| NVIDIA nTeresting Newsletter - May 11, 2012 |  |
| Written by NVIDIA | ||
| Friday, 11 May 2012 | ||
NVIDIA nTeresting Newsletter - May 11, 2012In this issue· GeForce GTX 670 proves to be perfect. · Need a reason to upgrade? GeForce 600 and Ivy Bridge gives it to you. · LLVM open source compiler now supports CUDA. GeForce GTX 670: It's The BombThis week we released our third Kepler-based GeForce GTX graphics card, the GeForce GTX 670. Our new GTX 670 is a new graphics option for gamers who want all of the key new features found in the GTX 680, but in a more affordable package. "NVIDIA is 3-for-3 on GPU releases this year. The GTX 680 took on the Radeon HD 7970 card from AMD and won, the GTX 690 is easily the fastest graphics card ever released and now the new GeForce GTX 670 takes the AMD product stack and puts it into question. " Featuring SMX - the building block of our groundbreaking new Kepler architecture - GeForce GTX 670 continues the Kepler juggernaut of delivering dramatically improved levels of price-performance, power efficiency and whisper-quiet operation for PC gamers, starting at $399 USD. Performance is well...unbelievable. "I think it's time for a new classification "The Extreme Value Category". When I began testing the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670, I doubted my own results. Performance was so amazing I had to recheck the system to make sure I placed the correct card in my test bed." The $399 GeForce GTX 670 even beats ATI's flagship GPU. "The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 shares the same $399 price segment with AMD's Radeon HD 7950, yet performs like the 7970. So with regard to value, the GeForce GTX 670 delivers more features and better performance than the less-powerful AMD Radeon HD 7950, but occasionally meets or exceeds performance to the $550 Radeon HD 7970." It is the perfect companion for high resolution displays. "Of course, being able to compete at 2560x1600, the GeForce GTX 670 is easily the perfect 1080p performance video card. At 1920x1200 we were able to have the highest in-game settings enabled in every game, including BF3 multiplayer. On top of that we could also utilize the highest antialiasing settings in every game at 1920x1200. For those that have a 1080p display, thinking the GTX 680 or HD 7970 may be a bit too much out of your price range, and performance range, the GTX 670 should fit your needs just fine now and into the future quite a ways. You'll save some money and have a great 1080p gaming experience." And it is fast and efficient, like all other Kepler GPUs. "The fact that new Kepler cores are power efficient was proven in March, when the most powerful design - GeForce GTX 680 - hit the market. New NVIDIA GPUs maintain this trend, consuming on average 6% less power under load." At $399, NVIDIA GPUs are taking over high-end gaming! "The issue at the top-end is not whether to buy AMD or NVIDIA, it's just which NVIDIA card to opt for. That's got to be a little gut-punch for AMD, with its top card being out-played by NVIDIA's second tier component." GeForce 600 Series + Ivy Bridge = UpgradeWith the flood of new GeForce 600 series GPUs and Ivy Bridge CPUs out now, many people are looking for a reason to upgrade. For some, it is for their favorite new game. If your favorite new game is the upcoming Diablo III and you want to upgrade, CNET has some advice for you. "Diablo fans must be, by now, working at every major PC component manufacturer, making sure the stars align in time for hell to open up. Intel took this time to release its brand new 22nm Ivy Bridge--Little Miss Ivy. They worked hard to make the overclockable K-series i5 and i7 on the shelves on time. NVIDIA is releasing its game-changing 28nm GK104 GTX 670 graphics card on May 10, giving enough pixel-pumping power to light up Azrael's glowing wings and the blue glow around magic weapons all the way till Diablo 4. Palit released its world-beating Jetstream graphics card cooling architecture just in time for the GTX680 flagship graphics card series, so that we'd only hear the screams of the monsters, not the whine of the cooling fans. And Kingston released its 3000 P/E cycle, low-cost, superfast SSDs in black, to match the color of the ashen remains of the monsters, and also to help you launch your Diablo in less than a second. I killed the Skeleton King a lot more times on Beta Weekend just because the game loaded real fast." Maybe you just like to trick out your rig. Lights, windows and water-cooling all in a small form factor may be more your thing. With GeForce 600 and Ivy Bridge you can have that and all the power you need. "At the end of the day we hope that we showed you how far small form factor solutions have come and what you can do with one. Full tower cases have their purposes, but if you can get away with a Mini-ITX solution it is the way to go these days. The amount of space you save is amazing and to be honest we didn't have to give up any features or performance! That was a big deal to us and our benchmark performance numbers show that. This mini-ITX 'Dream PC' that we built today scored P8649 in 3DMark11 with the Intel Core i7-3770K quad-core processor and the EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2GB Superclocked video card. The same video card on one of our systems running the Intel Core i7-3960X processor on an Intel X79 motherboard with 1866MHz of CL9 memory scored P9002! That is just a 4% performance difference on the fastest platforms that money could buy." Not a do it yourselfer? Then think about getting GeForce and Ivy Bridge on a notebook. "If you've been waiting to buy a new gaming laptop so you could have the latest Intel Ivy Bridge processor and NVIDIA "Kepler" graphics cards, your patience is now rewarded. Several recently updated gaming systems--from Alienware, Asus, Maingear, and others--are available for order today and can be in your eager hands in as little as eight days from now." GeForce 600 and Ivy Bridge make a potent combination Open Source Compiler now supports NVIDIA GPUsLLVM, one of the industry's most popular open source compilers, now supports NVIDIA GPUs, dramatically expanding the range of researchers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and programming languages that can take advantage of the benefits of GPU acceleration. LLVM is a widely used open source compiler infrastructure, with a modular design that makes it easy to add support for programming languages and processor architectures. "The code we provided to LLVM is based on proven, mainstream CUDA products, giving programmers the assurance of reliability and full compatibility with the hundreds of millions of NVIDIA GPUs installed in PCs and servers today," said Ian Buck general manager of GPU computing software at NVIDIA. "This is truly a game-changing milestone for GPU computing."
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