[H]ard|OCP

NVIDIA GPU Conference Press Conference Followup

Now attending a press conference that is following up the keynote speech by Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, at the NVIDIA GPU Conference. Attending are Jensen Huang, Drew Henry - General Mgr GPU, and Tony Tomasi - Senior VP of Content and Technology.

Jensen is opening up stressing the importance of heterogeneous computing and that the GPU is a big part of that. GPU will be utilized far beyond just graphics, but graphics will still be a huge part of NVIDIA's GPU business. New tools have been developed that allow for heterogenous programming and debugging.

Jensen added, Silicon of Fermi is "in house" and "we are bringing it up." Time to market is likely "a few short months." Jensen is stating that Fermi is much more than a video card for gaming and that, "DX is just a feature and it is not enough. We need something big and new!" "We need Fermi to bring excitement and sex appeal back." I am not sure what exactly that means, but it sounded good.

On the topic of 5800 shipping and market competition, Jensen stated, "Nobody likes when the competition has a product. I don't like keeping our enthusiast waiting on our next generation processors. I would rather be shipping today, but we will ship when the product is ready to ship."

On the size of Fermi, Jensen stated, "It is only big right now, because it is the biggest chip ever built." "Power consumption will be the same as today's GPUs. It will fit into today's PCs and 1U servers."

Discussion

[H]ardware Round-Up II

Cases & Modding

Lancool K62 Dragonlord Case (German) @ Technic3D

Maxcube Amoris 6010 Case @ Virtual-Hideout

ETC.

AMD's Baby Quads (Athlon II X4 620 and 630) @ Lost Circuits

Motherboards

ASUS P7P55D Deluxe @ Overclockers Club

Power Supply

ASUS U-65GA 650 W PSU @ Hardware Secrets

Video

AMD ATI Radeon HD 5850 @ HotHardware

AMD ATI Radeon HD 5850 @ Legit Reviews

AMD ATI Radeon HD 5850 @ PC Perspective

NVIDIA's Next Gaming Card

While I usually do not quote myself, I am in this instance to directly address what we think is going to happen in terms of NVIDIA getting a next generation video card into cosumers' hands. This is from the conclusion of our 5850 Review.

If you are waiting for NVIDIA to jump out of the GPU closet with a 5800 killer and put the fear into you for making a 5800 series purchase for Halloween, we suggest paper dragons are not that scary. We feel as though it will be mid-to-late Q1’10 before we see anything pop out of NVIDIA’s sleeve besides its arm. We are seeing rumors of a Q4’09 soft launch of next-gen parts, but no hardware till next year and NVIDIA has given us no reason to believe otherwise.

Jensen just had this to say live at the NVIDIA GPU Conference in regards to the next-gen GPU: "You will have to wait just a little longer." From that we went to talking about GPUs decoding HD Flash video.

Ongoing Discussion

ATI Radeon HD 5850 Stock

A little birdy told us to keep a close eye on Newegg for impending 5850 inventory...very very soon.

Fermi Officially Announced by NVIDIA

NVIDIA's Jensen Huang just announced new Fermi hardware sporting 3 billion transistors, 512 shader cores. For those of you wanting to know more about what this silicon represents, please hit the link for this Fermi Whitepaper in PDF form. Also there is a great HardForum post here that covers much of this.

NVIDIA GPU Conference

We are sitting down at the NVIDIA GPU Conference in San Jose, California (Live Webcast is linked on this page.) listening to Senior Vice President Dan Vivoli talk about how far reaching the word of GPU computing is going to be in the future. But I can't help but wonder about issues that are a bit more evident to the hardware enthusiast and gamer. Where is NVIDIA's next generation technology for the gamer? What is NVIDIA's answer to ATI Eyefinity technology? Why does NVIDIA detect AMD GPUs in Batman: AA and turn off AntiAliasing? Why do new NVIDIA drivers punish AMD GPU owners who want to leverage an NVIDIA card to compute PhysX? Hmmm.

Most interesting is that NVIDIA is showing off some demos with incredible fidelity, namely a Bugatti Veyron, that cannot be distinguished from an actual photograph. Sadly though, it does take about 18 seconds to render a single frame using ray tracing, and most disappointing is that this is being demonstrated on the currently available retail GPUs. No next generation is being shown off at NVIDIA's biggest event of the year. That said, the tech used to render the car is incredibly impressive and we remember that not very long ago it would take a bank of computers hours to do this.

Jensen Huang does make some incredibly efficient points about parallel computation possibly using a GPU as a co-processor though. There is no doubt in my mind that GPUs will find a huge place in our economy as a needed component, but all this makes me think that NVIDIA is on the way out as a gaming company and on the way in as a "CPU" company.

Discussion

NVIDIA GPU Tech Conference Underway

NVIDIA’s GPU Tech Conference is just getting underway in San Jose, California and the first images we have to share with you are these pictures of the conference area and Ryan Shrout from PC Perspective. Those 3D shades are sexy, aren't they? Ryan claims the glasses make the tech conference feel like it is an actual live conference.

NVIDIA Demos "Fermi" Architecture Live:

I am still watching the keynote speech via this (live webcast) and Jensen Huang just showed a live demo of the company’s "Fermi" architecture. Hit the link above and watch the webcast live.

Immediately following the "Fermi" architecture demo NVIDIA’s head honcho dropped a bit of disappointing news (although not unexpected) saying gamers will have to wait "a bit longer" for their next-gen video cards.

Convicted Hacker Hijacks Prison Computer System

Letting a convicted hacker, incarcerated for numerous computer crimes that netted him millions, work on the prison computer system? What could possibly go wrong?

A man serving a six-year prison sentence for stealing millions of dollars through online credit card fraud recently succeeded in (surprise!) hacking into his prison's computer network, effectively paralyzing the entire system. The really incomprehensible part, though, is that officials at Ranby Prison, close to Retford, Nottinghamshire, England, gave him access to the computer.

Comments

Radeon HD 5870 / Core i7-870 System Raffle

The folks at PC Perspective are holding a raffle to help children with Down Syndrome. Obviously this is a great way to donate to a worthy cause but it also gives you a chance to win a nice computer with a Radeon HD 5870. PC Perspective is also matching your donations dollar for dollar. Hit the link for more information.

Gaming News

Dead Space 2 in Preproduction @ Blue’s News

New Mass Effect Trailer @ Shacknews

PSPgo Helps Sell the Older PSP 3000? @ Joystiq

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Review Round-Up @ Kotaku

AMD ATI Radeon HD 5850 Video Card

Our evaluation of the AMD ATI Radeon HD 5850 video card is live. Hit the link and see how this card compares to a single HD 5870 and HD 5850 CrossFireX configurations.

If you are waiting for NVIDIA to jump out of the GPU closet with a 5800 killer and put the fear into you for making a 5800 series purchase for Halloween, we suggest paper dragons are not that scary. We feel as though it will be mid-to-late Q1’10 before we see anything pop out of NVIDIA’s sleeve besides its arm.

Comments

Blu-ray Discs To Feature PSP Movies

Starting November 10th, Sony will begin adding a PSP version to all the Blu-ray movies sold. No more companion DVDs, you’ll be able to rip the PSP version directly from the Blu-ray disc.

Until now, Digital Copy files shipped on a separate DVD-ROM bundled with the Blu-ray movie disc. Now you'll be able to pull the Digital Copy file from the Blu-ray disc straightaway, eliminating the need for multiple media. The feature launches on November 10th with the Blu-ray release of Godzilla. (Though, gotta say, not an auspicious choice of movies there Sony.)

Comments