Nvidia Revealed Gaming Console “Project Shield”
Graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia has unveiled a new mobile graphics system and a handheld gaming console called “Project Shield”. The console consist of a 5 inch touchscreen and comes with a dual-analog controller with directional pad and buttons. Very similar in concept with PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS.
Project Shield comes with Tegra 4 chip, six times more powerful than the Tegra 3 that drives many of today’s high-end tablets and mobile phones. It will output great “console quality” graphics. The console can be connected to a HDTV via HDMI port.
NVidia Launches GTX 480 and GTX 470
Nvidia has finally revealed the new GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 graphic cards based on next generation Fermi architecture. Finally Nvidia is playing catch up with ATI by releasing a DirectX 11 card.
New Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 would retail at $500 while GTX 470 for $350.
Nvidia Offers Fermi GF100 Specifications
NVIDIA’s next-generation gaming GPU, the Fermi GF100 graphics processor, has over 3 billion transistors, 16 Shader Multiprocessing core (SM cores) consisting of 32 Cuda cores each, PolyMorph Engine handles geometry on the GPU and is responsible for Vertex Fetch, Tessellation, Viewport Transform, Attribute Setup, and Stream Output functions.
Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said, It’s a brand new architecture which is designed to be a computer first. We call it a supercomputer with the soul of a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).
The Fermi G100 Nvidia GPU will appear late February.
Nvidia Shows Shows Off Fermi GPU Architecture
Nvidia used the GPU Technology Conference to reveal their next generation Fermi GPU architecture which will provide huge improvements to game play, multimedia encoding and enhancement, and other applications. Fermi has 16 streaming multiprocessors and 512 discrete cores.
Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said, It’s a brand new architecture which is designed to be a computer first. We call it a supercomputer with the soul of a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).
Source: Inside Fermi: Nvidia’s HPC Push
PS3 Developers Can Get Free NVidia PhysX SDK
NVIDIA announced will make available PhysX SDK to registered PS3 developers for free. This engine will be use in Heavy Rain, a PS3 exclusive game.
From NVidia: NVIDIA PhysX is a powerful physics engine which enables real-time physics in leading edge PC and console games. PhysX software is widely adopted by over 150 games, is used by more than 10,000 registered users and is supported on Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC.
Apple MacBooks Will Use NVidia Instead Of Intel
Apple will abandoned Intel’s integrated graphics chipsets for the NVIDIA MCP79 chipset which is a single-chip solution, it has GeForce 9300/9400-class integrated GPU and HybridSLI technology. In a nutshell, Apple will safe of PCB space, faster performance and better battery life with NVidia.
NVIDIA Adding Physics Engine To Product
NVIDIA recent acquisition of Ageia meant that PhysX will be added to future graphic cards.
So what is PhysX? It is basically a processor that delivers the computing horsepower to enable true advanced physics in games. See video of GRAW running with Ageia PhysX.
