It’s been a long time coming, but AMD and NVidia have finally traded an olive branch and soon you’ll be able to drop your NVidia GPU’s in SLI configuration on an AMD-powered motherboard.
“Long term gamers probably remember that for a long time AMD offered great high-end CPUs, but in recent years, AMD’s stature as the preferred gaming CPU fell by the wayside and Intel CPUs have been the gamers’ choice. For this reason, we’ve only licensed SLI for motherboards with Intel chipsets,” Nvidia explains. “However, we’ve been recently hearing chants of “SLI for AMD CPUs”, and figured that now is a great time to do it.”
This is great for budget gamers, as AMD chipsets are typically a lot cheaper than their Intel counterparts and perform just as well (if not better in many cases), and matching them with NVidia GPU’s will make for some amazing gaming systems.
Daytum, the information tracking startup founded by the famous info-designer Nicholas Felton, has been acquired by Facebook.
Daytum is at least the third New York-based company Facebook has acquired, and its founders will be moving west to join the Facebook product design team at its headquarters.
I wonder if this means we’ll see yet another redesign of the Facebook interface, embracing some of Felton’s famously minimalistic design.
The annual Augmented Reality Awards event, the Auggies, is coming back to Santa Clara, CA this year with an impressive lineup including Bruce Sternling, Will Wright, and many more. With each team getting a mere 5-minutes to present their tools, it’s a high-adrenaline nail-biting event for presenters and attendees alike.
“Auggies is the opportunity for AR developers to unveil their vision of the future, not only in terms of technical progress, but also on how creative you can be with this technology”, said Ivan Franco of YDreams the 2010 Auggie winner. “Winning is truly an important recognition from the AR community and it surely means you’re defying the norm and taking one step further”.
If you’ll be at FMX2011 checkout on NVidia, then you should also swing by the Chaos Group presentations to see them presenting the new V-Ray 2.0 for Maya.
FMX 2011 coincides with the upcoming release of V-Ray 2.0 for Maya – now with interactive rendering on CPU and GPU – which will officially launch at the end of April. To demonstrate the plug- in’s new and enhanced features, Chaos Group will run whole day presentations at Weltenbauer’s booth, in addition to hosting two free scheduled workshops.
They also have a collection of free workshops you can register for.
At next week’s FMX show, NVidia is sponsoring a wide variety of presentations focused on lighting and rendering, including lots of the guys behind the recent film ‘Rio’. In addition, they’ll be talking about use of NVidia products with things like Maxwell Render and V-Ray.
“As attendees will see, some of the most advanced uses of GPU acceleration are found in the world of lighting and rendering for visual effects and animation,” said Dominick Spina, digital film technology manager, NVIDIA. “FMX brings together the artists and technologists who are advancing the state of the art, and NVIDIA continues to support this important conference, enabling these experts to share their groundbreaking work. ”
Get all the details and schedules after the break.
VR-Zone is reporting that NVIDIA will be launching a desktop version of Optimus at COMPUTEX called Synergy. NVidia developed Optimus to save battery life by automatically switching the power of the discrete GPU off when it is not needed and switching it on when needed again. In Synergy, NVidia is doing the same thing. Synergy allows you to switch between the integrated GPU on an integrated GPU, like a Sandy Bridge processor from Intel, and a discrete GPU. The idea is not to save power, instead it is to use the Sandy Bridge Quick Sync technology for performing video transcoding jobs. COMPUTEX is held in Taiwan from May 31 through June 4.
The video compares an Intel Core i7-2600 CPU with an AMD 3510MX. The Intel CPU is a Sandy Bridge processor and has Intel HD 3000 graphics. The AMD quad-core processor A8-3510MX has Radeon HD 6620M graphics. Of course it shows that AMD’s Llano performs better.
The folks at JESS3 made an interesting infographic for GE about the future of solar energy, and equally interesting is One Block Off the Grid‘s comparison on what if Fukushima had leaked solar panels. Our selection continues the Rare Earths Map, from Business Insider, and with Earth Touch‘s look at the Serengeti’s great migrations. Closing up, the full size of ocean depths, provided by Earth Periodical.
Our selection begins today with a look at the the first anniversary of the disastrous BP oil spill, provided by Big Government. Then, Life’s Little Misteries shows us America’s emergency oil stash, while GOOD compares a gallon of gas with a gallon of other liquids. The costs of monster trucks, from The Auto Insurance, and the mechanical monstrosities of fossil fuel extraction, by Well Home, finish our today’s Daily Viz from Visual Loop.
Daytum, the information tracking startup founded by the famous info-designer Nicholas Felton, has been acquired by Facebook.
The annual Augmented Reality Awards event, the Auggies, is coming back to Santa Clara, CA this year with an impressive lineup including Bruce Sternling, Will Wright, and many more. With each team getting a mere 5-minutes to present their tools, it’s a high-adrenaline nail-biting event for presenters and attendees alike.
If you’ll be at FMX2011 checkout on NVidia, then you should also swing by the Chaos Group presentations to see them presenting the new V-Ray 2.0 for Maya.
At next week’s 
The folks at 
Our selection begins today with a look at the the first anniversary of the disastrous BP oil spill, provided by 
VizWorld.com 
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