mighty interesting between now and late October.
AMD's RS880 integrated graphics chip could make netbooks usable
Tired of hearing that your next favorite netbook / nettop is hamstrung with one of those woefully underpowered GMA950 graphics chipsets? Eager to see what all AMD is going to do about it? If The Inquirer is to be believed, an up and coming integrated chipset should elevate the multimedia prowess of low-end machines, as the RS880 would actually be based around the new Radeon HD 4200 core. In theory, at least, this chip would be around 15 percent faster than similar alternatives out there now, giving future netbooks just enough power to churn through 720p video without st, st, stuttering. Needless to say, the suits are refusing to comment on the matter, but we're definitely holding out hope for this one.
New DirectX 11 details emerge
Not many MMOs take advantage of the DirectX 10 API and its instruction sets but that's not stopping progress on DirectX 11. The new DirectX version will work on Vista and future versions of the Windows operating system dubbed Windows 7. Yesterday, at Gamefest -- Microsft's XNA conference, the conglomerate disclosed some upcoming key components that the new technology will possess. There's full support, and compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, and this support extends too new DirectX 11 hardware. A new compute shader technology will open a GPU's capabilities to coincide as a parallel processor. More optimized power as multi-threaded resource handling will increase performance on multi-core machines. That's great since 8-core processors are not far-off from market sale. The last technical DirectX 11 feat announced is support for tessellation, a big fancy term that more or less makes your graphics smoother and prettier when viewed close-up. It could be a year or more before a MMOG takes full advantage of DirectX 11's capabilities. For example early DX10 adopters that play MMOGs are still waiting for Age of Conan's DX10 client.
