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A long look at Nvidia's new GF100 architecture |
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Monday, 18 January 2010 21:39 |
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Maximum PC was able to sit down with Nvida and take a long look at what the new GF100 (Fermi) has to offer,
and when all of us enthusiasts can expect to see these units hitting the retail shelves. Lets take a quick look at
what they have to say.
The GF100 DirectX 11 GPU is still not ready for prime time,
but Nvidia opens up the hood and shows us the engine
that will power next generation Nvidia-based
graphics cards.
Nvidia’s latest generation GPU is going through the most painful, drawn out gestation period
since the company’s first programmable GPU, the GeForce 5800 series. Like the more recent
GeForce 280 GTX, the current GF100 (the code name, not the final name) chip represents a major,
ground-up architectural redesign.
Recently, we spent the better part of a day being briefed on the GF100, which represents
the first actual graphics processor built with Nvidia’s Fermi architecture. The presenters included
Jonah Alben, Senior VP of GPU engineering, Henry Morton, lead architect for geometry processing,
Emmett Kilgariff, Director of GPU Architecture plus a host of Nvidia marketing and PR folk.
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Last Updated on Monday, 18 January 2010 21:50 |
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Asus launches i7, HD5870 Gaming Laptop |
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Tuesday, 05 January 2010 22:07 |
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Engadget has some breaking news about the new Asus G73jh Gaming laptop that sports an impressive Core i7 chip, and an ATI Radeon HD 5870 video card! Impressive? Lets see what they think!
 "Power hungry, are you? ASUS has just the rig for you, as it just launched its newest Republic of Gamers laptop here at a CES press event. The G73hj is doing its darnedest to make every other gaming lappie out there look downright weak, with this one boasting a Core i7-720QM CPU, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 8-channel HD audio, up to 1TB of HDD space and DirectX 11 compatibility thanks to the internal ATI Radeon HD 5870. You'll also get a spacious 17.3-inch display, a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, Blu-ray / DVD combo drive, 8-cell battery, a 2 megapixel webcam, 802.11b/g WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1, an 8-in-1 card reader and a mini-VGA connector. Naturally, Windows 7 Home Premium will be running the show, and this thing is far from being slim and sexy. There's no word yet on a price and release, but we'll keep you posted." |
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 05 January 2010 22:18 |
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Service Pack for Windows 7? |
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Saturday, 09 January 2010 11:34 |
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If your waiting on a service pack for the new Windows 7 operating system, you might be waiting awhile, at least according to The Register.
Analysis Eagle-eyed bloggers who, it seems, have nothing better to do with their time then to scan Microsoft’s Windows 7 underbelly, recently discovered a Registry Key that points to service pack 1 of the operating system.
Windows 7 has only been available to consumers for less than three months, and already there is talk about when the platform’s first service pack will land.
But putting this into context, it’s unlikely that a package of updates for the OS - which has proved unsurprisingly vastly more popular than its predecessor - will rock up any time soon.
Windows Vista was riddled with bugs, offered (at best) lacklustre support for third party software and hardware, and failed to ever take-off as an operating system to be taken seriously by individuals, let alone businesses.
Despite that, the first service pack for Vista didn’t actually land until 14 months after shrink-wrapped copies of the operating system were unlovingly stacked on retail shelves in January 2007. Microsoft handed OEMs the ill-fated software in November 2006.
Similarly, MS pushed its Windows 7 OS out to computer makers last summer, ahead of the software’s general release on 22 October 2009.
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Last Updated on Saturday, 09 January 2010 11:36 |
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Nvidia Fermi not until March |
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Friday, 01 January 2010 21:43 |
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As noted by Digitimes, The new DirectX 11 version of the Nvidia cards deemed "Fermi" will not be launched until March 2010. They plan to announce and show the new cards at the upcoming CES International.
"Nvidia has selected the launch date for its next-generation DirectX 11-supporting GPU (Fermi) to be March, 2010, while AMD will launch more GPUs in January-February, according to sources from graphics card makers. Nvidia also plans to have a live demo of the product at CES in January.
According to market rumors, Nvidia had originally scheduled the launch of Fermi for November 2009 but then delayed the planned launch until CES in January 2010 due to defects. However,the sources stated that Nvidia recently notified graphics card makers that the official launch will be in March 2010, which is consistent with previous Nvidia comments that the product will begin shipping in the first quarter of 2010.
Commenting on the news, Nvidia stated that its planned schedule of product shipping in the first quarter 2010 remains unchanged and any rumors of defects are completely false.
Nvidia plans to launch a 40nm GDDR5 memory-based Fermi-GF100 GPU in March, and will launch a GF104 version in the second quarter to target the high-end market with its GeForce GTX295/285/275/260, the sources pointed out.
For performance level markets, Nvidia will allow its GeForce GTS250, GT240/220 and 9800GT/9500GT defend against AMD's Radeon HD 5770/5750, 4870/4850 and 4670/4650.
For the mainstream market, Nvidia will mainly push its GeForce 210.
Meanwhile, AMD will launch 40nm Radeon HD 5670/5570 (Redwood) and HD 5450 (Cedar) GPUs at the end of January or in February 2010, the sources noted.
In related news, although Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC's) 40nm process yields have already improved, capacity is still not sufficient to supply the two GPU giants fully which may have an impact the launch schedules, the sources added.
AMD did not respond by the time of publication." |
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Last Updated on Friday, 01 January 2010 21:49 |
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