June 16th, 2008
NVIDIA unveils the GeForce GTX 200 series
Today NVIDIA unveil their next-generation high-performance GPUs aimed at power-hungry enthusiasts - the GeForce GTX 200.
Beyond Gaming/Gaming Beyond
NVIDIA wants to move high-performance graphics card and make them relevant to a wider market than gamers, hence the “Beyond Gaming” part of the tag-line for the GTX 200. One way to do this was to incorporate CUDA support. With over 70 million CUDA-enabled GeForce 8 and 9 Series GPUs shipped to market, numerous rich-media and visual-computing applications are becoming CUDA-enabled. These applications are joining the ever-growing trend of apps that are enjoying phenomenal performance speedups that started with high-end professional and scientific applications upon the initial release of CUDA.
Examples of two areas that will benefit from CUDA are:
- Video transcoding - projects that would take hours are reduced to minutes!
- Folding@Home - Get much more folding done in less time!
But let’s not forget the gamers. For NVIDIA “Gaming Beyond” refers to taking games beyond static realism and into dynamic realism. The GTX 200 helps achieve dynamic realism through:
- Convincing facial animation
- Multiple ultra-high polygon characters in complex environments
- Advanced volumetric effects like smoke, fog, and mist
- Fluid and cloth simulation
- Fully simulated physical effects such as live debris, explosions, and fires.
- Physical weather effects such as accumulating snow and water, sand storms, soaking, drying, dampening, overheating, and freezing
- Better lighting for dramatic and spectacular effect, including ambient occlusion, global illumination, soft shadows, color bleeding, indirect lighting, and accurate reflections.
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Page 2: The GPUs
Page 3: Architectural changes
Page 4: PhysX and SLI
Page 5: Specification
Page 6: Performance
The GPUs –>
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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