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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and 470 specs and pricing emerge
We're only a week away from their grand unveiling, but already we've got word of the specs for NVIDIA's high end GTX 480 and GTX 470 cards. Priced at $499, the 480 will offer 480 shader processors, a 384-bit interface to 1.5GB of onboard GDDR5 RAM, and clock speeds of 700MHz, 1,401MHz, and 1,848MHz for the core, shaders and memory, respectively. The 470 makes do with 446 SPs, slower clocks, and a 320-bit memory interface, but it's also priced at a more sensible $349. The TDPs of these cards are pretty spectacular too, with 225W for the junior model and 295W for the full-fat card. Sourced by VR Zone, these numbers are still unofficial, but they do look to mesh well with what we already know of the hardware, including a purported 5-10 percent benchmarking advantage for the GTX 480 over ATI's HD 5870. Whether the price and power premium is worth it will be up to you and the inevitable slew of reviews to decide. [Thanks, Sean]
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 Fermi cards launching March 26th
It's okay, we understand your confusion, but the news here isn't that NVIDIA uses CoTweet as its Twitter client. What's exciting is that the GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 -- the company's first to use the new Fermi architecture -- are just over a month from release. Friday, March 26th, and given that also happens to coincidence with the kickoff date for Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) East 2010 (of which NVIDIA is a major sponsor), we tend to think that's not just some convenient coincidence. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
NVIDIA hopes you'll be better able to distinguish its products if it renames them all
What's in a name? Very little if you're buying computer hardware lately. Back in the day, you could easily compare two CPUs because their names were simply how fast they were -- now you've got series of processors and graphics cards with naming conventions dreamed up by marketing gurus who don't know a front side bus from a school bus. NVIDIA had been shooting for something simple with its G, GT, and GTX lines, but it looks like last year's talk of a re-tooling of its lineup are coming true; all those seemingly straightforward letter prefixes seem set to be dropped in favor of "GeForce" followed by a number. The first to bear this re-branding will be the 40nm, DirectX 10.1 GeForce 210, set to hit the retail channels in October, followed later by the GeForce 230 and GeForce 300. How exactly they all will compare remains to be seen, but we're going to go ahead and speculate that bigger number probably equals higher cost.
Windows 7 edges out Vista in thorough gaming benchmarks
Looking to find out what's the better gaming experience out there right now -- Windows 7 beta or Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 -- the folks at PC Perspective put both operating systems through the ringer with help from seven graphics cards running the gamut of price ranges. Overall, three ATI Radeon HD and four NVIDIA GeForce cards were pitted with six games and applications in one of the lengthiest benchmarking features we've ever read. AMD / ATI gets credit for being the first to release combined drivers that work on both OSs, and with one lone exception, performance on the Windows 7 machine was equal to or better than Vista. That said, the recomendations for each system is the same: ATI gets an advantage here for cards in the $120 to $130 range, but the competition is much closer as you start looking at more expensive models. Hit up the read link for technical details that you can shake an anti-aliased stick at.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 in tri-SLI reviewed: great performance, not so great price tag
The last time we talked about the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285, it was being hailed as the fastest single-GPU graphics cards on the market. The gang at TweakTown decided to take it two steps further and linked up a trio of them to test. So how synergistic is the tri-SLI set up? Probably not enough to pay well over a grand for everything. Aside from price, you're also gonna need a overclocked / top-of-the-line CPU to enjoy the triplets, and expect enough heat emanating from your rig to melt Alaska. If you've got the many Benjamins lying around and are looking for some serious performance, hit up the read link for a more thorough analysis.
MSI EX623 laptop "rocks" our (proverbial) "world"
Another day, another awesome laptop announcement. This one, the EX623, a 16-incher from the hallowed depths of MSI's genius labs packs an Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo CPU, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a max 320GB hard drive, and NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS graphics, with a 16:9 widescreen display. The "Bravo," as it's also known, is apparently being marketed as an entertainment laptop (we know this because we watched the super sweet video MSI has up on their site which shows a band totally rocking out), and as such houses things like a Blu-ray drive, an eSATA port, stereo speakers and a subwoofer, though there's no HDMI output and of course the 1366 x 768 resolution won't display 1080p HD. Still, we're pretty sure that "Breakpoint" will have never sounded so good. No word on the price or availability. [Via SlashGear]
GeForce 9400M to hit notebooks from five major vendors, mock Intel
Now that NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M has made its debut in Apple's new MacBooks, Technical Marketing Director Nick Stam says that five major notebook vendors are planning to ship systems with the chipset -- though we don't know if that includes Apple or not. Stam expects NVIDIA will carve out 30 percent of the integrated graphics market for itself, partly by improving other experiences besides games -- Google Earth, photo editing, day-to-day video encoding, and other activities performed by people who use keys besides W, A, S, and D. Frankly, we're just thankful we've evolved past the days when we needed a 19-inch monster to perform high-impact 3D tasks without sacrificing to the sinister gods of screen tearing.
Excess (ekses) n. : a Quad SLI gaming rig
Nvidia has announced that Quad SLI technology will be available from top system sellers, delivering ridiculous framerates at resolutions up to 2560x1600. Systems include Dell's already announced XPS 600 Renegade as well as machines from power players Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Voodoo, and—of course—the PrimeA Galleria 64Quad-SLI.With prices around the $5K mark, don't expect to see Compaq offering these space heaters at the local department store; hardcore gamers only need apply. With this setup, you'd only need about 7 systems to push all the pixels in that ridiculous 10240x3072 display. Let's see, uh, 7 times $5K... [Via Engadget][UPDATE: Added a clarification]
