crookedvulture writes “Graphics hardware reviews have long used frames per second to measure performance. The thing is, an awful lot of frames are generated in a single second. Calculating the FPS can mask brief moments of perceptible stuttering that only a closer inspection of individual frame times can quantify. This article explores the subject in much greater detail. Along the way, it also effectively illustrates the ‘micro-stuttering’ attributed to multi-GPU solutions like SLI and CrossFire. AMD and Nvidia both concede that stuttering is a real problem for modern graphics hardware, and benchmarking methods may need to change to properly take it into account.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes “The free game with every graphics card deal has finally backfired for AMD and Codemasters. Due to a lack of .htaccess, 1.7 million keys for a free copy of DiRT 3 on Steam have been leaked. No word from AMD or Codemasters yet, but I’m sure Valve will block all the codes on Steam soon. One question that remains: if you used one of the codes, will Steam ban your account? There could be a few very unhappy gamers later today if that happens.”
The exact number of keys is in question — reports range from 250,000 to 3 million — but AMD confirmed that a leak did occur.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
crookedvulture writes “Crytek made news earlier this summer by releasing a big DirectX 11 update for the PC version of its latest game, Crysis 2. Among other things, the update added extensive tessellation to render in-game elements with a much higher number of polygons. Unfortunately, it looks like most of those extra polygons have been wasted on flat objects that don’t require more detail or on invisible layers of water that are rendered even in scenes made up entirely of dry land. Screenshots showing the tessellated polygon meshes for various items make the issue pretty obvious, and developer tools confirm graphics cards are wasting substantial resources rendering these useless or unseen polygons. Interestingly, Nvidia had a hand in getting the DirectX 11 update rolled out, and its GeForce graphic cards just happen to perform better with heavy tessellation than AMD’s competing Radeons.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes “With the release of the dual-GPU AMD Radeon HD 6990, closely followed by the competing Nvidia GeForce GTX 590, we saw graphics card performance reach new heights. With bandwidth throughput in excess of 300GB/s, these cards can consume more power than entire computer systems. By utilizing three monitors, games can become roughly 3x more demanding, as the graphics card is required to render an overwhelmingly higher number of pixels. Whereas graphics card reviews and benchmarks usually test GPUs at single monitor resolutions, TechSpot has added two more LCD monitors and tested eleven games running at resolutions of 5040×1050, 5760×1200 and 7680×1600.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Vigile writes “Both NVIDIA and AMD have recently released new extreme-high-end graphics cards with dual-GPU configurations and PC Perspective has compared them to each other with some standard SLI/CrossFire comparisons for good measure. The GTX 590 is a pair of 512 shader processor GF110 GPUs which had the potential to be the fastest combination available, but the clock speeds were lowered to such a level that is has trouble keeping up with AMD’s Radeon HD 6990. Sound levels were noticeably better on NVIDIA’s option though the Radeon card provided better frame rates at the highest resolutions. So, while the $700 video card market just got a pair of new competitors, the best investment for that money might still be two less expensive Radeon or GeForce single-GPU cards.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Bit-tech recently spoke with Richard Huddy, worldwide developer relations manager of AMD’s GPU division, about the lack of a great disparity between PC game graphics and console game graphics, despite the hardware gap. Quoting:
“‘We often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it’s very clear that the games don’t look ten times as good. To a significant extent, that’s because, one way or another, for good reasons and bad - mostly good, DirectX is getting in the way.’ Huddy says that one of the most common requests he gets from game developers is: ‘Make the API go away.’ ‘I certainly hear this in my conversations with games developers,’ he says, ‘and I guess it was actually the primary appeal of Larrabee to developers – not the hardware, which was hot and slow and unimpressive, but the software – being able to have total control over the machine, which is what the very best games developers want. By giving you access to the hardware at the very low level, you give games developers a chance to innovate, and that’s going to put pressure on Microsoft – no doubt at all.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
EconolineCrush writes “While AMD’s Eyefinity multi-display gaming tech is undeniably impressive at first glance, digging deeper reveals key limitations. Some games work well, others not at all, and many are simply better suited to specific screen configurations. A three-way setup looks to be ideal from a compatibility perspective, and given current LCD prices, it’s really not all that expensive. But would you take that over a single high-resolution display or a giant HDTV?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
MojoKid writes “AMD’s 6-output Radeon has been seen in action at a number of events, but today the ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition is being officially launched. HotHardware paired the card up with six 22″ Dell LCD panels in a 3×2 configuration — with a max resolution of 5760×2160 — and ran it through a number of popular titles including Dirt 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Crysis. For specialized, high-end graphics cards like this, the market potential may be relatively small. If, however, the idea of multi-monitor gaming is appealing to you and you’ve got the means to score one of these cards (along with multiple displays), you won’t be disappointed.”
Reader Vigile adds a different analysis of the card’s six-monitor gaming: “PC Perspective found FPS games were basically unplayable because of the bezel through the middle of their vision while RTS and racing games like StarCraft 2 and DiRT 2 were spectacular.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
arcticstoat writes “AMD has just aimed a shot at Nvidia’s PhysX technology, saying that most game developers only implement GPU-accelerated PhysX for the money. AMD’s Richard Huddy explained that ‘Nvidia creates a marketing deal with a title, and then as part of that marketing deal, they have the right to go in and implement PhysX in the game.’ However, he adds that ‘the problem with that is obviously that the game developer doesn’t actually want it. They’re not doing it because they want it; they’re doing it because they’re paid to do it. So we have a rather artificial situation at the moment where you see PhysX in games, but it isn’t because the game developer wants it in there.’ AMD is pushing open standards such as OpenCL and DirectCompute as alternatives to PhysX, as these APIs can run on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. AMD also announced today that it will be giving away free versions of Pixelux’s DMM2 physics engine, which now includes Bullet Physics, to some game developers.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It’s never too early to start thinking about that desktop that you really, really need under the tree by the third week in December, and rather than waiting until the last moment and getting stuck with some random configuration and a lofty overnight shipping fee, iBuyPower is encouraging you to have a gander at the five new liquid-cooled rigs that it just unveiled at NewEgg. The low-end is propped up by the Gamer Extreme 922 SLC at just $989, while the specced-out Gamer Supreme 979SLC will set Santa back just under four large. At the top, you’ll find luxuries such as Intel’s Core i7 975, a Blu-ray drive, 128GB SSD and 1.5TB of HDD space, while lower-end systems snag the likes of a Core i7 860, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD. Peek the via link below for a more robust look at the specifications, and feel free to get your order in now if you like resting easy.
Continue reading iBuyPower lets out five liquid-cooled gaming desktops
iBuyPower lets out five liquid-cooled gaming desktops originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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