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PAX East is a three-day game festival for gamers. Gamers includes tabletop, video, and PC gamers. PAX East will take place in Boston, MA from March 11-13. Tom’s Hardware is reporting that the NVIDIA GTX 590 will be released at PAX East. If you remember last year, Nvidia released the GTX 470 and GTX 480 on the first day of PAX East 2010. One can resonably expect then, that the GTX 590 will be released on March 11th.

Like the Radeon HD 6990, the NVIDIA GTX 590 will be a dual GPU card. Therefore one can surmise that the GTX 590 will have simply double the number of cores, texture units, ROPS, and memory. If that is the case, then the 590 will have 1024 cores, 128 texture units, 96 ROPS, and 3 GB memory. GPU core speeds and memory speeds are unknown at this time. However, to minimize the power draw and the heat generated, they are likely to be slower than the GTX 580 which has a 772 MHz GPU core speed and 4.008 GHz memory speed.

via : GeForce GTX590 at PAX East; Asus, EVGA Only? @ Tom’s Hardware

Hardware gtx 590, nvidia

AMD has posted a video demonstrating its Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), which has been code named Llano. AMD compares it against an Intel Core i7-2630QM, which is based on the Sandy Bridge architecture. As one might expect, since it is an AMD demonstration, the Fusion APU beats the Intel Sandy Bridge chip. Then again, AMD does have a history of making great graphics cards through their purchase of ATI. Intel’s graphics have always been less than stellar.

Hardware amd, fusion, intel, llano

SweClockers.com has posted a video of the new MSI Radeon HD 6990. It is kind of fun to listen to the video and see what words I do understand, even though I do not speak Swedish. However, thanks to Google, we can translate what they wrote:

The upcoming super-hot video card Radeon HD 6990 makes an appearance at Cebit 2011

Never mind. We already knew that. What we did not know was the GPU core speed and memory speeds. Those have been recently revealed by Hexus.net. Hexus.net says that the AMD Radeon HD 6990 will have a core speed of 800 MHz and an effective memory clock of 4.5 GHz. However, Fudzilla is reporting the 6990 will have a core speed of 830 MHz and an effective memory clock of 5.0 GHz. Perhaps the difference is that someone is wrong, or perhaps the difference is that some board makers will be selling an overclocked version of the card. Until it is released, you can treat it as rumors.

The AMD Radeon HD 6970 currently has a core speed of 880 MHz and an effective memory clock of 5.5 GHz. This makes the dual GPU AMD Radeon HD 6990 slower than the 6970, but that is to be expected since they need to limit the amount of power that it uses, as well as limit the amount of heat that it generates. Since the 6990 does have two GPUs, one could expect that it would have 3072 stream processors, 192 texture units, and 4GB of GDDR5. Of course, that is just simply doubling the specs of the 6970. The rumored release date for the 6990 is March 8th.

Hardware 6990, amd, msi, radeon

The spiral galaxy NGC 247 is one of the closest spiral galaxies of the southern sky. In this new view from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope in Chile large numbers of the galaxy’s component stars are clearly resolved and many glowing pink clouds of hydrogen, marking regions of active star formation, can be made out in the loose and ragged spiral arms.

NGC 247 is part of the Sculptor Group, a collection of galaxies associated with the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253, also shown in eso0902 and eso1025). This is the nearest group of galaxies to our Local Group, which includes the Milky Way, but putting a precise value on such celestial distances is inherently difficult.

To measure the distance from the Earth to a nearby galaxy, astronomers have to rely on a type of variable star called a Cepheid to act as a distance marker. Cepheids are very luminous stars, whose brightness varies at regular intervals. The time taken for the star to brighten and fade can be plugged into a simple mathematical relation that gives its intrinsic brightness. When compared with the measured brightness this gives the distance. However, this method isn’t foolproof, as astronomers think this period–luminosity relationship depends on the composition of the Cepheid.

Another problem arises from the fact that some of the light from a Cepheid may be absorbed by dust en route to Earth, making it appear fainter, and therefore further away than it really is. This is a particular problem for NGC 247 with its highly inclined orientation, as the line of sight to the Cepheids passes through the galaxy’s dusty disc.

However, a team of astronomers is currently looking into the factors that influence these celestial distance markers in a study called the Araucaria Project. The team has already reported that NGC 247 is more than a million light-years closer to the Milky Way than was previously thought, bringing its distance down to just over 11 million light-years.

Apart from the main galaxy itself, this view also reveals numerous galaxies shining far beyond NGC 247. In the upper right of the picture three prominent spirals form a line and still further out, far behind them, many more galaxies can be seen, some shining right through the disc of NGC 247.

This colour image was created from a large number of monochrome exposures taken through blue, yellow/green and red filters taken over many years. In addition exposures through a filter that isolates the glow from hydrogen gas have also been included and coloured red. The total exposure times per filter were 20 hours, 19 hours, 25 minutes and 35 minutes, respectively.

Science astronomy, eso

Today’s selection begins with a list of the least and most stressful jobs on the planet, featured on Business Insider. I’m sure everyone will have their own opinions on that, and it’s also interesting to see Don Lapre‘s most desired Professions by Youth. The Evolution of Higher Education is presented by WGU, and Voxy explains why it pays to be bilingual in these days. Closing up, Smartpress‘s excellent Graphic Designer’s Roadmap, for all of those who intend to follow this career.

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Graphics, Science design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations

JVC has their new GS-TD1 FullHD 3D Camcorder up on their website, and they’ve finally given a price for it.

Full HD 3D camcorder with 64GB internal Flash memory and an SDXC card slot offering spectacular 3D video recording and 3D still photography. Enjoy superb 3D playback on the 3.5″ touch panel LCD without the need for special glasses! The F1.2 Super Bright “JVC 3D TWIN HD GT LENS” and two Back-illuminated CMOS Sensors offer stunning 3D images with superior low-light performance, while JVC’s unique BIPHONIC audio technology reproduces dynamic 3D SOUND. Packed with a range of features that provide easy 3D shooting for everyone.

How much does 64GB of 3D goodness cost?  1599 £ (Roughly $2600 USD).

via NEW | GS-TD1 | JVC Everio Full HD 3D Camcorder at JVC.

Hardware 3d, camcorder, jvc, stereoscopic

The ACM is now accepting submissions for the upcoming SC11 conference, this year to be in Seattle.  This year they plan to focus heavily on the huge data problem, how do you deal with it and what can HPC do about it? That’s interesting for some of you, but for many you probably don’t care.  For those of you, they’ve got a new feature this year you might want to pay closer attention to:  The first ever “Visualization Showcase”.

“The visualization showcase will be set up much like a museum or art exhibit, giving conference participants the opportunity to browse and enjoy scientific visualizations that are at once beautiful and able to communicate important research results,” said Jim Costa, technical program co-chair and a senior manager at Sandia National Laboratory. “It also gives the many visualization experts in our community the change to become more active participants in the technical program.”

Sounds neat huh?  Unfortunately, I don’t see anything on the SC11 website or Submission form about how you get entries in.

Get the full details after the break.

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Science conference, sc11

Autodesk has a big announcement today, the new Entertainment Creation Suite Premium 2012, including new versions of 3dsMax, Maya, Mudbox, and more!  The new version a new multi-threaded graphics core, part of the “Project Excalibur” initiative .  This gives you not only better performance, but better visuals during interactivity making the whole suite easier to use and faster to get to your desired objective.

“The first time I loaded a scene in 3ds Max 2012 I could see the soft lighting and shadows right in the viewport. This had the biggest impact on me. I suddenly felt more productive; like the barriers to my creativity were falling away,” said Stephen Lebed, 3ds Max beta tester and visual effects supervisor at MECHnology.

3dsMax will be available in April, with 3dsMax Design later this month.  Get the full press releases for these products after the break.

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Graphics 3dsmax, autodesk, maya, softimage, software

Last year we did a fair bit of talking about Lucid, and their Hydra chip. The Lucid Hydra chip is an independent solution to allow multiple GPUs to render scenes in games. This means that you are no longer dependent on SLI from NVidia or Crossfire from ATI. Lucid is able to perform this bit of magic by intercepting any OpenGL or DirectX calls. Asus developed a motherboard based on the Hydra chip, as did MSI. A little over a year ago, we even brought you some reviews of the Hydra chip.

Today, LucidLogix has announced a new software product called Virtu, which is short for GPU virtualization. Virtu intercepts any OpenGL or DirectX calls, just like the Hydra chip did. Virtu allows you to use both the GPU on the Intel Sandy Bridge processor as well as a discrete graphics card from NVIDIA or ATI. If you are playing a demanding 3-D game, then Virtu will send all the calls to the NVIDIA or ATI graphics card. If you are transcoding a video, then Virtu will send this to the GPU on the Intel Sandy Bridge processor, which is better for the task. Anandtech has a review of the new Virtu software.

Once setup there’s no user intervention necessary – the software just works. Fire up a game and it’ll run on your discrete GPU. Visit YouTube or transcode a video and your discrete GPU powers down leaving Sandy Bridge’s on-die graphics to handle the workload.

There is definite overhead to Virtu – I measured 2 – 8% on average, however I did see a 30% figure pop up in DiRT 2 on NVIDIA hardware. I’d expect the performance hit to be less than 10% in most cases.

via : Lucid’s Virtu Enables Simultaneous Integrated/Discrete GPU on Sandy Bridge Platforms @ Anandtech

Hardware hydra, lucid, virtu

Among all the natural disasters, earthquakes are, certainly, one of the most devastating. Almost impossible to predict, it’s a tremendous challenge for every nation in high-risk regions to prepare themselves for the tragedy. GOOD made an infographic pinpointing where the next earthquake might hit, but the truth is that preparing for such disasters should be on the top of every government’s priority list. Another major concern worldwide it’s the dependence on oil. The folks at One Block of the Grid challenge us to imagine a World without the “Black Gold”, and Bill Shrink made an interactive chart featuring gas prices around the world. The alternative, as we all know, is to shift to renewable energy, and we can see the state of adoption in the USA from Cooler Planet‘s piece. To close this selection, Solar Panel Free Quotes shows us some impressive figures about the use of Solar Panels around the World.

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Graphics, Science design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations