VizWorld.com

A new update on NVidia’s FaceBook page has some new information about the upcoming Fermi-based Graphics Cards, the GTX480 and GTX470.  It seems that lucky attendees of the upcoming PAX East conference will have the first glimpse of this gaming powerhouse in action.

We want to apologize for the confusion around our most recent GF100 update. To clarify, the launch date for GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 is March 26, 2010. This date also coincides with the GeForce LAN event NVIDIA is hosting at PAX 2010. Hope you can attend the show. For more info, please visit: www.nvidia.com/paxeast

Anyone want to snap some photos/Video for VizWorld?

via NVIDIA | Facebook.

Hardware fermi, gpu, nvidia, pax

Astronaut Soichi Noguchi captured an amazing picture of the Space Shuttle. In the picture to the right, you can see Endeavour reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. As it reenters the atmosphere, Endeavour makes two wide turns, called S-turns, to bleed off airspeed. Since Endeavour is going so fast, it is heating up the atmosphere as it does this and causing it to glow. Astronaut Soichi Noguchi captured this airglow from the from Space Station Cupola.

via : TwitPic

Science nasa, space shuttle

Mint has posted an interactive inforgraphic on where they think the jobs will be as the United States recovers from the Great Recession. They also look at the areas where the job growth will be the fastest. You can click on individual cities to see their opinion on how they will do.

via : Where the Jobs Will Be

Graphics infographic

If you have some old time red/cyan glasses, then head on over to the Ciclops blog to see some great images of Prometheus in 3-D. Prometheus is a moon of Saturn that was discovered in 1980. Prometheus is located at the inner edge of Saturn’s F Ring, and acts as a shepherd moon for that ring.

This view looks toward the leading hemisphere of Prometheus (86 kilometers, 53 miles across). North on Prometheus is up and rotated 47 degrees to the right. The end of Prometheus on the lower right points toward Saturn, and the end on the upper left points away from the planet.

via : Prometheus Popping in 3-D

Science 3d, asteroid, astronomy, nasa

The Credit C.A.R.D. Act of 2009 goes into effect today. This idea of this law is to protect consumers from credit card companies and their unfair and deceptive practices. BillShrink has an infographic posted showing how this will affect you, if you use credit cards. Personally, I am a fan of using debit cards.

via : The Credit C.A.R.D. Act of 2009

Graphics infographic

The Blender Foundation has just released Blender 2.5 Alpha 1, the second official testing release of the Blender 2.5 series.  The list of improvements and new features is far too extensive for me to cover here, but some of the highlights include:

• The Sculpting system has been improved, Thanks to the Durian Open Movie project
  
• RAM usage has been improved
  
• New “Solidify” Modifier
  
• Improved workflow for Brush Textures
  
• Improved Keymap Editor
  
• “Rigify” Rigging System so go check it out and download it and help out with bugfixes and improvements.

Head on over to the Blender.org site and download it, and help them out with bugfixes and improvements.

blender.org – Blender 2.5.1.

Graphics blender, software

AnandTech has posted a review of Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5850 Toxic Edition. This graphics card is the first fully customized 5850 on the market. Since it comes with an excellent cooling solution, and is overclocked by default, will this card be the best 5850 out there? Read the article to find out. From the introduction to the article:

Today Sapphire is launching a pair of Radeon HD 5850 cards: the 5850 Vapor-X and the 5850 Toxic Edition. Both of these cards use a new custom design – a custom PCB, custom chokes, and of course a custom cooler – making the set of them the first custom 5850 on the market. Both are factory overclocked, with the Vapor-X clocking in at 735MHz/1050MHz, and the Toxic at 765MHz/1125MHz, and are otherwise identical. Sapphire tells us that only the Toxic will be launching in North America, while the Vapor-X will be available elsewhere.

via AnandTech: Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5850 Toxic Edition: Our First Fully-Custom 5850.

Hardware 5850, amd, ati, radeon

VRay users can check out the new collection of shaders for Maya, created by Paul Markowski Dreisen and Oilver.  In addition to the shaders, you can download a MEL script that can convert 3dsMax materials into VRay Shaders suitable for Maya.

Check out sample renders of the shaders here.

Check out the MEL script here.

Vray For Maya Shaderlibrary | cgheute.

Graphics maya, shaders, vray

Guru3d has an editorial today on the problems that NVidia is having with the launch of GeForce 470 and 480, which are Fermi based chips. The feeling is that will likely have a paper launch of the two gaming graphics cards in March, with a very low production numbers after that. Starting in the 2nd quarter, the availability of the long delayed cards will improve. If you take a look at the article, he lists clock speeds for the GeForce 470, but sidesteps giving any performance numbers. From the article:

Initially NVIDIA ran into a can of worms with the A1 revision of GF100 (Fermi), yields have had to be incredible horrible as they very quickly shifted to revision (build) A2 of the ASIC. After revision A2 was out some time passed and TSMC reported that the majority of their 40nm issues had been solved. Good proof of that is that ATI is pushing out many DX11 class product in much diversity and reasonable volume. That means the wafer yields though likely not very good where okay enough. So there's something else going on as well next to yield issues. Either a bug slipped in or the thermal package is causing issues resulting in lower than anticipated clock frequencies and perhaps heat related issues.

via NVIDIA and it’s troubled GeForce 400 series.

Hardware fermi, graphics cards, nvidia

I have been waiting for the Eyefinity⁶, which is the 6 DisplayPort version of the Radeon HD 5870, for some time now. Sure I have to buy all new monitors to support it, but what else would you expect with new technology. Earlier I posted that I suspected the cards would be available near the launch of the GeForce 470 and 480. That way, AMD could spoil the launch of the new NVidia cards. Guru3d is reporting that the launch date is March 11.

AMD will launch its new graphics adapters around the same time NVIDIA plans to release its GTX 480 and GTX 470 cards. These two models will be NVIDIA’s first adapters to support DirectX 11 and will be built on the next-generation CUDA architecture known as Fermi. It is not exactly surprising to see AMD trying to take away its rival’s spotlight by releasing its first Eyefinity 6 card. ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 edition is concerned, this product will make its official debut on March 11, just after the end of the show in Hannover, Germany.

via ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 card will arrive soon.

Hardware amd, ati, eyefinity, radeon