Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1: Intel inside an Android?

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards, Processors, Mobile | June 3, 2013 - 03:00 AM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: Intel, atom, Clover Trail+, SoC, Samsung, Galaxy Tab 3 10.1

While Reuters is being a bit cagey with their source, if true: Intel may have nabbed just about the highest profile Android tablet design win possible. The, still currently unannounced, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 is expected to embed Intel's Clover Trail+ System on a Chip (SoC). Samsung would not be the largest contract available in the tablet market, their previous tablets ship millions of units each; they are a good OEM vendor to have.

Source: BGR India

Samsung is also known for releasing multiple versions of the same device for various regions and partners. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 did not have a variety of models with differing CPUs like, for instance, the Galaxy S4 phone did; the original "10.1" contained an NVIDIA Tegra 2 and the later "2 10.1" embed a TI OMAP 4430 SoC. It is entirely possible that Intel won every Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 tablet ever, but it is also entirely possible that they did not.

Boy Genius Report India (BGR India, video above) also claims more specific hardware based on a pair of listings at GLBenchmark. The product is registered under the name Santos10: GT-P5200 being the 3G version, and GT-P5210 being the Wi-Fi version.

These specifications are:

Intel Atom Z2560 800-933 MHz dual-core SoC (4 threads, 1600 MHz Turbo)
PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0)
1280x800 display
Android 4.2.2

I am not entirely sure what Intel has to offer with Clover Trail+ besides, I would guess, reliable fabrication. Raw graphics performance is still about half of Apple's A6X GPU although, if the leaked resolution is true, it has substantially less pixels to push without being attached to an external display.

Maybe Intel made it too cheap to refuse?

Source: Reuters

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Galaxy's Factory Overclocked GTX 770 Graphics Card Is Now Available for $400

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 2, 2013 - 12:43 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: nvidia, gtx 770, graphics card, gk-104, galaxy

Galaxy recently made its custom factory overclocked GTX 770 graphics card available. The new card is not the fastest GTX 770, and doesn't quite embrace the supa-pipe as much (as Josh would say), but it looks to be a good deal all the same, giving you a quieter HSF and a decently-overclocked Geforce GTX 770 GPU for $399.99.

The Galaxy GeForce GTX 770 2GB (77XPH6DV6KXZ) takes NVIDIA's GTX 770 GPU with 1,536 GK-104 based CUDA cores and overclocks it to 1110 MHz base and 1163 MHz boost clockspeeds. The 2GB of GDDR5 memory is only clocked at the reference 7010 MHz, however.

The card has the same video outputs as other GTX 770 cards: two DL-DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort output. The card with its dual slot, dual fan cooler is 10” in length and requires a 600W PSU at minimum (not solely for the GPU). It needs one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCI-E power connector.

Galaxy provides a two year warranty for the card. It is available now for around $400 at various retailers.

Read more about other factory overclocked GTX 770 graphics cards at PC Perspective!

Source: Newegg

ASUS Launches GTX 770 DirectCU II OC Graphics Card

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 1, 2013 - 06:00 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, gtx 770, graphics card

NVIDIA recently unveiled its GTX 770 GPU. Sitting between the GTX 680 and GTX 780, the Geforce GTX 770 is a refined GK104 with higher clockspeeds and improved GPU boost. It features 1536 CUDA cores and a 256-bit memory bus.

While the stock GTX 770 comes clocked at 1046 MHz base and 1085 MHz boost, ASUS is factory overclocking its DirectCU II OC card with a maximum boost GPU clockspeed of 1110 MHz. The 2GB of GDDR5 memory on the card will come clocked at 7010 MHz.

ASUS GTX 770 DirectCU II OC Graphics Card.jpg

The differentiating factor here (aside from the overclock) is the custom DirectCU II cooler. ASUS has fitted the overclocked GTX 770 with a DirectCU cooler that uses copper heatpipes that directly contact the GPU and attach to an aluminum fin stack. The heatsink is, in turn, cooled by two 80mm fans. ASUS claims that the GTX 770 DirectCU II OC is up to 20% cooler and three-times quieter than the referrence NVIDIA cooler. Other features include a 10-phase DIGI+ VRM, and “Super Alloy Power” capacitors, chokes, and MOSFETs. The dual slot card is 10.7” long and includes two DL-DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort video ouptut. ASUS' GPU Tweak software will allow users to adjust core and memory clockspeeds, voltage, fan speeds, and the power control target.

The ASUS GTX 770 DirectCU II OC is shipping now and will be available at retailers soon. In fact, the card is avaiable at Newegg right now for just under $410.

Read more about NVIDIA's GTX 770 GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Review - GK104 Speed Bump @ PC Perspective!

Source: Videocardz

NVIDIA Launches New High-Performance 700M Graphics Cards

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 1, 2013 - 05:11 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: gtx 700M, nvidia, mobile gpu, kepler, 780m, 700m

Earlier this year (beginning of April), NVIDIA introduced the first set of mobile graphics cards in its 700M series. These were relatively low-end cards that features at most 384 CUDA cores and were based on NVIDIA's 600-series Kepler architecture.

NVIDIA is now adding higher-end mobile GPUs to the 700M family with the GTX 760M, GTX 765M, GTX 770M, and GTX 780M. These chips are still based on Kepler (600-series), but feature more CUDA cores, more memory, a wider memory bus, and faster clockspeeds. The GTX 780M is not quite the mobile equivalent to the desktop GTX 680, but NVIDIA is matching it up against AMD's 8970M GPU and claims that it can run games like Sleeping Dogs, Assassins Creed 3, and Borderlands 2 at Ultra settings (1080p). The GTX 770M is also capable of running modern games, though some detail setitng may need to be turned down.

The chart below details the various specifications and compares the new GTX 700M cards to the existing GT 700M GPUs. At the high end, NVIDIA has the GTX 780M with 1,536 CUDA cores, a base clock of 823 MHz, and 4GB of GDDR5 memory (1250 MHz) on a 256-bit bus. The GTX 770M occupies the mid-range mobile gaming slot with 960 CUDA cores, a base clock of 811 MHz, and a memory clock of 1GHz. The GTX 760M and GTX 765M have similar hardware specifications, but the GTX 765M has a higher GPU base clock of 850 MHz versus the GTX 760M's 657 MHz base clock. The low end GTX 700M GPUs (760M and 765M) feature 768 CUDA cores, a 128-bit memory bus, and memory clockspeeds of 1GHz.

	GTX 720M	GTX 735M	GT 740M	GT 750M	GTX 760M	GTX 765M	GTX 770M	GTX 780M
CUDA Cores	96	384	384	384	768	768	960	1536
GPU Base Clock	938 MHz	889 MHz	980 MHz	967 MHz	657 MHz	850 MHz	811 MHz	823Mhz
Memory Clock	1000 MHz	1000 MHz	2500 MHz	2500 MHz	1000 MHz	1000 MHz	1000 MHz	1250 MHz
Bus Width	64-bit	64-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit	192-bit	256-bit
					New	New	New	New

Further, GPU Boost 2.0, Geforce Experience software, and NVIDIA Optimus support are features of the new GTX 700M graphics cards. You can read more about these NVIDIA technologies in this article by motherboard reviewer Morry Teitelman.

These cards are based on NVIDIA's 600-series despite the 700M moniker. They should provide OEMs with some good gaming options on the NVIDIA side of things and allow for some more competition in the gaming notebook hardware space against the existing AMD cards.

Source: NVIDIA

EVGA Outfits GTX 780 With Hydro Copper Water Block

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 1, 2013 - 01:38 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: watercooling, nvidia, hydro copper, gtx 780, gpu, gk110, evga

EVGA GTX 780 Hydro Copper GPUs

While NVIDIA restricted partners from going with aftermarket coolers on the company's GTX TITAN graphics card, the recently released NVIDIA GTX 780 does not appear to have the same limits placed upon it. As such, many manufacturers will be releasing GTX 780 graphics cards with custom coolers. One such design that caught my attention was the Hydro Copper full cover waterblock from EVGA.

EVGA GTX 780 with Hydro Copper Water Block (2).jpg

This new cooler will be used on at least two upcoming EVGA graphics cards, the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Classified. EVGA has not yet announced clockspeeds or pricing for the Classified edition, but the GTX 780 Hydro Copper will be a GTX 780 GPU clocked at 980 MHz base and 1033 MHz boost. The 3GB of GDDR5 memory is stock clocked at 6008 MHz, however. It uses a single 8-pin and a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector. This card is selling for around $799 at retailers such as Newegg.

The GTX 780 Classified Hydro Copper will have a factory overclocked GTX 780 GPU and 3GB of GDDR5 memory at 6008 MHz, but beyond that details are scarce. The 8+8-pin PCI-E power connectors do suggest a healthy overclock (or at least that users will be able to push the cards after they get them).

Both the GTX 780 and GTX 780 Classified Hydro Copper graphics cards feature two DL-DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort video outputs.

EVGA GTX 780 Classified with Hydro Copper Water Block (1).jpg

The Hydro Copper cooler itself is the really interesting bit about these cards though. It is a single slot, full cover waterblock that will cool the entire graphics card (GPU, VRM, Memory, ect). It has two inlet/outlet ports that can be swapped around to accommodate SLI setups or other custom water tube routing. A configurable LED-backlit EVGA logo adorns the side of the card and can be controlled in software. A 0.25 x 0.35 pin matrix is used in the portion of the block above the GPU to increase the surface area and aid in cooling. Unfortunately, while the card and cooler are single slot, you will actually need two case PCI expansion slots due to the two DL-DVI connectors.

It looks like a neat card, and it should perform well. I'm looking forward to seeing reviews of the card and how the cooler holds up to overclocking. Buying an overclocked card with a pre-installed waterblock is not for everyone but having a water cooled GPU with a warranty will be worth it more than pairing a stock card with a custom block.

Source: EVGA

Never mind the 780; here comes the GTX 770

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 30, 2013 - 02:55 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: nvidia, kepler, gtx 770, gtx 680, GK104, geforce, MSI GTX660 HAWK

$400 is a tempting number, much less expensive than the $650 price tag on the GTX 780 and right in line with the existing GTX670 as well as AMD's HD7970. You will probably not see many at that price, $450 is more likely as there will be very few reference cards released, all manufacturers will be putting there own spins on the design of these cards, which brings the price in line with the GTX680. Performance wise these cards outpace the two current single GPU flagship cards, not by enough to make it worth upgrading from a 7970 or 680 but certainly enough to attract owners of previous generation cards. [H]ard|OCP reviewed MSI's Lightning model, with dual fans, an overclock of 104MHz on the base clock and 117MHz boost, plus a completely unlocked BIOS for even more tweaking choices.

If you want to see how well it fares on our new Frame Rating metric you will have to read Ryan's full review here.

"NVIDIA debuts the "new" GeForce GTX 770 today. The GeForce GTX 770 is poised to provide refreshed performance, for a surprising price. We evaluate a retail MSI GeForce GTX 770 Lightning flagship video card from MSI with specifications that will make any enthusiast smile. The $399 price point just got a kick in the pants."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

Source: [H]ard|OCP

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Review - GK104 Speed Bump

Author: Ryan Shrout

Date: May 30, 2013

Subject: Graphics Cards

Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Tagged: nvidia, kepler, gtx 770, gtx 680, GK104, geforce

GK104 gets cheaper and faster

A week ago today we posted our review of the GeForce GTX 780, NVIDIA's attempt to split the difference between the GTX 680 and the GTX Titan graphics cards in terms of performance and pricing. Today NVIDIA launches the GeForce GTX 770 that, even though it has a fancy new name, is a card and a GPU that you are very familiar with.

The NVIDIA GK104 GPU Diagram

Based on GK104, the same GPU that powers the GTX 680 (released in March 2012), GTX 670 and the GTX 690 (though in a pair), the new GeForce GTX 770 has very few changes from the previous models that are really worth noting. NVIDIA has updated the GPU Boost technology to 2.0 (more granular, better controls in software) but the real changes come in the clocks speeds.

The GTX 770 is still built around 4 GPCs and 8 SMXs for a grand total of 1536 CUDA cores, 128 texture units and 32 ROPs. The clock speeds have increased from 1006 MHz base clock and 1058 MHz Boost up to 1046 MHz base and 1085 MHz Boost. That is a pretty minor speed bump in reality, an increase of just 4% or so over the previous clock speeds.

NVIDIA did bump up the GDDR5 memory speed considerably though, going from 6.0 Gbps to 7.0 Gbps, or 1750 MHz. The memory bus width remains 256-bits wide but the total memory bandwidth has jumped up to 224.3 GB/s.

Maybe the best change for PC gamers is the new starting MSRP for the GeForce GTX 770 at $399 - a full $50-60 less than the GTX 680 was selling for as of yesterday. If you happened to pick up a GTX 680 recently, you are going to want to look into your return options as this will surely annoying the crap out of you.

If you want more information on the architecture design of the GK104 GPU, check out our initial article on the chips release from last year. Otherwise, with those few specification changes out of the way, let's move on to some interesting information.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB Reference Card

Tired of this design yet? If so, you'll want to look into some of the non-reference options I'll show you on the next page from other vendors, but I for one am still taken with the design of these cards. You will find a handful of vendors offering up re-branded GTX 770 options at the outset of release but most will have their own SKUs to showcase.

Continue reading our review of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 graphics card!!

AMD Catalyst 13.6 Beta Drivers For Windows and Linux Now Available

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 28, 2013 - 11:32 PM | Tim Verry
Tagged: gpu, drivers, catalyst 13.6 beta, beta, amd

AMD has released its Catalyst 13.6 beta graphics driver, and it fixes a number of issues under both Windows 8 and Linux. The new beta driver is also compatible with the existing Catalyst 13.5 CAP1 (Catalyst Application Profile) which improves performance of several PC games.

As far as the Windows version of the graphics driver, Catalyst 13.6 adds OpenCL GPU acceleration support to Adobe's Premiere Pro CC software and enables AMD Wireless Display technology on systems with the company's A-Series APUs and either Broadcom or Atheros Wi-Fi chipsets. AMD has also made a couple of tweaks to its Enduro technology, including correctly identifying when a Metro app idles and offloading the corresponding GPU tasks to integrated graphics instead of a discrete card. The new beta driver also resolves an issue with audio dropout over HDMI.

On the Linux side of things, Catalyst 13.6 beta adds support for the following when using AMD's A10, A8, A6, and A4 APUs:

Ubuntu 13.04
Xserver 1.14
GLX_EXT_buffer age

The driver fixes several bugs as well, including resolving black screen and corruption issues under TF2, an issue with OpenGL applications and VSYNC, and UVD playback issues where the taskbar would disappear and/or the system would experience a noticeable performance drop while playing a UVD in XBMC.

You can grab the new beta driver from the AMD website.

Source: AMD

Trimming the TITAN; NVIDIA's GTX 780

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 24, 2013 - 06:10 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: nvidia, gtx 780, gk110, geforce

With 768 more CUDA Cores than the 680 but 384 less than the TITAN the 780 offers improvements over the previous generation and will be available for about $350 less than the TITAN. As you can see in [H]ard|OCP's testing it does outperform the 680 and 7970 but not by a huge margin which hurts the price to performance ratio and makes it more attractive for 680 owners to pick up a second card for SLI. AMD owners with previous generation cards and deep pockets might be tempted to pick up a pair of these cards as they show very good frame rating results in Ryan's review.

"NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 780 video card has finally been unveiled. We review the GTX 780 with real world gaming with the most intense 3D games, including Metro: Last Light. If the GTX TITAN had you excited but was a bit out of your price range, the GTX 780 should hold your excitement while being a lot less expensive."

Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:

Graphics Cards

Source: [H]ard|OCP

Epic Games is disappointed in the PS4 and Xbox One?

Subject: Editorial, General Tech, Graphics Cards, Systems | May 23, 2013 - 06:40 PM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: xbox one, xbox, unreal engine, ps4, playstation 4, epic games

Unreal Engine 4 was presented at the PlayStation 4 announcement conference through a new Elemental Demo. We noted how the quality seemed to have dropped in the eight months following E3 while the demo was being ported to the console hardware. The most noticeable differences were in the severely reduced particle counts and the non-existent fine lighting details; of course, Epic pumped the contrast in the PS4 version which masked the lack of complexity as if it were a stylistic choice.

Still, the demo was clearly weakened. The immediate reaction was to assume that Epic Games simply did not have enough time to optimize the demo for the hardware. That is true to some extent, but there are theoretical limits on how much performance you can push out of hardware at 100% perfect utilization.

Now that we know both the PS4 and, recently, the Xbox One: it is time to dissect more carefully.

A recent LinkedIn post from EA Executive VP and CTO, Rajat Taneja, claims that the Xbox One and PS4 are a generation ahead of highest-end PC on the market. While there are many ways to interpret that statement, in terms of raw performance that statement is not valid.

As of our current knowledge, the PlayStation 4 contains an eight core AMD "Jaguar" CPU with an AMD GPU containing 18 GCN compute units, consisting of a total of 1152 shader units. Without knowing driving frequencies, this chip should be slightly faster than the Xbox One's 768 shader units within 12 GCN compute units. The PS4 claims their system has a total theoretical 2 teraFLOPs of performance and the Xbox One would almost definitely be slightly behind that.

Back in 2011, the Samaritan Demo was created by Epic Games to persuade console manufacturers. This demo was how Epic considered the next generation of consoles to perform. They said, back in 2011, that this demo would theoretically require 2.5 teraFLOPs of performance for 30FPS at true 1080p; ultimately their demo ran on the PC with a single GTX 680, approximately 3.09 teraFLOPs.

This required performance, (again) approximately 2.5 teraFLOPs, is higher than what is theoretically possible for the consoles, which is less than 2 teraFLOPs. The PC may have more overhead than consoles, but the PS4 and Xbox One would be too slow even with zero overhead.

Now, of course, this does not account for reducing quality where it will be the least noticeable and other cheats. Developers are able to reduce particle counts and texture resolutions in barely-noticeable places; they are also able to render below 1080p or even below 720p, as was the norm for our current console generation, to save performance for more important things. Perhaps developers might even use different algorithms which achieve the same, or better, quality for less computation at the expense of more sensitivity to RAM, bandwidth, or what-have-you.

But, in the end, Epic Games did not get the ~2.5 teraFLOPs they originally hoped for when they created the Samaritan Demo. This likely explains, at least in part, why the Elemental Demo looked a little sad at Sony's press conference: it was a little FLOP.

Update, 5/24/2013: Mark Rein of Epic Games responds to the statement made by Rajat Taneja of EA. While we do not know his opinion on consoles... we know his opinion on EA's opinion:

RT @developonline: EA: Xbox One and PS4 a generation ahead of PC develop-online.net/news/44289/EA-… <-no they’re not. I call bullshit on this one.

— Mark Rein (@MarkRein) May 23, 2013

Source: Rajat Taneja, of EA

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards, Processors, Mobile | June 3, 2013 - 03:00 AM | Scott Michaud Tagged: Intel, atom, Clover Trail+, SoC, Samsung, Galaxy Tab 3 10.1

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 2, 2013 - 12:43 AM | Tim Verry Tagged: nvidia, gtx 770, graphics card, gk-104, galaxy

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 1, 2013 - 06:00 PM | Tim Verry Tagged: nvidia, kepler, gtx 770, graphics card

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 1, 2013 - 05:11 PM | Tim Verry Tagged: gtx 700M, nvidia, mobile gpu, kepler, 780m, 700m

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 1, 2013 - 01:38 PM | Tim Verry Tagged: watercooling, nvidia, hydro copper, gtx 780, gpu, gk110, evga

Subject: Graphics Cards | May 30, 2013 - 02:55 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom Tagged: nvidia, kepler, gtx 770, gtx 680, GK104, geforce, MSI GTX660 HAWK