LucidLogix Virtu MVP 2.0 Software Suite Now Available

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards | February 20, 2013 - 12:49 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: lucid, virtu MVP, virtu, hyperformance

As promised at CES, Lucidlogix has released their Virtu MVP 2.0 for purchase to anyone who wants to buy it.  Their GPU Virtualization software for SandyBridge and IvyBridge based systems with a discrete card allows you to jump back a forth between the embedded GPU on your processor and the graphics card without needing to move monitor cables or reboot.  That allows you to save your laptops battery life when the discrete GPU is not needed but to instantly enable it the second you fire up a compatible game, the list of which has grown since the release of their original Virtu MVP.  They have also improved their Virtual VSync and Hyperformance features which we reviewed last summer on an Origin laptop. 

The move to selling the product directly to consumers is beneficial as previously you could only get the software and updates from the manufacturer of your motherboard or your laptop.  As anyone who has dealt with the infrequency graphics driver updates from manufacturers is well aware, the updates are few and far between.  It is much better to be able to acquire the software from the vendor who creates it in the first place.  Head over to Lucidlogix to read more and perhaps buy one of the three versions available.

"The optimal system specifications Virtu MVP 2.0 include an Intel® Core™ i5 (Sandy Bridge) on an Intel Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge motherboard with an NVIDIA® Geforce 460GTX or similar or better AIB and 2GB or more memory running Windows® 7 or Windows 8 in either 32-bit or 64-bit modes.

With special launch prices, Virtu MVP 2.0 is now available in three models: Basic with GPU virtualization for $34.99 (USD), Standard with Virtual Vsync for $44.99 and Pro with Hyperformance and Virtual Vsync for $54.99."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Tilera etches '*ss-kicking' 72-core system-on-chip for network gear @ The Register
• Samsung develops a programmable mobile GPU @ The Inquirer
• Canon PIxma MG6320 Review @ TechReviewSource

PCPer Live! Crysis 3 Game Stream - Win Games and Graphics Cards from AMD!

Subject: Graphics Cards | February 19, 2013 - 08:00 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: video, tahiti, radeon, never settle reloaded, live, Crysis 3, crysis, amd

UPDATE: If you missed the live stream you can still catch the YouTube replay right here!!

On February 19th on the PC Perspective Live! page we will be streaming some single player game action of the new Crysis 3.  If there has ever been a game that defined the world of PC gaming graphics and technology, it is the Crysis series. 

"Sure, but can it play Crysis?"

There is probably no more famous line of dialogue that pigeon hole's new hardware releases. 

With the release of the latest version of Crysis 3 on February 19th, we will be teaming up with AMD once again to provide a fun and exciting PCPer Game Stream that includes game demonstrations and of course, prizes and game keys for those that watch the event LIVE! 

Crysis 3 Game Stream

5pm PT / 8pm ET - February 19th

PC Perspective Live! Page

Warning: this one will DEFINITELY have mature language and content!!

The stream will be sponsored by AMD and its Never Settle Reloaded game bundles which we previously told you about.  Depending on the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series GPU that you buy, you could get some amazing free games including:

• Radeon HD 7900 Series
  • FREE Crysis 3
  • FREE Bioshock Infinite
• Radeon HD 7800 Series
  • FREE Bioshock Infinite
  • FREE Tomb Raider
• Radeon HD 7900 CrossFire Set
  • FREE Crysis 3
  • FREE Bioshock Infinite
  • FREE Tomb Raider
  • FREE Far Cry 3
  • FREE Hitman: Absolution
  • FREE Sleeping Dogs

AMD's Robert Hallock (@Thracks on twitter) will be joining us via Skype to talk about the game's technology, performance considerations as well as helping me with some co-op gaming!

Of course, just to sweeten the deal a bit we have some prizes lined up for those of you that participate in our Crysis 3 Game Stream:

• 2 x Radeon HD 7970 3GB graphics cards
• 4 x Combo codes for both Crysis 3 AND Bioshock Infinite

Pretty nice, huh?  All you have to do to win is be present on the PC Perspective Live! Page during the event as we will announce both the content/sweepstakes method AND the winners!

Stop in on February 19th for some PC gaming fun!!

We interrupt your Titan previews for a look at comparitive Catalyst version performance

Subject: Graphics Cards | February 19, 2013 - 06:09 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, catalyst, 2012

Today might be Titan Preview Day as you can see from the links below as well as Ryan's article here, but [H]ard|OCP would like to offer you solid performance numbers instead.  They took a look back at the Catalyst 12.x series of drivers that AMD GPU owners have been using over the past year. With the HD 7970 and HD 7950 they tested 7 of AMD's past drivers for performance on four popular games.  The findings are fairly clear, after a poor start to the year AMD's drivers showed improved performance as the year went on, with leaps after games were released and the driver could be optimized for speed.  The HD7970 did improve over the year but it was the 7950 that proved to receive the biggest gains.

"We continuing our look at driver performance improvements over time by evaluating AMD’s 2012 driver performances on both the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950 video cards. We will see how drivers from the beginning of the year to the end of year have impacted real world gameplay performance . "

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

Graphics Cards

• NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan, Part 1: Titan For Gaming, Titan For Compute @ AnandTech
• Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Video Card Preview @ Ninjalane
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Video Card Preview @ Legit Reviews
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN; GK110’s Opening Act @ Hardware Canucks
• aming and Supercomputing Collide: NVIDIA Announces GeForce Titan @ Techgage
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Review @ OCC
• Asus GTX 660Ti DirectCU II TOP @ eTeknix
• EVGA GTX 650 Ti SSC 2 GB @ techPowerUp

GeForce 314.07 WHQL Drivers: Optimized For Crysis 3, Assassin's Creed 3 & Far Cry 3

Subject: Graphics Cards | February 19, 2013 - 01:50 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: nvidia, graphics drivers, geforce, 314.07

Just in time for the arrival of the Titan previews comes the new WHQL 314.07 Geforce driver from NVIDIA.  Instead of offering a list of blanket improvements and average frame rate increased, NVIDIA has assembled a list of charts showing performance differences between this driver and the previous one for their four top GPUs in both SLI and single card setups.  As well they attempt to answer the question "Will it play Crysis 3?" with the chart below, showing the performance you can expect with Very High settings at 1080p resolution and 4x AA.  They also provide a link to their GeForce Experience tool which will optimize your Crysis 3 settings to whatever NVIDIA card(s) you happen to be using.  Upgrade now as the new driver seems to offer improvements across the board.

The new GeForce 314.07 WHQL driver is now available to download. An essential update for gamers jumping into Crysis 3 this week, 314.07 WHQL improves single-GPU and multi-GPU performance in Crytek’s sci-fi shooter by up to 65%.

Other highlights include sizeable SLI and single-GPU performance gains of up to 27% in Assassin’s Creed III, 19% in Civilization V, 14% in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, 14% in DiRT 3, 11% in Just Cause 2, 10% in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, 10% in F1 2012, and 10% in Far Cry 3.

Rounding out the release is a ‘Excellent’ 3D Vision profile for Crysis 3, a SLI profile for Ninja Theory’s DmC: Devil May Cry, and an updated SLI profile for the free-to-play, third-person co-op shooter, Warframe.

You can download the GeForce 314.07 WHQL drivers with one click from the GeForce.com homepage; Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8 packages are available for desktop systems, and for notebooks there are Windows 7 and Windows 8 downloads that cover all non-legacy products.

Intel's embedded GPU might finally be 'good enough' according to JPR

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards | February 19, 2013 - 01:38 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: Q4 2012, NVIDA, jon peddie, Intel, amd

Jon Peddie Research have released their findings on the state of the discrete and integrated graphics market, not counting servers, smartphone nor ARM based systems.  While the overall PC market showed a negligible gain of 2.8% over the final quarter of 2012, discrete graphics sales saw a decline of 8.2%, which JPR attributes to a noticeable increase of purchases of systems with only an Intel or AMD embedded GPU.  When you break the quarter down by manufacturer the news is not good.  For AMD the last quarter did see an increase of less than 1% on desktop CPUs but declines of 19% in laptop CPU sales and 13.6% in discrete GPU sales.  Intel saw desktop CPU sales up 3% but lost over 6% on laptop sales with their overall decline compared to last quarter sitting at about 3%.  NVIDIA was hit the hardest at the end of 2012 with only their discrete GPU sales applying to this survey, a loss of 15% on the desktop and a loss of 18% on mobile GPUs lead to an overall decline of 16%.

Compared to the final quarter of 2011, AMD lost 29.4%, Intel 5% and NVIDIA 4.6%, reflecting the difficulty of making sales in the past year; the total discrete GPU market dropped almost 10% or about 3 million units.  Even with the companies making profits, in some cases significant profits, the entire GPU market is depressed with ARM based devices and smartphones starting to erode the market that is already shrinking thanks to Intel and AMD shipping CPUs with embedded GPUs that are good enough for many users needs.

"The news was disappointing for every one of the major players. AMD dropped 13.6%, Intel slipped the least, just 2.9%, and Nvidia declined the most with 16.7% quarter-to-quarter change, this coming on the heels of a spectacular third quarter. The overall PC market actually grew 2.8% quarter-to-quarter while the graphics market declined 8.2% reflecting a decline in double-attach. That may be attributed to Intel's improved embedded graphics, finally making "good enough" a true statement."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Ubuntu? Fedora? Mint? Debian? We'll find you the right Linux to swallow @ The Register
• HDMI breakout lets you sniff HDCP crypto keys @ Hack a Day
• Nvidia announces Tegra 4i : Tegra 4's smaller sibling @ Hardware.info
• AMD: Star Trek holodecks within reach @ The Register
• Kingston Joint Giveaway @ NikKTech

AMD wants to set the record straight on its future GPU strategy

Subject: Graphics Cards | February 15, 2013 - 01:50 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: southern islands, Solar System, Sea Islands, radeon, oland, mars, holycrapiamtotallyconfused, amd

Remember that story we posted last week and then discussed on the podcast about AMD not releasing any new GPUs in 2013?  Today we had a call with AMD that attempted to answer some questions, clear up some confusion and give us some insight to the company's direction.  I say 'attempted' because after a 53 minute discussion, we have some answers, but we also have some interesting questions that remain.

First, some definitions.  If you have heard about code names like "Solar System" and "Sea Islands" you might not know what they refer to.  Sea Islands is a new line that will fall into the 8000-series of products and will be a refresh, slightly different architecture based heavily on the Southern Islands parts you've come to love in the Radeon HD 7000 parts.  Solar System is the name AMD has given to the sub-category of Sea Islands directly related to mobile products, the 8000M. 

The slide that started this confusion - and our questions.

What might make things even more confusing is that there are some 8000-series parts that are already shipping in OEM desktops and notebooks that use verbatim HD 7000 GPU specs.  So what you have is a combination series with Radeon HD 8000 that is made up of some rebrands and at least a couple of "new" chips thus far.  Those two new GPUs, Mars and Oland (Radeon HD 8650 and HD 8670) depending on the mobile or desktop target, are already out and you can find them if you look hard.  They are NOT available in the channel or for DIY PC users. 

Our readers might be disappointed to learn that Sea Islands is heavily focused on the notebook and mobile markets though AMD did indicate that there some good things coming for the channel users in the future in 2013. 

We also learned that the HD 7900-series will remain the company's high end parts through the end of 2013 but AMD said that there are new SKUs set to be released in this series sometime this year as well.  Will that be the elusive HD 7990 dual-GPU product or maybe just something in the mainstream 7800 segments?  They wouldn't tell us but we are definitely hoping for higher performance parts.  You might also expect to see these new 7000-series parts to use Sea Islands silicon...

The Radeon HD 7970 looks like it will stay a focus for AMD throughout 2013.

Many readers might be wondering why AMD is breaking its standard cadence of near-yearly GPU releases.  The answer came from AMD's Roy Taylor, VP of Channel Sales, who said that "7000 series parts are continuing to ramp UP, sales are increasing" so it is premature for AMD, as a company intending to make money, to introduce a new series or architecture. 

In fact Roy was very emphatic about relieving us of potential ambiguity. 

We have products, we have a road map.  We are not announcing them now because we want to reposition the ones we have now.  We are not sitting still, we do not lack resources, we do not lack imagination.

So what can you expect for the future?  Sea Islands chips will continue to be released and eventually in the desktop, channel market and some of them will be branded as 7000-series parts and some of them will be branded as 8000-series parts.  They wouldn't give us information on whether or not you'll see BIGGER chips (which we would assume would be faster) than the current HD 7900 cards or if they would all be in the mainstream segment. 

AMD thinks its partnerships with key games like Crysis 3 will help keep momentum in 2013.

The residual message from this call was that AMD wants everyone to know that they have the best products on the market today and to maintain that momentum, AMD will enhance drivers, establish big partnerships with gaming companies and developers and release SOME new GPUs. 

AMD was cagey again when asked about the possibility of a new architecture by the end of 2013 but based on the reactions of AMD reps I tend to believe we will see it, though probably very very close to the end of that time.  (Update: AMD did in fact say that an entire new product stack would be releaed by the end of 2013.)

That all clear now?

UNIGINE's Newest Valley Benchmark Features Huge, Open-Space Expanses

Subject: General Tech, Graphics Cards | February 15, 2013 - 01:43 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: UNIGINE, valley benchmark

Move over Heaven, there is an uncanny new benchmark in town from UNIGINE called Valley, which takes your GPU on a journey to Siberia and forces it to labour on wide open spaces with full DX11 scenery.

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird's-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Editions of Valley Benchmark

Alongside a completely free Basic edition, Valley Benchmark provides in-depth performance reviews in the Advanced and Pro editions for hardware manufacturers, graphics driver developers, industry professionals and all individuals involved with video card stability testing.

Advanced Edition
Targeted mainly towards overclockers and hardware reviewers, the Advanced Edition allows for stress-testing under different conditions and thorough reports outputted into a flexible format.

The Advanced Edition exclusive features:

• Command line automation for full control over run tests S
• tress testing mode (benchmark looping)
• Highly customizable reports in CSV format

The Valley Benchmark Advanced Edition is available for purchase in the official UNIGINE online store.

Professional Edition
The Professional Edition is a comprehensive benchmarking tool for hardware manufacturers and graphics driver developers as it is bestowed with the complexity of top-level gaming technology.

The Professional Edition exclusive features include:

• Licensed for commercial use (for one PC, site licensing option is available on request)
• Command line automation for full control over run tests Stress testing mode (benchmark looping)
• Highly customizable reports in CSV format Per-frame deep analysis
• Rendering of a specified frame Software rendering mode in DirectX 11 for reference purposes Technical support

The Valley Benchmark Pro Edition is available for purchase in the official UNIGINE online store.