The new chip features AMD’s new “Graphics Core Next” architecture, and it’s quite a big jump up from the company’s HD 8800M series. The 8970M features 1,280 stream processors, and a clock speed of 850MHz with a memory speed of 1.2GHz. The new chip should be able to handle pretty much any new game you throw at it on your laptop.

As for the first laptop to get the new 8970M, it’ll be the MSI GX70, which will come with an AMD A10 quad-core processor, Eyefinity support, Killer gaming network card, and will have a 17.3-inch display with a 1920×1080 resolution. However, we should be seeing more laptops with the new graphics chip later this year, possibly next month at Computex.

Of course, you’ll be paying a pretty penny for any machine that will run AMD’s latest graphics chip, with the GX70 most likely exceeding well over $1,000, but they also have slower 8000M series chips that the company unveiled in January, including the 8500M, 8600M, and the 8700M. Of course, the 8500M may not live up to AMD’s 8970M chip, but the 384 stream processors along with the 650MHz clock speed and 1,125MHz memory speed should keep you humming along with most games while on the go.

With the update being offered this week, NVIDIA has delivered new support for a series of games most recent to the market. Support of what NVIDIA says is “up to 20% faster performance” is included for games like Dead Island: Riptide, Neverwinter, and the Star Trek title associated with the film Star Trek Into Darkness. Dead Island: Riptide is also included in the GeForce Experience instant optimization collection.

NVIDIA continues to make pushes in the gaming market both in the desktop and mobile gaming arenas. Earlier this year at CES, NVIDIA announced several cross-over projects that would have traditionally mobile platforms such as Android working with high-powered gaming PC graphics processing over wireless local networks. Have a peek at our coverage of NVIDIA’s Project Shield to see NVIDIA’s mobile gaming device hero that’ll be released later this year.

Have a peek at other recent updates to NVIDIA’s gaming environment and see for yourself how they’re aiming to keep their name in gamers minds through 2013. Let us know if you use NVIDIA’s GeForce GPUs and how you find the upgrade process as well, and if you’re a gamer who uses something other than a GeForce GPU, too!

Inside each of these bits of architecture you’ve got the graphics power to take your notebook to the next level. With the GeForce GT 750M, 745M, and 740M, NVIDIA will be aiming for a higher performance segment – not your everyday laptop machine, that is. The two smaller bits, the GeForce GT 735M, and 720M, will be heading to high-powered gaming notebooks this year.

Each of these GPUs is based on Kepler and works with NVIDIA Optimus technology so if you’re all about both next-generation power and long life in batteries, you’ll be set. You’ll have GPU Boost 2.0 technology and all the most fabulous NVIDIA innovations to roll with as well. Have a peek at the GeForce Experience to see what you’ll be working with in the near future on a GeForce-packing notebook near you.

“Every leading notebook manufacturer will be introducing notebooks with GPU Boost 2.0 technology, including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.” – NVIDIA

Also meanwhile have a peek at our NVIDIA GeForce tag portal and our Tegra hub to see how the desktop and mobile gaming universes will be converging more and more as the year goes on. We’ll be rolling out with high powered hand-held adventures sooner than you think!

[via NVIDIA]

The company made the new graphics card official earlier today, unveiling the official design of the card during a press conference at GDC 2013 (seen above). Little else is known about the new card, though. However, game developing studio DICE has admitted to using the HD 7990 card for its 17-minute Battlefield 4 preview that we reported on a couple days ago.

Other than a few pictures that we were treated with, nothing else was said about the specs of the card, other than that it’s a dual Tahiti card. However, the photos do give away some clues about the card itself. First off, the card has a complete open-air cooler, as opposed to previous dual-GPU cards sporting full blowers. This means that your computer case will have to be particularly well-ventilated and breezy.

There are also two 8-pin PCI-express connectors, which means that the power rating probably hovers around 375 watts, so you’ll definitely need a fairly robust power supply in order to get feed an adequate amount of juice to this bad boy. Other than that, AMD said that the card will be coming soon, but no word on an official release date.

[via AnandTech]

The new Sky cards are built on AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture and use RapidFire technology in order to deliver the best cloud gaming experience possible. The series includes three enterprise-level graphics cards, with the top-tier model being the Sky 900, which packs in 3,584 stream processors, 6GB of GDDR5 memory, and a memory bandwidth of 480GB per second.

The plan with these cards is to deliver cloud gaming to a number of devices, including PCs (obviously), smartphones, tablets, and even Smart TVs. The company said that they’re “working closely” with a handful of cloud gaming companies to build the best cloud-focused graphics cards out there. AMD announced partnerships with Otoy, Ubitus, G-Cluster, and CiiNow.

AMD’s new cloud gaming initiative comes a couple of months after NVIDIA announced its GRID cloud gaming system at CES 2013, which will allow gamers to stream games over the interwebs to their computer and other mobile devices, including the new Project SHIELD from NVIDIA, which can play graphic-intensive games on a small handheld. AMD’s plans for Sky are a bit scarce at this point, but we should be hearing more about it soon.

What is the NVIDIA GRID VCA?

The NVIDIA GRID VCA is a Visual Computing Appliance. In it’s current state, you’ll be working with a massive amount of graphics computing power no matter where you are, accessing this remote system over the web. As NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang noted on-stage at GTC 2013, “It’s as if you have your own personal PC under your desk” – but you’re in a completely different room.

You’re wireless, you’re in a completely different state – NVIDIA GRID VCA is basically whatever you need it to be. The first iteration of the NVIDIA GRID VCA will be packed as follows:

• 4U high.
• Sized to fit inside your standard server rack (if you wish).
• 2x highest-performance Xeon processors.
• 8x GRID GPU.
• 2x Kepler GPU.
• Support for 16 virtual machines.

You’ll be able to work with the NVIDIA GRID VCA system with basically any kind of computer, be it a Mac, a PC, mobile devices with Android, ARM or x86-toting machines, anything. With the NVIDIA GRID VCA, your remotely-hosted workspace shows up wherever you need it to. Each device you’ve got simply needs to download and run a single client going by the name “GRID client.” Imagine that.

If you’ve got a company using NVIDIA’s GRID, you’ll have access to mega-powerful computing on whatever machine you’ve got connected to it. One of the use-cases spoken about at GTC 2013 was some advanced video editing on-the-go.

Use Case 1: Autocad 3D and remote Video Editing

On-stage with NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang spoke James Fox, CEO of the group Dawnrunner. As a film and video production company (based in San Francisco, if you’d like to know), workers at Dawnrunner use Adobe software and Autodesk. As Fox notes, “Earth Shattering is what gets talked about in the office.”

Fox and his compatriots use their own GRID configuration to process video, head out to a remote spot and show a customer, and change the video on the spot if the customer does so wish it. While processing video of the monster sizes Dawnrunner works with, still needs relatively large computing power – “Hollywood big” we could call it – NVIDIA’s GRID can make it happen inside the NVIDIA GRID VCA.

With the processing going on inside the VCA and shown on a remote workstation environment (basically a real-time window into the GRID), you could potentially show real-time Hollywood movie-sized video editing from your Android phone. In that one image of a situation you’ve got the power of this new ecosystem.

Use Case 2: Hollywood Rendering with Octane Render

Of course no big claim with the word “Hollywood” in it is complete without some big-name movie examples to go with it. At GTC 2013, NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang brought both Josh Trank and Jules Urbach onstage. The former is the director of the upcoming re-boot (2015) movie The Fantastic Four (yes, that Fantastic Four), and the latter is the founder and CEO of the company known as Otoy.

Both men speak of the power of GPUs, Trank speaking first about how people like he, the movie director, use CGI from the beginning of the creation of a film with pre-visualization to bid it out to studios, getting funding before there is any cash to be had. Meanwhile Urbach spoke of how CGI like this can be rendered 40-100 times faster with GPUs than CPUs – and with that speed you’ve got a lot less energy spent and far fewer hours used for a final product.

With that, Urbach showed Otoy’s Octane Render (not brand new as of today, but made ultra-powerful with NVIDIA GRID backing it up). This system exists on your computer as a tiny app and connects your computer to a remote workstation – that’s where NVIDIA’s GRID comes in – and you’ll be able to work with massive amounts of power wherever you go.

Octane Render allows you to use “hundreds or thousands” of GPUs to be used by renderers in the cloud. Shown on-stage was a pre-visualization of a scene from the original Transformers movies (which Otoy helped create), streamed in real time over the web from Los Angeles to the location of the conference: San Jose.

What they showed, it was made clear, is that the power of GPUs in this context cannot be denied. With the power of 112 GPUs at once, it was shown that a high-powered Hollywood-big scene could be rendered in a second where in the past it would have taken several hours. And here, once again, it can all be controlled remotely.

Cost

There are two main configurations at the moment for NVIDIA’s GRID VCA, the first working with 8 GPU units, 32GB of GPU Memory, 192 GB System Memory, 16 thread CPU, and up to 8 concurrent users. The second is as follows – and this is the beast:

GPU: 16 GPUs
GPU Memory: 64 GB
System Memory: 384 GB
CPU: 32 thread CPU
Number of users: up to 16 concurrent

If you’re aiming for the big beast of a model, you’re going to be paying $39,900 USD with a $4,800-a-year software license. If you’re all about the smaller of the two, you’ll be paying $24,900 USD with a $2400-a-year software license.

Sound like the pocket-change salvation you’ve been waiting for? Let us know if your SMB will be busting out with the NVIDIA GRID VCA immediately if not soon, and be sure to let us know how it goes, too!

Obviously this will be all about developers, gaming, and high performance graphics, but we’re also expecting some exciting news on the NVIDIA GPU front (aka TITAN) as well as some details on their impressive mobile chipset recently announced, the NVIDIA Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i.

From Ray Tracing to Crysis 3 gaming and graphics will obviously be the star of the show here. From emerging technology, emerging companies and much more we’ll be here live with all the details.

The official GTC Keynote is about to begin here shortly this morning with NVIDIA’s own Jen-Hsun Huang taking the stage as usual to share some details. We’re expecting the focus to be on content, developers, partners, and a few nice announcements about the products mentioned above. Stay tuned for all the details live from SlashGear! Don’t forget to check out our Tegra Portal for more NVIDIA news.

That’s not something you could really say about Wacom’s existing Cintiq models, the 22HD, 24HD, and 24HD touch, which kick off at a desk-bound 22-inches. In contrast, the Cintiq 13HD display is 14.75 x 9.75 x 0.5 inches and 2.65 pounds, and simply hooks up to your laptop as a second display.

Once you’ve done that – via the native HDMI, or DVI, VGA, or Mini DisplayPort with the right adapter – you get a 2048-pressure-level pen, 16.7m color support, and tilt recognition. The pen itself comes with nine different nibs – five standard, three felt, and one stroke – as well as a desk stand and a carry case. It has two side switches and an active eraser, as well as the pressure-sensitive nib.

Around the body of the 13HD there are four user-assignable shortcut buttons, the functions of which can automatically change depending on the active app, and a 4-position customizable rocker ring and home button. The screen itself has 250cd/m2 brightness and covers 75-percent of the Adobe RGB color gamut.

As well as detaching the stand to use the new baby Cintiq in your lap, you can prop it up at one of three angles – 22-, 35-, and 50-degrees – and a regular USB 2.0 data connection is included in the three-in-one cable which also handles display signal and power.

The Wacom Cintiq 13HD will go on sale in early April, priced at $999 in the US and £749.99 in the UK.

NVIDIA’s product manager for PhysX, Mike Skolones, says that “great physics technology is essential for delivering a better gaming experience and multiplatform support is critical for developers,” and “with PhysX and APEX support for PlayStation 4, customers can look forward to better games.” Indeed, both PhysX and APEX should make games more realistic with life-like movements and scenery.

PhysX is designed specifically to be used with hardware acceleration in processors and graphics cards, and the technology allows for more complex and detailed worlds in video games, including more-realistic explosions, clothes that react more naturally to the wind and body movements, and of course, better life-like motions of characters.

Both PhysX and APEX are already integrated into a handful of games. NVIDIA boasts that PhysX alone is featured in more than 150 games, and is used by over 10,000 developers. Some games that are taking advantage of NVIDIA’s technologies include Borderlands 2, the Batman Arkham series, Mirror’s Edge, and Metro 2033.

The other three Kepler-based Quadro cards are the K4000, K2000, and the K2000D. The K4000 is the beast of the bunch, racking up 3GB of on-board memory and costing a whopping $1,269. The K2000 and K2000D are similar to one another, both of which are priced at $599 and come with 2GB of onboard memory, but the K2000D comes with native support for two dual-link DVI display connectors, which NVIDIA says is ideal for “interfacing with ultra-high-resolution medical imaging displays.”

Furthermore, the K4000 has 768 CUDA Cores, a memory bandwidth of 134 GB/s,and 1.246 teraflops. The K2000 has 384 CUDA Cores, 67 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and 733 gigaflops. The budget card of the bunch, K600 isn’t as fast, but for the money you’re paying, it’s not a bad deal. You’re looking at 192 CUDA Cores, a memory bandwidth of 29 GB/s, and 336 gigaflops.

Currently, the Quadro K5000 is the flagship card of the series, but for those who don’t need that much power out of their rig, you can grab cheaper versions that may be suited for more your speed. NVIDIA says these new cards deliver twice as much performance as previous-generation cards, and features larger and faster on-board memory to keep your graphics-intensive projects going strong.

Version 314.14 brings optimization for upcoming games, as well as current games that could use a boost. Specifically, the new beta drivers deliver up to a 23% boost in Sniper Elite V2 and a 9% boost in Sleeping Dogs. In SLI mode, other games also get an increase in performance, including a 9% boost in StarCraft II and a 5% boost in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Today’s update comes just a couple weeks after NVIDIA unleashed version 314.07 of its GeForce drivers, which increases performance for a handful of intensive games, such as Crysis 3, Assassin’s Creed III, Civilization V, and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Crysis 3 ended up with a 65% boost in performance, which is quite the improvement.

Other games that NVIDIA focused on for these beta drivers are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Just Cause 2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Batman: Arkham City, all of which received 4% to 5% performance boosts. If you already have the GeForce Experience installed, the drivers are available for automatic downloading and installing right now.

So you can expect that when NVIDIA announced the Titan, AVADirect was all over it. The NVIDIA GTX Titan GPU includes and improves existing NVIDIA features, like NVIDIA adaptive veritical sync and NVIDIA Surround. It offers support for 3-way SLI and support for up to 4 displays. It also supports up to 4k resolutions and the DirectX 11.1 API. The GPU will cost $999, have 2,688 CUDA cores, 6GB of GDDR5 RAM, and 7.1 billion transistors.

The NVIDIA GTX Titan is a very powerful, and very efficient GPU, one that NVIDIA claims as “the most powerful GPU on the planet”. It is designed with pro-gaming in mind and will meet all the needs of even the most demanding games out there, like Crysis 3. The Titan will be one of the greatest tools in any pro-gamer’s arsenal.

Of course, at the $1000 price-tag, the Titan won’t be for everyone. AVADirect, however, will offer the Titan in customized computer builds that will still be relatively affordable. Its goal is to get the GPU to as many consumers as possible, because while it may be a highly coveted, powerful GPU, it shouldn’t be unattainable. Check AVADirect’s site out in the coming days to see its updated system configurations. Also, check out the timeline below to check the latest news regarding NVIDIA’s innovations.

[via AVADirect]

NVIDIA says that the new GTX Titan graphics card is “powered by the fastest GPU on the planet,” which we certainly can’t refute at this point. The graphics card itself is huge, measuring in at 10.5-inch long, and it’s capable of pushing 4,500 Gigaflops, which is quite impressive if we do say so ourselves.

However, the GTX Titan falls just a tad short of NVIDIA’s current top-tier offering, the GTX 690, as far as raw specs and computing power are concerned, but efficiency is where the Titan really shines. The GTX Titan features over a thousand more CUDA cores than the GTX 690, but it requires less power, as well as generates less heat and runs quieter overall.

As far as availability goes, NVIDIA The Titan GPU will be available starting on February 25 from various partners, including ASUS, eVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI, at a price of around $1,000, which certainly isn’t going to want you to make an impulse purchase, but if you’re looking for supercomputer-like speeds with your gaming rig, this card may be well worth it.

This release has a limited number of games for which you’ll be able to get next-level optimization on your own GeForce-toting gaming PC. This release pumps up the availability of optimization beyond what the closed beta offered, with both Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPU support now ready for action. NVIDIA also added 2560 x 1440 display resolution support this time around – that having not been part of the closed beta release either.

With the GeForce Experience Open Beta you’ll see improved game detection logic as well as a collection of 41 games ready to look and work as magnificent as they’ve ever been on your machine. Having added FarCry 3, Mechwarrior Online, and the battle action heavy Hawken for this release, GeForce Experience is now able to work with 41 total titles. The rest are as follows:

Assassin’s Creed 3, Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Counter-Strike:GO, CrossFire: Rival Factions, Crysis 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Diablo III, Dirt 3, DOTA 2, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, F1 2012, Fable III, Fallout New Vegas, Far Cry 3, FIFA 12, FIFA 13, Football Manager 2013, Hitman Absolution, League of Legends, Left 4 Dead 2, Mass Effect 3, Max Payne 3, Mechwarrior Online, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Planetside 2, Portal 2, Shogun 2: Total War, Star Wars The Old Republic, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Team Fortress 2, The Secret World, The Sims 3, The Sims Medieval, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, World Of Tanks, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

The actual app and usage therein is beyond simple. Once you’ve got it downloaded and open, you hit the scan button to see if there are any games on your machine that are part of the current list the GeForce Experience works with. The machine we’ve used here is an Alienware M17x R4 (see our full review here), and on it we’ve got none other than Batman: Arkham City (see our full review here) which the GeForce Experience software recognizes easily.

From there it’s just a button click or two more before we’ve got full NVIDIA-approved optimization of our settings, based entirely on the hardware/software combination we’ve got and ready for the best-case-scenario outcome when we kick out the gaming jams.

And that’s it! The simplicity of this app is part of the experience, the GeForce Experience being one that’s meant to be beyond simple. This environment makes certain everyone takes the time to optimize their machines with as easy a process as possible so that NVIDIA’s GeForce graphics can do their work as well as possible – and everything looks and handles hot!

This release includes upgrades in performance for client startup, game scan, billboard display, and nothing less than straight up communication with NVIDIA as well. If you’re all about getting some fantastic support for your games straight from NIVIDA, it’s time you headed over to the GeForce Experience Beta download page and had at it. This release works with Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, and is just 9.16 MB in file size – make it yours!

Bonus! Have a peek at the two videos below direct from NVIDIA – the first was filmed at the CES 2013 event we attended (see the timeline below for more info) with the bossman talking about the release iteration of GeForce Experience. The other video shows the app again in simple terms with fancy graphics flying everywhere – hot stuff!

AVADirect also partnered up with ASUS and used the company’s ESC4000 G2 Black 2U server platform to bring some respectable hardware to these new server units. On the inside, you can store up to 512GB of DDR3 RAM, with room for eight PCI-E 3.0 16x expansion cards (including those four Tesla units).

You’ll also find eight SATA ports with multiple RAID configurations, eight hot-swappable hard drive bays, and a 1+1 Redundant 1,620W 80PLUS Platinum power supply. That’s certainly a lot of firepower that must be treated carefully. AVADirect says that these new units are meant for render farms, imagine generators, rack-mounted graphics workstations, and multi-display workstations.

Of course, AVADirect will let you customize the new server system to fit your needs, and their website offers a ton of different configurations. However, the company’s recommended build costs just shy of $5,250, so if you’re serious about getting some major computing power in your hands, you better be saving up right this instant.

The company says that this solution allows users to have best of both worlds when it comes to graphics and expansion cards, since the tower can fit up to four graphics cards while still making room for additional cards for other purposes. AVADirect says that most other similar solutions don’t offer the same flexibility.

The motherboard featured in the default configuration (Super X9DRG-QF) offers four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, two PCI-Express 3.0 x8 slots, and one PCI-Express 2.0 x4 slots. So essentially, you could pop in four graphics cards and still have three slots left over for expansion cards like a RAID controller or a network card.

AVADirect says that this kind of flexibility “truly shines and stands out from other configurations” that are offered by competitors. The system also supports Intel Xeon E5 processors and up to 512GB of ECC-registered memory or 192GB of ECC un-buffered memory. On top of all this, there’s eight 3.5-inch hot-swap bays, and a massive 1620-watt redundant power supply to run the show. Of course, it won’t be cheap. AVADirect’s recommended build costs over $2,600.

It may seem like a complicated service, but NVIDIA promises that the user won’t be required to do much of anything. The tool is made to make the user experience as simple as possible. It definitely seems like a perfect solution if you’re not into guess-and-check graphics settings, which can forever for gamers to dial in.

The service can even automatically adjust more advanced settings like anti-aliasing levels and shadow options. There are obviously tons of different configurations that gamers could theoretically apply, but GeForce Experience can fetch optimal settings from the cloud and apply them for you, and it makes changes directly to your game’s config file.

The service is currently in beta, but it’s not public, so get in line if you think you might want to give it a try. If you enjoy tuning your own settings, then GeForce Experience probably won’t change your life, but the service also comes with automatic driver updates, and that’s one thing that every gamer can benefit from.

[via Maximum PC]

NVIDIA has updated it’s 310.54 beta drivers to 310.64 beta, and while you may not think it’s a huge update, NVIDIA claims that the update will boost framerates in Far Cry 3 by up to 38% when using Nvidia’s latest GeForce 600-series graphics chips. That’s certainly nothing to scoff at, especially considering that you can get that kind of framerate boost for free.

The claim comes from NVIDIA’s own internal testing, which the company ran the game at a 1920×1080 resolution with graphics setting maxed out. The test system used an ASUS Rampage IV Extreme motherboard with an Intel Core i7-3960X processor clocked at 3.3 GHz, 8 GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 670, GTX 680 or GTX 690 depending on the test.

In addition to the Far Cry 3 improvements, the new beta drivers also include tweaks for Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Assassin’s Creed III, along with general performance tweaks that provide up to a 16% boost in games like Battlefield 3, Skyrim, and StarCraft II. The new beta drivers are available now to download on NVIDIA’s website.

This project is a next-level teaming of the Cray XK7, the “most scalable supercomputer” on the planet, and the NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU, aka the “world’s fastest accelerator.” This combination beings on CUDA and Open ACC programming and new features that expand programmability far beyond what’s been available before, and with the NVIDIA GPU units being used now, they’re working with 3x higher performance per watt. This means one whole heck of a lot less power consumed for the same tasks as were being performed before.

This supercomputer is currently in the acceptance process for a series of scientific applications. The program that surrounds this unit is made to expand the access groups have to supercomputing, judging each application for a program individually and giving them time based on the percentages allotted to each of the following: Plasma, Nuclear, Materials, Engineering, Earth Science, Computer Science, Chemical Science, Biology, and Astrophysics. This is all done through the US Department of Energy’s INCITE: Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment.

This program has seen a record number of proposals, with demand being approximately three times larger than they’re actually able to supply. Have a peek at the gallery below to see a few examples of what these applicants are proposing:

This also brings the Jaguar – again, now called Titan – up to a whole new specifications set. The compute notes remain the same at 18,688, but the Login and I/O nodes go up from 256 all the way to 512. The memory per node was at 16Gb and is now at 32GB + 6GB. Number of Opteron cores jumps from 224,256 to 299,008, and the total system memory was at 300TB and is now at 710TB. With the addition of 18,688 NVIDIA K20 Kepler accelerators, this beast’s former peak performance at 2.3 Petaflops is dwarfed by its current peak at 20+ Petaflops.

This announcement has the AMD AppZone Player made to work perfectly with Android apps even if they were made for phones or tablets. With the player, you’ve got BlueStacks providing you with an optimized experience that makes full use of AMD Radeon graphics and OpenGL drivers found in AMD APUs and GPUs. At the moment there are 50 free apps – some of the biggest names in the app universe in general – available for your perusal.

This technology also works with a Cloud Connect service that’ll allow you to sync both apps and SMS messages with your Android smartphone or tablet. You’ll need the BlueStacks Cloud Connect app on your Android device as well – but once you’ve got it, you’ll be up on both machines like a snap. Cloud Connect is up on the Google Play app store right this minute for you to download and utilize.

BlueStacks makes this process simple – just head to the AMD AppZone and download any app to your AMD-toting PC. When you do, you’ll have an automatic check to see if you’ve got the AMD AppZone Player, and if you don’t, you’ll have the option to download it instantly. So very simple for all the PC/Android lovers!

When showed to Laptop Mag, it would found that a combination of a prototype Thunderbolt graphics card from Lucid produced amicable results. With a combination of Intel’s integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip on a standard Ivy Bridge motherboard, they showed 3DMark06 benchmark bringing up 28 frames-per-second – that’s without this new solution. With the Lucid external graphic card plugged in through the test system’s Thunderbolt port, great things happened.

With the Thunderbolt-connected Lucid-made system, here a AMD Radeon 6700 chip, 3DMark06 brought up a much more fabulous 89 fps. This system works extremely simply, with a plug in to the system resulting in a moment of black screen then the system appearing under Windows Device Manager under Display adapters. If you’re in the mood to disconnect the system again, you’ll simply be force-quit out of whatever application your in and the original Windows desktop will be up and ready to continue to rock without it.

This external video card solution makes it so the future of laptop-based gaming (or desktop-based gaming, for that matter) will bring upgrades with as simple as a cord plug. No more screwdriver action for you if you don’t want! Prices and release dates have not yet been revealed – stay tuned for more Lucid action!

[via Laptop Mag]

With the GTX 660Ti you’ve got what NVIDIA tells us will be a lovely 150W TDP or down to 134W under “typical use”. NVIDIA also notes that here in the hardware’s 2GB video buffer you’ve got 192-bit GDDR5 RAM making it all hum nicely too – this is just below the GTX 670′s configuration which is 256-bit GDDR5. Configurations will vary between brand releases, of course, but most will be popping up with a bit of a bonus – Borderlands 2!

Have a peek at MAINGEAR’s release and see a couple of custom built limited-edition PCs made with the 660 Ti with Borderlands 2 included as well. You’ll find that NVIDIA is making an effort to come up directly against the AMD Radeon HD 7870, also on the market now, with both of them coming in at $299 standard.

NVIDIA has made claims that the GeForce GTX 660 Ti has had anywhere in between 10 and 30 percent performance gain over the AMD Radeon HD 7870, and has taken on the slightly more expensive $350 AMD Radeon HD 7950 as well. NVIDIA let it be known that in tests vs the 7950, their GTX 660 Ti came up with higher average frame rates, up to 20 percent in some cases, when testing games such as Max Payne 3.

And of course, as shown above, each new generation of NVIDIA’s GPU line keeps getting better and better! Stay tuned for more GTX 660 Ti action throughout the day, and stick around as we test our own build on a custom-built MAINGEAR review unit soon as well. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti will begin shipping today from all your favorite outlets, too, so get pumped!

The MAINGEAR custom desktop line will benefit from the Kepler family right out of the gate and there’s a couple of limited edition units coming here in the summer season as well. MAINGEAR is bringing on a limited F131 and Potenza class system, each of them with the 660 Ti for gaming action, and both of them coming on with the next-level beast of a game Borderlands 2 included. Check out more info on these limited edition setups on the GTX 660 Ti MAINGEAR page right this minute. The Potenza Limited Edition model with Borderlands 2 will cost you a cool $1199 while the F131 Limited Edition model with Borderlands 2 will bring you up to $1379 – they’re both ready to rock!

MAINGEAR notes that NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 660 Ti will bring on 1.5x faster performance than the generation that precedes it – the GTX 560 Ti. This same comparison has the new 660 working at 2x better power efficiency as well. With this solution you’ve got TXAA temporal antialiasing for fabulous performance and image quality no matter what game you’re attacking. You’ve also got NVIDIA PhysX as well as Full Direct X11 support for “the best gaming experience possible”.

And we’ll see about that when we have a full look at one of these units next week – meanwhile, you’ll want to have a peek at recent bits of news surrounding the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti in the timeline below [DEVELOPING]. And let us know if you plan to upgrade to this new gear in the near future!

First have a peek at what could be an undeniable theft or, if Samsung is able to convince the jury, an incredible coincidence. This is the Telephone app icon for the iPhone – which still exists today – as it appeared on the first iPhone. Below the image, as it is with the rest of the examples as well, Apple shows a collection of Samsung devices with their icon of choice for the Samsung Android version of the Telephone app. Green icon with a white landline-type phone aiming upward and to the right.

Next is the iTunes trademark as compared to Samsung’s choice of a CD with a music note in front of it. This is a bit of an odd one because Apple’s icon for iOS (on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch) is actually more of a music note in a white circle than it is an iTunes logo. Apple presents their original trademark application image for the iTunes logo to the right of the mobile icon for comparison to Samsung’s collection below.

Next is the Settings icon from iOS being compared to the Samsung Settings icon on everything from the Captivate to the Galaxy S II. One might ask one’s self why the gear is being claimed by Apple when it should be clear that the base Android system the Samsung devices in question were built on also had a gear for its own shortcut to Settings. Have a peek first at the Apple comparison to Samsung, then to an icons pack from an early version of Android: version 1.6 Donut.

There’s a Notes app in both the iPhone and each of the Samsung devices Apple is showing in this next slide. This is where things get a bit more suspicious once again as not only are the colors replicated rather closely, but the lined yellow paper looks the same as well. Why on earth neither company went for the more obvious sticky-notes type icon, we cannot say!

The Photos icon comparison between iOS and the Galaxy line of Samsung smartphones is a bit odd as there is indeed a flower in both of the options – but they’re sized quite differently. Apple’s icon is a clear image of a sunflower on a blue sky background while Samsung chose to have flower pedals shown with two photos of those pedals sitting on to, with a play button on top of the stack as well.

Finally there’s the Contacts icon as presented by Apple (as it is with the rest of these slides) with the original iOS icon up top and a collection of Samsung Galaxy smartphones below. Though the color scheme here isn’t the same, it’s quite clear that both of these groups grabbed inspiration from the same source. OR that one saw the other at some point and decided to make good.

Make your own judgements here and let us know if you feel that Apple or Samsung – or both – were wronged in how similar their mobile device icons look to one another. It’s no small accusation saying that a design was copied directly from your own, and we hope neither company is taking any of this situation lightly.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see additional insights into this case and stay tuned as Apple and Samsung cut each-other to shreds over the coming weeks and months.

The Mali-T624 starts with a single core but scale up to four cores, while the more powerful T-628 can go all the way up to eight cores for twice the graphics performance. Both chips are aimed at smart TVs and smartphones, while the T678 is designed for tablets. That chip is four times more powerful than the T624 thanks to increased ALU support, and is meant to be used for computational photography as well as augmented reality.

On top of the boost in performance, ARM is keen to point out the investments it has made in the GPU compute department too. By tapping into the GPU, a wider range of smartphones will be able to leverage real-time photo editing, plus others functions like improved video stabilization. That ties in with partnerships with MediaTek and Rockchip, with both companies working with ARM in order to utilize the new T600 GPUs across a large range of devices.

Naturally, Samsung is along for the ride as well, saying that it will be working closely with ARM in order to bring the improved GPUs to future Exynos chipsets. Currently the Galaxy S III uses an improved Mali-400 GPU, but it’s not hard to imagine that future smartphones and tablets from the company will make use of the new T600 series.

Microsoft has focused in on a few key areas to help make that fluid experience happen. Text rendering has been dramatically improved thanks to DirectWrite, with performance increases ranging from 131% to 336%. 2D geometry rendering also sees a boost, so any bars or charts rendered in Excel or PowerPoint shouldn’t cause any unnecessary slowdown. That’s also important for HTML5 rendering in Internet Explorer 10, and for any elements used in Metro apps.

On top of improved image and video rendering, DirectX 11.1 will also be the foundation for all hardware acceleration, so both 2D and 3D elements can take advantage of the technologies on offer. One API will now handle all graphics rendering, which reduces memory usage, and makes things a lot easier for apps trying to get access to the GPU whether it be tablet or traditional PC hardware.

The MSI GT70 is a 17.3-inch laptop that features a 1920 x 1080 Full HD matte display. It has a fully back-lit and multi-color keyboard that’s programmable with macro capabilities, three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 1.4, WiDi, Bluetooth, a 7-in-1 media reader, an E-SATA prot, and a 720p webcam. It also boasts 12GB of DDR3 memory, a 128GB SSD, and a 500GB HDD. The new GT70 is priced starting at $1,650.

Additionally, MSI is also announcing two more affordable gaming notebooks with the GE70 and the GE60. They are 17-inch and 16-inch laptops featuring Intel’s HM77 chipset, NVIDIA GTX 660M graphics, SteelSeries keyboard, and Headset AMP + Gold Flash Jacks. Pricing for the GE70 starts at $1,300, while the GE60 starts at $1,200.

[via MSI]

To be fair, Adobe’s security bulletin doesn’t say that the security flaw will never be patched. But it does recommend ”best security practices” for those who can’t upgrade, or don’t wish to. That rather implies that the company doesn’t intend to fix the problem any time soon, if ever. Adobe classifies the security flaw as Critical, or in their words, “A vulnerability, which, if exploited would allow malicious native-code to execute, potentially without a user being aware.”

Most paid software is expected to be supported well after the replacement is available, for stability and security if not for actual features. And with software as expensive as Photoshop (about $700 street for the standard version, $200 for an upgrade) sometimes even professional photographers and graphic designers wait through several versions before upgrading. The sky-high price of Photoshop is probably a large part of the reason that CS5 owners are already up in arms. Adobe has made no statement about the security patch thus far.

[via Slashdot]

Maingear will be one of the first to offer the GTX 690 in its latest line of desktops. As above, the GPU has two Kepler cores with a total of 4GB of GDDR5 memory, and a disgusting amount of CUDA cores: 3,072 to be exact. The power behind the graphics card means gamers won’t have any problems with 1080p gaming, or even at the higher resolution of 2560×1600 found on some premium desktop monitors.

Wallace Santos, CEO and Founder of Maingear, says that the GTX 690 is “a work of art”, reminding the company of when NVIDIA first introduced the GeForce 256. “Everything about this card just screams power, performance, and perfection.” You can expect to see the GTX 690 working its way into new Maingear builds starting from today. No word on what pricing up one of the rigs will cost you, but considering the card itself costs $999, we hope your children weren’t planning on going to college at all.

First note that Acer has made it plain that they’ll be offering PCs with 3rd Generation Intel Core Processors in more than one configuration right away. These computers will range from $699.99 to $1,199.99 and will include both Acer and Gateway-branded desktop PCs. Two examples are included below, these part of a much larger ecosystem that will be revealed soon!

First there’s the Acer Predator AG3620 line. This will be the first lineup to get the new Ivy Bridge line of Intel processors, and will be bringing you specifically the 3rd gen Intel Core i7 3770 processor running at 3.4GHz. This processor inside this beast will have NVIDIA GT630 graphics as well, and will be running with 16GB of memory as well as 2TB of storage space for all your goodies. The suggested retail price on this machine is going to be right around $1,199.99 – and it looks fabulous.

Then there’s the Gateway DX4860-UR14P which will be available “quickly” according to Acer. This machine will be coming in at a suggested price of $699.99, and will also be running with 3rd gen Ivy Bridge. Inside you’ll find a 3rd gen Intel Core i5 3450 processor running at 3.1GHz as well as 6MB of DDR3 RAM along with 1TB of storage. For your visuals you’ll have included here Intel HD graphics power.

These as well as the soon to be announced Gateway FX desktop line will be amongst the first machines on the planet to run 3rd gen Intel Core processors – grab em!

The graphics processor giant recently outed the GTX 680 as its latest flagship model sporting its new 28nm Kepler GPU architecture. It supposedly has twice the graphics performance than previous GPUs, while keeping power consumption the same if not lower. Multiple glowing reviews of the GPU support the claims, some even saying that it may be the fastest single-GPU graphics card to date.

Speculation suggests that the NVIDIA teaser may be referring to the GTX 690, which is expected to be a dual-chip GPU built on the latest 28nm Kepler architecture. However, it’s also been noted that NVIDIA did just come out with the GTX 680 last month and is still working on its availability, while its latest mid-range cards have yet to be released.

[via CNET]

Tupac is a legendary human being, known around the world not just as a rapper, but as a celebrity that represents the whole of the culture he so virulently infected the world with in a wholly positive way. A concert like this, with Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg bringing on hit after hit to represent the culture they helped create as well, the crowd (in person and at home) were set up perfectly to receive a pitch like holographic Tupac. They’ve taken the pitch and have hit it out of the park on the web.

Talk nearly immediately broke out surrounding the idea that Tupac’s hologram would go on tour. A holographic music artist going on tour is no unheard of – the Gorillaz have done it for several years with fabulous results. Some of the same people that brought you the holographic Gorillaz you saw at the Grammys performing with Madonna created holographic Tupac.

Another situation quite similar to this in its implications is the CLU representation of Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy. This 1985 version of Bridges was acted by 2000s Bridges with sensors on his face, his ability to be 20 year younger version of himself made believable.

Now that Tupac has performed on-stage 16 years after he first departed from this world. The physical body of the performer no longer needs to be in the house for their contribution to the audience to be real. Expect Nirvana, The Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix to be going on tour soon.

Tim Cook immediately went into talking about the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor in all those Android tablets when talking about their own new A5X. After confirming the processor under the hood he revealed that the X stands for quad-core graphics. Graphics that are capable of around 4x the performance of the Tegra 3.

Apple A5 was already twice as fast, this is a graphics powerhouse”

The graph above makes the Tegra 3 seem tiny in comparison. If that turns out to be completely accurate the Android tablet and gaming market will have some catching up to do. We have a feeling we’ll be testing this very soon. His comments regarding the original A5 being twice as fast might not be completely true and when we compared the iPad 2 vs the quad-core Transformer Prime we didn’t find the same results. Hit the links below for our gaming and benchmark comparisons of the previous generation iPad.

Either way the iPad 2 was already fast, smooth, and extremely capable. Adding more power to the graphics side will only open things up more and offer more games with even better performance than before. iPad has grown up as a device from media consumption to a production machine! Who wants one? Get all of the news, details, and pricing from our Apple Hub!

The Intuos5 features a slim-profile in a professional matte black and soft-touch finish that’s both modern and durable. It has ergonomics in mind with an ambidextrous design that makes it easily adjustable for right- or left-hand users. At the core of Wacom’s graphics tablet is its Intuos5 Grip Pen, which registers 2,048 levels of pen pressure and up to 60 degrees of tilt. This precision and sensitivity makes it feel the same as working with traditional tools such as markers, pens, and brushes, giving users more creative effects when used with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and other similar graphics software.

The addition of multi-touch gestures support helps to further streamline workflows by making it easy to zoom, scroll, pan, and rotate content, all directly on the tablet instead of switching back and forth from a mouse or other input device. The Intuos 5 can recognize standard Windows and Mac gestures as well as custom gestures created through Wacom’s software.

There are also customizable ExpressKeys on the Intuos5 along with one Touch Ring and a four-function toggle that allow users to create custom shortcut keys for commonly used functions to reduce the need to go back to the keyboard, improving productivity. And with the purchase of a separate Wireless Accessory kit, which includes a rechargeable battery, RF module, and USB receiver, the Intuos5 can be converted to a wireless tablet for even more comfort and convenience.

Wacom’s Intuos 5 graphics tablets are available now and come in three sizes with the Small priced at $229.95, Medium at $349.95, and the Large at $469.95. A cheaper pen-only version of the Small tablet will also be offered, but pricing on that has not been confirmed yet.

The new IP cores are based on the PowerVR Rogue architecture that uses a scalable number of compute clusters. These compute clusters are arrays of programmable computing elements designed for high performance and power efficiency and minimal bandwidth requirements. The first two PowerVR Series6 cores are the G6200 with two compute clusters and the G6400 with four clusters.

The PowerVR Series 6 GPU cores promise 20 times better performance than current generation GPU cores and 5 times the efficiency. Performance is said to exceed 100gigaFLOPS and even reaches the teraFLOPS range. There are already eights licensees for the PowerVR Series 6 cores, including ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments.

A Lenovo Sandybridge ultrabook boosted its CPU output to 87% of the performance of a standard voltage CPU, while compressing and emailing a collection of 200 photos. A CPU-based graphics demonstration showed off an Ivybridge laptop computing amazing graphics feats on integrated hardware, including the destruction of a virtual wooden bridge, calculating the position of thousands of logs and planks with extremely minimal slowdown.Each piece of debris was calculated and rendered at all points during the demo, which used only Intel’s previously uninspiring graphics processors. A troll graphics demo showed off animation and detail that’s about on par with current game consoles.

A DirectX11 demo of Formula 1 2011 was impressive – it looks like you can run a pretty solid framerate in just standard Ivybridge hardware. Of course, these are demos on demo hardware. But the next generation of Ultrabooks look like they can do some respectable gaming. You won’t beat out the latest AMD or Nvidia cards, but current-generation gaming may start to become a more tangible reality in the near future. The demonstrator teased significant performance gains, to be specified later at CES.

As long as it beats the competition in the NVIDIA GTX 580 while not being too power hungry and heating the entire house like the dual-GPU GTX 590 I’ll be happy — and I’m sure the enthusiast gaming crowd will be too. Below are a few of our favorite reviews for the new AMD Radeon HD 7970 for everyone to enjoy. We’ll start with the all popular Anandtech.

AnandTech’s Ryan Smith says at the end of the day this graphics card is geared to be a gaming workhorse — but being their new flagship GPU I wouldn’t expect anything different from AMD. He goes on to mention in most gaming scenarios the power consumption was lower than the competing GTX 580 while offering 20% better performance and sometimes more. He does mention being priced much higher than the last-gen 6970 could be a potential drawback for some.

Tom’s Hardware explains that this is a big improvement and a step in the right direction with the new, smaller 28 nm fabrication and called it “Fast, Forward-Looking, But Not Fully Baked.” Saying that NVIDIA’s upcoming Kepler GPU is still months off so they’ll still retain the fastest single-GPU title for now, but without further testing they didn’t want to give a recommendation just yet.

HardOCP is known for breaking things down very thoroughly and have came up with some decent overall numbers. Claiming the 7970 is at least 30% or more faster than the previous generation while offering 10%+ performance increases over the current GTX 580 competition making this definitely worth the price for giving increased performance across all available games.

Bit-Tech said the HD 7970 by AMD “has certainly thrown down the gauntlet. The HD 7970 3GB is a huge improvement over the HD 6970 2GB and GTX 580 1.5GB” They also mention overclocking — something many enthusiasts and water-cooling fans do daily was a huge surprise. Squeezing around 20% more performance from the card without even tweaking the voltage.

While you are at it don’t forget to check out the review from HotHardware, and Hexus who claim it’s a great graphics card but wont win and Bang4Buck awards. Guru3D also mentions the huge overclocking potential before and after overvolting — making this a great graphics card with plenty of potential.

So the question is: Will you be buying the AMD Radeon HD 7970? And if so will you be tossing this bad boy under a DangerDen waterblock or going all out with some LN2?

AMD also noted they’d continue their strong ties to gaming developers through 2012, this on top of supporting (in one way or another) all gamers, not just those working with AMD products. They spoke of the current state of gaming rigs there much higher resolution displays cost much less than previous lower-end models, and how according to their sources (Steam Hardware Surveys), high-definition monitors are the more common of the two display categories in gaming today. They spoke of power efficiency, reduced cost of ownership, and the thinning out of devices allowing for easier transport and daily storage.

AMD noted that they’ve now got word that over 200 applications are accelerated by AMD GPUs specifically at this very moment, this pointing towards the fact that GPUs aren’t just working for gamers as they once essentially were. They spoke of how awesome they were in that they were the first to work with 28nm processes, how they were the first to PCI-E Gen 3, and how they worked with DirectX 11.1 first as well.

Then came the talk of what was code-named Southern Islands. In this project came three islands: Tahiti, Pitcairn, and Cape Verde. The first of these three, Tahiti, contained Enthusiastic Gamers and the “World’s Most Powerful and Advanced GPU.” Then there’s Pitcairn where all the Hardcore Gamers live and the “sweet spot” for hardcore gamers must also reside. Lastly there’s Cape Verde where Performance Gamers sit with their “new paradigm of performance and power.” What does this all mean? It means AMD is getting specific with their hardware, seeking each different kind of user for precise computing for all!

Thusly they break this project down again into Graphics Core Next, AMD Eyefinity 2.0, and AMD App Acceleration. Here you’ll find their many pinpoints of power including the lovely 28nm Process tech, PCI-E Gen3, custom resolutions, the ability to work with 5 x 1 landscape, and a whole mess of new software partnerships for the very near future.

All of this leads up to the AMD Radeon HD 7970, with stream processors adding up to 2,048, Graphics Core Next shader architecture, 3GB GDDR5 memory and 384-bit bus, 6 pin and 8 pin power connectors, DVI, HDMI, and two mDP outputs, and yes, yes indeed, up to 6 displays working on this same bit of hardware at once. It’s got a whole mess of fabulous display configurations for you to work with aside a full slot for better cooling than ever before – and the fan up back of the hardware has the most advanced cooling and silent acoustics an AMD bit of hardware has ever had.

Matching up against their biggest competitor NVIDIA this AMD Radeon monster out-does it in every benchmark they’ve set up, and their AMD CrossFire Technology is laid out to look rather impressive against the same GPU with no such scaling in place. A whole pack of power-saving technologies are visualized as well such as ZeroCore Power Technology with AMD CrossFire as well as AMD ZeroCore – idle out!

They launch into AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series codename “Tahiti” details, speaking about how inside you’ll find up to 32 compute units, 8 render back-ends with 32 color ROPs per clock and 128 Z/stencil ROPs per clock. Here you’ve got a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface with over 264 GB/sec memory bandwidth and 4.3 billion 28nm transistors. That’s a lot of little pieces of graphics magic! AMD rolls out details on how they’re about to change the whole earth with their first ever GPU with the ability to simultaneously output multiple independent audio streams, one for each screen you’ve got if you like! Be sure to check out Anand’s benchmarks and review of this GPU for starters, then pick one up for yourself at the start of 2012 and rock it all night long.

What we’re doing here is going down the list of trusted reviewers who today have their hands on the new core in a couple different brand flavors. Note here that each photo or benchmark sits below the author who photographed and/or provided it, except the image above which is also coming from HotHardware. The first of these is Don Woligroski of Tom’s Hardware who has the Zotac brand 448 Core, and his description of it lets us know how cool this card can be:

” Zotac’s option is based on its GeForce GTX 570 AMP! Edition card. As expected, then, it’s 9.5” long (about an inch less than the reference GeForce GTX 570 and about half an inch longer than the reference GeForce GTX 560 Ti). The 448-core card doesn’t get the designation of being one of Zotac’s AMP! models, but it does feature a slight increase of 33 MHz over the reference 732 MHz core clock spec. … The card has an interesting choice of outputs: two dual-link DVI ports, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort connector. You generally don’t see four total outputs on a GeForce-based card, since Nvidia’s GPUs still max out with two independent display pipelines. However, the choice to pick any two of the four is still nice.”

Next we have Marco Chiappetta of HotHardWare who is using the same Zotac version of the core inside a Intel Core i7 980X (3.3GHz, Six-Core) and Gigabyte EX58-UD5 (Intel X58 Express), the first of the benchmarks being spoken about in just such a way:

“Unigine’s Heaven Benchmark v2.5 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform, real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark–when run in DX11 mode–also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion) It also features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering. … The new GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448-Core Limited Edition card falls into place right where you’d expect it to in the Unigine Heaven benchmark, which is to say it was somewhat faster than the original GeForce GTX 560 Ti, but a hair slower than the higher-end GeForce GTX 570.” – Chiappetta

From Benchmark Reviews there’s Hank Tolman who is one of the rare reviewers to get the EVEA version of the card, noting from what we can tell that there’s not just a WHOLE lot of difference between this is the others. He also does benchmarks with a series of games, here with Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

“I really can’t complain at all about the performance of the GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores FTW. NVIDIA says that the GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores should run about 5% slower than the GTX 570, thus filling the gap between the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 570. This is almost exactly the case in the tests I have run with the EVGA GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores FTW. I think there was only one test where the difference was 6% or more. The rest were either 5% or below. That’s likely due to the fact that the EVGA GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores FTW outclocks the stock GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores. With performance that close, it is probably a good bet that, when overclocked, the EVGA GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores FTW will do very well. … In our benchmark tests of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the first three minutes of action in the single-player raft night scene are captured with FRAPS. Relative to the online multiplayer action, these frame rate results are nearly identical to daytime maps with the same video settings.” – Tolman

Finally there’s Ryan Smith of AnandTech, who again is using the Zotac version of the card, who both speaks on the price and has a collection of benchmarks, here showing FPS on the game DiRT 2 at 1680 x 1050 Ultra High Quality + 4xAA:

“The MSRP on the GTX 560-448 will be $289, however launch partners will be free to price it higher to match any factory overclocks they do. At $289 the GTX 560-448 is priced extremely close to the cheapest GTX 570s, and depending on clockspeeds and sales a GTX 570 could end up being the same price or cheaper, so it will be prudent to check prices. Meanwhile the GTX 560-448’s closest competition from AMD will be the Radeon HD 6950, which trends around $250 after rebate while the Radeon HD 6970 is still closer to $340. Overall NVIDIA’s pricing may be a bit high compared to their other products, but compared to AMD’s products it’s consistent with the performance. … With DIRT 2 our benchmarks once again swing back in favor of NVIDIA. At 1920 the GTX 560-448 is 14% of the 6970, never mind the 6950. The advantage over the GTX 560 Ti is even greater, with the GTX 560-448 coming in at nearly 20% faster. Throw on Zotac’s overclock and now the GTX 560-448 is as fast as the GTX 570. If you still don’t believe the GTX 560-448 is really a slower GTX 570, then this should be rather convincing proof.” – Smith

And of course we’re interested in your opinions as well – what do you think of this product as a possibility for your setup in the near future? Orangy enough for you?

NVIDIA notes that this driver download enables NVIDIA Surround on the newest X79 SLI-certified motherboards and those of you with BenQ XL2420T and BenQ XL2420TX monitors can now get 3D Vision DisplayPort 1.1 connections natively. Ambient Occlusion is included for Skyrim and MW3, this feature activated in your control panel once you’ve got it all downloaded and loaded. Ambient Occlusion essentially means you’ll have the best in-game shadow effects in the business. To get to this feature in your control panel, hit 3D Settings, Manage 3D settings, and find Ambient Occlusion (should be at the top) and set it to either Performance or Quality, then hit the Apply button.

UPDATE: head to this NVIDIA slider page to see how the shadows will improve your experience in all places!

Of course this only works after you’ve got the new driver downloaded and attached, which you’ll have to head to the Beta and Legacy Drivers page on NVIDIA to get. Once you’ve got it ready to go, have a peek at the full release notes here on what you’ve done to your computer. Only great things, only big hits! You’re gonna love it!

NVIDIA Ambient Occlusion
• Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
• Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

NVIDIA PhysX
• Updates PhysX System Software to version 9.11.1107 for the best PhysX experience in Batman: Arkham City.

NVIDIA Surround
• Enables NVIDIA Surround support for Intel X79 SLI-certified motherboards.

NVIDIA SLI
• Added or updated SLI profiles for Crysis 2, Heroes and Generals, Inversion, Stronghold 3, and Syndicate.

3D Vision
• Adds support for 3D Vision over native DisplayPort 1.1 connection – available on BenQ XL2420T and BenQ XL2420TX monitors.
• Added or updated the following 3D Vision game profiles:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – Rated Good
Cang Sheng – Rated Good
Diablo 3 – Rated Good
Fei fei – Rated Good
Final Combat – Rated Good
L.A. Noire – Updated Rating To 3D Vision Ready
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 – Rated Fair
Qian Nv You Hun Online – Rated Good
QQ Xi You – Rated Good
Sonic Generations – Rated Good
Xian Tu – Rated Good
Yong Bing Tian Xia Online – Rated Good

HD Audio
• Updates HD Audio driver to version 1.3.9.0.

Bug Fixes
• Fixes random flickering as Windows boot logo is loading or fading away.
• Fixes corruption in Crysis 2 with SLI and lower quality shadow settings.
• Fixes ability to set Surround resolutions to 5760×1080 using custom resolutions.
• Fixes some random instances of triangular artifacts when playing Battlefield 3.
• Fixes corruption and flickering of some objects in Battlefield 3 in the New York single-player level when anti-aliasing is enabled.
• Fixes corruption seen in Settlers 7 with the NVIDIA 275.33 drivers.
• Fixes playback of videos or live TV using Window Media Center resulting in a black screen.
• Fixes the issue where 1920×1080 @60Hz PC resolution mode switched down to @59Hz.
• Fixes mouse cursor flickering and shaking in Crysis 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Deus Ex and Civilization V when SLI is enabled when using 3DTV Play.

Don’t forget to check out our full review of Batman while you’re down here, it’s Battastic!