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NVIDIA launches two entry-level graphics cards based on its 'most efficient' GPU so far
AMD has enjoyed plenty of room on our pages recently, what with all the talk of Mantle-this and HSA-that. We imagine the folks at NVIDIA have found it all quite bemusing, because for them the graphics card business hasn't changed: it's still primarily about offering higher frame rates for fewer watts in common DirectX-based PC games. Indeed, that's exactly what the green corner's all-new Maxwell architecture is claimed to deliver, starting with the GTX 750 Ti card that should be hitting stores today priced at $150 (or £115 in the UK). At the transistor level, Maxwell is no more efficient than Kepler -- we're still looking at a 28nm fabrication process, which is pretty standard by now. However, NVIDIA says it has figured out much smarter ways of distributing power across its graphics cores, resulting in a doubling of performance-per-watt. What does this mean in practice? Read on and ye shall discover.
CyberpowerPC stuffs full-size graphics into a tiny gaming desktop
Not interested in buying a Steam Machine this year, but still want a tiny gaming PC? Never fear -- CyberPowerPC has just released the Zeus Mini, its latest take on a conventional small computer with full-sized performance. The system is just 4.4 inches thick and 18 inches deep, but it has room for fast video cards like AMD's R9 290 or NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780. You'll also find a high-end AMD Kaveri or Intel Haswell processor inside, and there's space for a large liquid cooling system if you insist on a silent rig. Zeus Mini prices start at $599 for a basic variant with a 3.7GHz AMD A10 chip and integrated graphics, but demanding players can shell out $1,479 for a flagship model with a 3.5GHz Core i7 and GTX 780 video.
GeForce Experience update brings Twitch game streaming
NVIDIA's GeForce Experience may not be tremendously popular with PC gamers, but it's about to get more traction now that its Twitch streaming is finally available in beta. An updated app lets any player with a Kepler-based GeForce card both livestream their sessions and record clips through ShadowPlay. If you're worried about missing special moments, there's a PlayStation 4-like Shadow Mode to automatically capture the last 20 minutes of game time; performance shouldn't be an issue, since dedicated hardware handles all the video encoding. NVIDIA can't promise that everything will be smooth in the beta, but it's already planning to add both a desktop capture mode and new microphone controls. Head to the source links if you're eager to share your virtual escapades with the world.
MSI reveals two GT60 laptops with 3K displays
MSI is jumping into the world of ultra-sharp displays today with the launch of two high-end GT60 laptop models. Both the gaming-oriented 2OD-261US and the workstation-grade 2OKWS-278US have 15.6-inch, 2,880 x 1,620 screens that make the most of 3D graphics and photos. As you'd hope, the two systems have more than enough horsepower to justify the high resolution. Each GT60 variant carries a quad-core 2.4GHz Core i7, 16GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive; the gaming rig relies on GeForce GTX 780M graphics and runs Windows 8, while its sibling uses pro-level Quadro K3100 video and Windows 7. Whichever PC you choose, you'll pay a lot for MSI's newfound visual prowess. The 20D-261US is available now for $2,200, while the 2OKWS-278US raises the asking price to $2,800.
NVIDIA's Shield now streams PC games to your TV in 1080p, has new control mapping capabilities
It was just over a month ago when NVIDIA's handheld, Shield, got the ability to stream Android games to TVs at 1080p resolution via Console Mode. Today, it can now do the same for PC games thanks to a software update that also brings improvements to 720p streaming mode and its Gamepad Mapper feature, too. Of course, the Gamestream technology that powers Shield streaming officially supports a limited number of games at the moment, with Batman: Arkham Origins, Borderlands 2 and Assasin's Creed IV: Black Flag among the highlights. In all, 63 games are currently available to stream in full HD, with more titles scheduled to be added every week. With Gamepad Mapper, users can now map motion controls to physical ones. So, instead of tilting your handheld from side to side in the games designed to do so, you can map those gyro inputs to the Shield's thumbsticks instead. And, to better let folks know of all the custom control possibilities, NVIDIA is rolling out a community beta feature that lets folks share and rate different control map profiles. Lastly, if you have a Shield and live in Northern California, you can now get in on NVIDIA's GRID beta. For folks who aren't familiar, GRID is NVIDIA's cloud gaming technology, similar to Gaikai and OnLive. So, folks with a sub-40ms ping time to NVIDIA's San Jose, Calif., servers and a minimum 10 Mbps connection through a GameStream-ready router can get exclusive access to the service's library of games on their Shield. Looks like Christmas came early, folks, so head on down to the source for the info needed to grab all the goodies.
NVIDIA unveils GeForce GTX 760, brings modern Kepler down to $249 (video)
NVIDIA has been gradually lowering the base pricing for its desktop GeForce 700 series, but few outside of the hardcore gamer set would say the $399 GTX 770 was affordable. Enter the GeForce GTX 760: the Kepler-based chipset supports all the visual effects of its faster cousins, but at a more palatable $249 target price. Although it won't rival the 770 in performance, it offers more bang for the buck than the GTX 660 it's built to replace: the GTX 760 carries more processing cores (1,152 versus 960) and more memory bandwidth (192GB/s versus 144GB/s) while maintaining similar clock speeds. It can even punch above its weight class, as it's reportedly up to 12 percent faster than the $299 GTX 660 Ti. Should that balance of price and performance sound especially sweet, you can pick up a GTX 760 board today from the likes of ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte and others. Several PC builders, such as Falcon Northwest, Maingear and Origin PC, are also equipping their machines with the new mid-tier graphics from day one.
Razer puts 14-inch Blade up for pre-order
Razer teased us when it unveiled the 14-inch Blade last week: a rare blend of portability with gaming performance, and we couldn't even put money down? Well, we can at least do that now. The smaller of the two Blades is now up for pre-order, with prices ranging from $1,800 to $2,300 depending on the SSD capacity. Whatever the storage level, players are getting the same 14-inch 1,600 x 900 display, quad-core 2.2GHz Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and GeForce GTX 765M graphics. Any fresh orders should ship within two to three weeks, which fits just inside of Razer's promised launch schedule -- and just ahead of our summer vacations.
Origin PC lineup makes the leap to Haswell, GeForce GTX 700M
Origin PC makes a point of embracing game-friendly technology as soon as it arrives, and you'd better believe it's welcoming Haswell-based processors with open arms: virtually all of its computer line is making the jump to the faster Intel hardware. The raw CPU power is the main highlight for the Chronos, Genesis and Millennium desktops, while those buying the larger EON15-S and EON17-S laptops get a few additional treats. Origin PC is adopting NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 765M, 770M and 780M graphics for the portables' mainstream editions. It's also letting the truly storage-addicted run two simultaneous RAID configurations if their laptop has four drives. The Haswell upgrades bump EON15S-S and EON17-S prices by about two Benjamins to $1,722 and $1,784 respectively, but players who just have to stay current can pay the premium today.
NVIDIA reveals GeForce GTX 700M series GPUs for notebooks, we go eyes-on
We've already seen a couple of new desktop GTX cards from NVIDIA this month, and if the mysterious spec sheet for MSI's GT70 Dragon Edition 2 laptop wasn't enough of a hint, the company's got some notebook variants to let loose, too. The GeForce GTX 700M series, officially announced today, is a quartet of chips built on the Kepler architecture. At the top of the stack is the GTX 780M, which NVIDIA claims is the "world's fastest notebook GPU," taking the title from AMD's Radeon HD 8970M. For fans of the hard numbers, the 780M has 1,536 CUDA cores, an 823MHz base clock speed and memory configs of up to 4GB of 256-bit GDDR5 -- in other words, not a world apart from a desktop card. Whereas the 780M's clear focus is performance, trade-offs for portability and affordability are made as you go down through the 770M, 765M and 760M. Nevertheless, the 760M is said to be 30 percent faster than its predecessor, and the 770M 55 percent faster. All of the chips feature NVIDIA's GPU Boost 2.0 and Optimus technologies, and work with the GeForce Experience game auto-settings utility. The 700M series should start showing up in a host of laptops soon, and a bunch of OEMs have already pledged their allegiance. Check out a video with NVIDIA's Mark Avermann after the break, where he shows off a range of laptops packing 700M GPUs, and helps us answer the most important question of all: can it run Crysis? (Or, in this case, Crysis 3.) %Gallery-189806%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 and 780 review roundup: Kepler's still kicking in 2013
Now that we have the low-down on NVIDIA's two mainstream heavyweights, the GTX 770 and the GTX 780, we figure it's time to move beyond specs and official slide decks and bring together some reviews from the specialist sites. Both cards contain the same Kepler architecture as NVIDIA's 2012 line-up, with no huge leaps in evidence, but they either add more of this silicon (in the case of the GTX 780) or drive it harder (in the case of the GTX 770) in order create new options for enthusiasts and for those upgrading from a card that is two or more generations old. At the same time, these products represent a major shift in NVIDIA's pricing strategy. At $649, the GTX 780 is priced much higher than its direct ancestor, and it aims to approach Titan-level performance without hitting the same thousand-dollar high. Meanwhile, the GTX 770 costs just $399 and yet is said to replace last year's flagship cards like the GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, which are still being sold for $450 and upwards at some retailers. Read on and we'll summarize how these claims have stacked up against reality.
NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 770 for under $400, says it's faster than last year's GTX 680
It probably won't come as a huge surprise, given the GTX 780's appearance last week, but today's launch of the GTX 770 nevertheless brings us a very interesting product. The card is claimed to be about five percent faster than last year's much more expensive flagship, the GTX 680, thanks to faster memory (7Gb/s instead of 6Gb/s), a slightly higher base clock speed (1,046 vs. 1,006MHz) and an equivalent number of CUDA cores (1,536). Seeing as how the the GTX 680 still holds its own with current games, this performance parity strikes us as something of a deal -- assuming independent benchmarks back it up. We're awaiting a confirmed US price, but we'll eat our SATA cables if it's anything other than $399 for a 2GB model (the press release just says "under $400"). UK and European prices match those of the GTX 670 (£329 inc. VAT, 329 euros exc. VAT), and availability begins today. Check out NVIDIA's slide deck for more details, including power consumption and noise, SLI scaling (which looks healthy) and some in-house frame rate comparisons against other products. Update: $399 is confirmed. The cables are safe.%Gallery-189773%
NVIDIA releases GeForce GTX 780 for $649, claims more power with less fan noise
It's well over a year since the GTX 680 came out, but given how that card was a strong contender it may feel too early for an upgrade. NVIDIA knows the score, which is why it's made a particular point of pitching this year's card at owners of the GTX 580 instead. Upgraders from that GPU are pledged a 70 percent lift in performance, which is about double the gain a GTX 680 owner would see. On the other hand, something more people might notice -- if NVIDIA's slides prove to be accurate -- is a 5dBA drop in noise pollution, as well a new approach to fan control that attracts less attention by varying revs less wildly in response to load. This is surprising given that most of the extra performance in this card stems from more transistors and greater power consumption, but that's what we're told. Feel free to hold out for our round-up of independent reviews or read past the break for further details.%Gallery-189136%
NVIDIA's GTX 650 Ti Boost lives up to its name for $149
By NVIDIA's own admission, the lower registers of its Kepler-based GeForce graphics cards "couldn't always tackle [their] originally stated goal" of powering 1080p games with the settings amped up to high. So, after the GeForce GTX 650 and 650 Ti, maybe the third time's a charm. The latest card goes by the name GTX 650 Ti Boost, reflecting the fact that it brings NVIDIA's GPU Boost technology into the mix, which can vary the chip's clock speed as need allows. Stacked against the 650 Ti, this unit's got 782 CUDA cores (up from 768), a base clock of 980MHz (up from 928MHz) and a TDP of 140W, (compared to 110W). Another big draw is two-way SLI, so you can pair up cards when your wallet regains its strength. On the benchmark front, NVIDIA promises you can run Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm at highest settings and get a frame rate of 62fps, an order of magnitude higher than the 39fps promised on the 650 Ti. Sitting above the 650 Ti and below the GeForce 660, the 1GB version will set you back $149 (£124), with the 2GB edition priced at $169 (£144). In behind-closed-doors tests, the company has found that it comes out on top against AMD's $249 Radeon 7850, but we'll be rounding up independent reviews shortly in order to verify that claim -- as well as seeing if it can make the 7790 think twice about getting out of bed. %Gallery-183823%
PSA: Tomb Raider gets another patch, Nvidia updates beta drivers
Tomb Raider on PC got another patch this weekend, launched in conjunction with new beta drivers from Nvidia for GeForce GPUs. Download the latest GeForce 314.21 drivers direct from Nvidia.Since its launch, GeForce Tomb Raider players have seen "major performance and stability issues" trying to play the game at max settings. Complaints include problems with TressFX and tessellation tripping the game up, at least for those with 600-series cards. There are more Tomb Raider patches incoming from Crystal Dynamics, based on ongoing player feedback.
Tomb Raider PC patch addresses hairy Nvidia issues
Tomb Raider received a PC patch this weekend, with fixes for the Nvidia-associated stability issues high on the agenda. The patch notes mention corrections for "some stability and startup issues on machines that have both Intel and Nvidia graphics hardware" and "some small improvements to TressFX hair rendering." These chief issues led to Nvidia apologizing for the game's unstable performance at maximum settings on its GeForce cards.Going by the Steam and Eidos forums, the patch does provide significant improvement for some of the stability issues, although by the sounds of it TressFX is still somewhat flaky.
Nvidia, Crystal Dynamics looking into Tomb Raider PC performance issues
Graphics powerhouse Nvidia is working with developer Crystal Dynamics to address the "major performance and stability issues" occurring with GeForce cards playing Tomb Raider on max settings. A number of users on the Nvidia, Steam, and Tomb Raider forums complained about a range of GeForce-related issues, with common complaints including the game repeatedly crashing to desktop on 600-series cards, and AMD's TressFX hair rendering tech taking a chunky toll on performance.Following no mention of Tomb Raider in its post on the latest GeForce beta drivers, Nvidia's Andrew Burnes took to the comments to explain the situation, revealing the company only received a final version of the game a few days ahead of launch."Unfortunately, Nvidia didn't receive final code until this past weekend which substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided," said Burnes. "We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we would like to apologize to GeForce users that are not able to have a great experience playing Tomb Raider, as they have come to expect with all of their favorite PC games."
NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan leaks, could cost a grand
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 690 currently wears the world's-fastest-graphics crown, unless you count the limited edition Ares II, by cramming two Kepler GPUs onto one mainstream board. When it comes to improving on that, some leaked European retailer listings suggest NVIDIA might not wait on a completely next-gen architecture, but may instead try to deliver similar performance through a less power-hungry single GPU design. The listings, gathered together by TechPowerUp and VideoCardz, point towards a pricey new flagship, the GeForce GTX Titan, that would be a graphics-focused adaptation of the beefy Tesla K20 computing card. It'd pack 2,688 shader units, a 384-bit memory bus and 6GB of RAM, all with one chip -- for reference, the GTX 690 needs two GPUs to offer 3,072 shader units and has 4GB of RAM. There's no confirmed unveiling date, and the primary leak on a Danish site has actually been pulled, but ASUS and EVGA are rumored to be launching their own GTX Titan variants as soon as next week, possibly in the $1,000 to $1,200 ball park. That's a short wait for what could deliver a serious boost to game performance, not to mention bragging rights.
NVIDIA posts Q4 2013 earnings: $1.1 billion in revenue, $174 million in profit
Earnings may be down slightly sequentially for the graphics and mobile CPU powerhouse, but things are still looking good compared to the same period last year. For the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013 NVIDIA is reporting $1.1 billion in revenue, a small dip from last quarter's record $1.2 billion, but up from 2012's $950 million. That's an increase of 16.1 percent year-over-year and, perhaps most importantly, net income was up 50 percent to $174 million. That does, however, mark a significant drop from Q3's $209 million in profits. Still, while it didn't offer specific numbers in its press release (those may come during the company's earnings call later today), NVIDIA declared that its Tegra business was continuing to grow. And its GPU division continued to put up impressive numbers, raking in $3.2 billion for the year, despite a sagging PC market. If you'd like to dig into all the financial particulars check out the PR after the break. Update: In its earnings call, NVIDIA said Tegra products for smartphones and tablets, which include recent Windows RT models, have risen 50 percent year-over-year to around $540 million. NVIDIA is also currently sampling 4G LTE modems with its Tegra 4 processor, which was announced at CES this year. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that "LTE modems will allow Tegra to enter into new markets where LTE is necessary." Later in the call, Huang gave praise to the much-hyped Project Shield, stating that the portable console will be a great companion device for GeForce, thus enhancing their case for the GPU. "We have more than just Android application processors," he said. "We have Android, we have Windows RT, we have Shield. Tegra is not just for smartphones." Nicole Lee contributed to this report.
LG intros 15.6-inch U560, helps stretch our definition of Ultrabook (video)
There have already been a few 15-inch Ultrabooks that have pushed the very limits of the thin-and-light category. Still, LG wants its turn at bending the rules. Its new U560 packs a 15.6-inch display and an optical drive that, together, contribute to the PC's 4.3-pound weight and 0.82-inch thickness -- really, it's a traditional laptop in a slimmer than usual package. Not that we'll complain too much when it involves an IPS-based LCD, a 1.8GHz Core i5, dedicated graphics (a support page suggests NVIDIA) and both a spinning hard disk as well as solid-state storage. The U560's launch is limited to South Korea so far, although we wouldn't be surprised to see Europe and other territories get their turn.
NVIDIA gets a little help from Valve, tweaks GeForce drivers just as Steam for Linux beta launches
NVIDIA and Linux haven't always been the most welcoming of bedfellows, but Valve seems to be defrosting that relationship somewhat. The Half Life maker has helped NVIDIA to tweak its 600 series GeForce drivers to reduce games' loading times when used on Linus' operating system. The R310 drivers are said to double performance when using Steam for Linux, which opens for beta today, meaning that you can try and survive twice as many zombie apocalypses in Left 4 Dead than you could a week ago.
