Toms Hardware has their massive 20 page review online talking about everything you ever wanted to know about the new Fermi GeForce cards, and ends up breaking it down into 3 main things: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The cliff notes (reduced for size):
First, the good—performance. Fortunately for Nvidia, it had a few targets in the Radeon HD 5970, 5870, and 5850 as it was generating specs. While we’re sure the company wishes it was shipping 512-shader cards instead of pared-down boards, it’s hitting high-enough clocks to make GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 generally-faster than Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon HD 5850. (…)
What about the bad? Well, getting your feet in the door here costs $350. A flagship GeForce GTX 480 runs $500. Radeon HD 5850s recently dropped back down to $300 and Radeon HD 5870s can be found around $400. Though the GeForce cards are faster than their single-GPU competition, the premium is hard to swallow if power and display connectivity are important to you, and less-so if PhysX, CUDA, or 3D Vision are more interesting. Do we expect AMD to drop its prices in response? Don’t count on it. (…)
Then there’s the ugly: power. Nvidia argues that the enthusiast space isn’t as sensitive to figures like power consumption, and that lofty load figures still only translate to a few dollars per year. (…) Of course, that power invariably gets dissipated as heat, and thus the GTX 480, in particular, becomes a very hot card, cresting 160 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface during game play.
Be sure to go read the full review for all the details.
NVidia is unveiling the new GeForce GTX400, based on the Fermi chipset, and it looks like most of the rumors were true.
I’m not going to bore you with all of the details, but I will update this post with crucial nuggets of information and links to other reviews. First off is this morning’s leaked TechARP report, which is now back online:
Guru3d has posted a video showing an Eyefinity6 setup in action. The take-away from this video, just like the last one we posted about, is that in a 3×2 configuration, the bezels get in the way. This is especially true in first person shooter games.
We’ve made it Boston and we’re finishing up our setup for PAX East! Everyone’s been working around the clock to get our booth ready in time for today’s opening. We have over 16 systems ready for gamers to get their hands on, with everything from DX11 demos to games like Starcraft 2, Metro 2033, and Just Cause 2 in 3D Vision Surround! And up in the GeForce LAN, we have 40 GTX 480 PCs waiting for the eager gamers who can play their hearts out up until 2am tonight.
In addition to the booth and LAN, we’ve been building up our main stage event, taking place tonight from 6-7pm EST. Check out this video of the set up to get an idea of what goes on behind the scenes and don’t forget- we’ll be live blogging the event here on the blog!
We’ve got three 25′ x 15′ screens being installed for our GeForce GTX 480 celebration. HUGE. 3D Vision all over.
Looks like Hexus goofed as well and prematurely posted their Fermi review, including a slew of benchmarks that show the average FPS, Power Consumption, and Temperature. They are best summed up by this Overclock.net commenter:
According to the Hexus review, the 5970 is still on top of the dog pile. On average, the 480 saw about a 7% FPS increase in most games compared to the 5870. Is that worth $100+ for 7%? Not to me. I’ll of course be keeping an eye out for more reviews (guru3d, Tom’s Hardware, Overclockersclub, etc). Oh well, was hoping for a reason to jump ship and get some more performance, but that would probably mean getting a new PSU AND $500 GPU from Nvidia before seeing any noticeable gains. Bleh, hope Fermi doesn’t end up sucking. I don’t care about Red/Green team, I just want more performance for my money.
Edit: lol @ 480 for being hotter than 5970 and drawing more power.
One of VizWorld’s undercover agents at PAXEAST snapped a quick & dirty pic of the Unigine Heaven 2.0 benchmark running on the new NVidia GeForce GTX480, based on Fermi.
It’s a bit difficult to read, but the cliff-notes version:
FPS: 36.0
Scores: 908
Min FPS: 19
Max FPS: 85.4
Render: Direct3d11, 1920×1080 4xAA Fullscreen
Trilinear Filter, 16x Anisotropy
Tessellation: extreme
The card, according to the benchmark, is the NVidia GeForce GTX480 8.17.12.5615, with 1536Mb of RAM.
For comparison, some benchmark results from around the net:
ATI Radeon HD5700 – 24.2 fps, 1680×1050 with no AA
ATI Radeon HD5800 – 32.2 fps, 1920×1080 with 2xAA
ATI Radeon HD5800 – 48 fps, 2560×1600 with no AA
So, fairly impressive, given that most of the other demos are at lower AA settings or lower Anisotropy settings. Our agent is still roaming the floor, and as he sends in more pics, I’ll post them here.
If you’ve ever attempted to render a network graph, then you know that the fine details of colors, layout, connection strategies, and size are more art than science. Requiring constant tweaking and an eye not only for the science but the “beauty” of the result, people frequently stop with ‘good enough’ simply out of frustration. Not any more, thanks to a new tool called ‘Gephi’.
Gephi is an interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds of networks and complex systems, dynamic and hierarchical graphs.
It looks truly amazing, earning digital urban‘s title of ‘a Photoshop for Graphs’. Interactive refinement and editing, combined with the multitude of options and settings inside Gephi, really do lead to a powerful and beautiful tool. See the demonstration video below.
A startup named ‘NTERA’ has announcement of a new technology called ‘Nanochromics’ that can create printable, flexible, interactive full-color displays that could ‘revolutionize dynamic comunication’ for several media.
“Printegration” — the process of integrating a display, a sensor, a battery or other electronic components by using successive layered printing steps – will take print to the next level of sophistication, he says. “Once you can add a dynamic element to what we have always considered static media, like newspapers or magazines, you’ve disrupted things and brought new life to them.” As an example, Giacoponello cites experiments in using printed-battery-powered displays in magazine advertising, which is already a reality. “You can see how devices like e-readers are changing the perception of what the nature of printed media is,” says Giacoponello.
They mention the potential of dynamically updating SmartCard badges, shipping labels, and newspapers. Read the full release after the break, and hit their site.
The CAD Panacea blog has some details on the newly announced AutoCAD2011, including many screenshots of the new user interface and modeling capabilities. A few to note:
AutoCAD now has the same ‘dark grey’ background as 3dsMax and Maya
Several improvements to the Ribbon
2010′s Advantage Pack “Add Selected” tool is now standard.
Visual Economics has posted a huge infographic giving a time-line of the new health-care bill. The graphic provides key provisions of the bill, along with a time-line of when other events take place.
Toms Hardware has their massive 20 page review online talking about everything you ever wanted to know about the new Fermi GeForce cards, and ends up breaking it down into 3 main things: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The cliff notes (reduced for size):
If you’ve ever attempted to render a network graph, then you know that the fine details of colors, layout, connection strategies, and size are more art than science. Requiring constant tweaking and an eye not only for the science but the “beauty” of the result, people frequently stop with ‘good enough’ simply out of frustration. Not any more, thanks to a new tool called ‘Gephi’.
A startup named ‘NTERA’ has announcement of a new technology called ‘Nanochromics’ that can create printable, flexible, interactive full-color displays that could ‘revolutionize dynamic comunication’ for several media.
The CAD Panacea blog has some details on the newly announced AutoCAD2011, including many screenshots of the new user interface and modeling capabilities. A few to note:
VizWorld.com 
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