GeForce G310 - NvidiaBloggo - All the latest Nvidia news! 2010

While ATI’s strategy is to emphasize the launch of the first graphic cards with DX11 support, nVIDIA declares that there’s no need to worry about their own “delay” in launching the next-generation GPUs.

According to nVIDIA, the DirectX 11-ready factor won’t be the main selling point of the new GPUs, but the important thing will be the overall performance on the new cards, with things like the CUDA software that will allow the new GPUs to be used as a co-processor, helping the CPU in many situations.

nVIDIA hasn’t mentioned, however, that the main factor on the new graphic cards will be the availability of titles that are capable of using the new APIs that will be featured on Windows 7, highlighting other features and the versatility of their cards.

Truth is, until games are compatible with the new DX11 APIs, which will probably not happen until the second half of next year, the new cards won’t be more useful than the current DX10 ones, also because the newest titles to be launched still this year will be based on the DirectX 10.1 in any case.

After our brief vacation, we’re back to work and today we’re talking about the new Apple OS, Snow Leopard and the support to OpenCL. Snow Leopard will be the first to integrate the OpenCL, a cross-platform programming interface based on the Open Source standards that allow the developers to reach the maximum graphic performance from the GPU and put it to work with basically any application.

OpenCL uses the nVIDIA CUDA architecture and allows the system to use the CPU and GPU as co-processors. Thanks to the general integration from the CUDA architecture, nVIDIA was able to offer Apple a vast selection of 10 card models that are fully supported by Snow Leopard. The cards are: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 and Quadro FX 5600.

Besides cooperating with Apple to integrate the support to OpenCL on Snow Leopard, nVIDIA has also released new OpenCL drivers for Linux and Windows.

Also nVIDIA has released the latest updates on their GeForce drivers, a new WHQL certified version in which the main objective is the fixing of some bugs that were found on Windows 7. The new drivers 186.18 are basically an update of the 186.08 that fix a few bugs with Windows 7, and in fact, these drivers integrate the PhysX v9.09.0428 which is the same of the previous release, the same goes for the Ambient Occlusion support and CUDA 2.2.

The drivers support all GeForce cards from the series 6 on and are optmized for ION platforms with the chipset GeForce 9400. They also take advantage of the hardware acceleration through the GPU in the video encoding also with cores with less than 32 shaders, but such feature was already introduced on the 185 version.

Despite nVidia’s work was concentrated on bug fixing, there are also performance enhancements with some titles such as Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Crysis, Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge.

The drivers can be downloaded on nVidia’s driver download page.

Nvidia has released a new beta version of their own GeForce graphic card drivers, compatible with the GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100 and 200 solutions; the drivers insert a few performance optimizations, support to CUDA 2.2. and ambient occlusion.

The version for the Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows XP OS, both in 32bit and 64bit are available on nVIDIA’s official site. They’ve also released a new PhysX System Software release, integrated in the drivers but also downloadable separately.

After a few weeks of waiting, nVIDIA has finally released the new version of their video drivers, the 185.18.14.

Released for both Windows and Linux systems, 32 and 64bit, this update should fix some previous bugs and a better support for the Linux Kernels.

More information can be found on nVIDIA’s official website.

The latest release of the nVidia drivers, WHQL Certificated, adds the stable support for the new GTX 285 and GTX 295 models, and it also brings a better performance PhysX for the game Mirror’s Edge.

Besides offering support to the GTX 285 and GTX 295 cards, the new drivers also update the PhysX System Software component to the version 9.09.0010. Nvidia has confirmed that the new PhysX component is able to offer better performances in Mirror’s Edge. The PC version of EA’s game was developed specially in order to use the PhysX technology.

Also, the new drivers have solved a bug that had appeared on the Beta version with the GeForce GTX 295 cards, in which only one of the graphic cores was recognized as being able to support CUDA and PhysX. Other bugs that affected some SLI configurations were also solved, such as the Fallout 3 crashes when in 1440×900 pixels. A SLI profile was also added on S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky Benchmark. In any case, Nvidia has declared that the anti-aliasing active-mode in the SLI configurations has a limited support, however.

The new ForceWare 181.22 supports also the nVidia cards from the GeForce 6 series up to the GeForce 9 series, including also the new GTX 200.

The Quadro FX 5600 is considered an OpenGL “monster”. Equipped with 1536MB GDDR3 RAM, the Quadro FX 5600 offers enough power for higher resolutions and bigger textures. The car dis based on the G80 graphic chip, present also in many GeForce 8800 gaming card series. The Quadro FX 5600 is sold for an average price of €2500, and usually gets the first position in many benchmark categories.

The “Maxtreme 11″ driver from nVidia is very interesting. It’s a plugin, developed especially for 3D Studio Max, that offers a significant performance increase with that particular software. In comparison with the previous versions, Maxtreme 11 supports the OpenGL and DirectX API. The 3DSM shader operations also benefit from this plugin.

The 90nm chip and the bigger amount of memory require more energy, which is supplied by two 6-pin Molex connectors.

The GPU-Z’s screenshot shows the main technical information about the FX 5600.

Designed mainly for CAD, DTP and visual simulators, the professional graphic cards include optimizations for professional applications such as AutoCAD, SolidWorks, ProEngineer and similar. Both nVidia and AMD have noticed that the difference between these cards and the classical ones are mainly connected to the drivers, the other features being very similar to their FireGL and Quadro FX (for videogames) models. The high price on these products, therefore, is due to the little amount of units manufactured, and the need to develop specific drivers for them (which includes the certification process and the support).

In order for this market to succeed, producers must make sure that a classic graphic card, such as a GeForce or a Radeon, cannot be transformed into a Quadro FX or a FireGL mode. Many hackers have, indeed, repeteadly created soft-mods or modified BIOS to transform gaming cards into professional workstation cards; they succeded exactly for the fact that the two products are, indeed, 99% identical to each other. That means the manufactures do not have an easy time.

When it comes to the performance, the differences are clear: comparing a gaming card with its (almost identical) workstation version, users will find that the drivers allow the professional version to work a lot faster.

In these next few articles, we will be reviewing the nVidia Quadro FX 5600, 170, 570 and 370.

NVIDIA just released another set of beta ForceWare drivers (version 180.43), adding a variety of features and enabling NVIDIA SLI on Intel X58-based motherboards. They also offer performance improvements for Ubisoft’s shooter Far Cry 2. The drivers are being released with a quote from Ubisoft’s Louis-Pierre Pharand:

“Since we first began working on Far Cry 2 in early 2005, we have used GeForce GPU’s to develop the game and worked closely with NVIDIA’s excellent engineers. While Far Cry 2 represents an outstanding PC gaming experience for a wide range of systems, GeForce users can expect to enjoy the game quite literally ‘The Way It Was Meant To Be Played’,” says Pharand.

The latest 180.43 drivers are available for Windows XP 32-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit, and Windows XP 64 bit.