BIOS update can patch up problem

It seems that some recent HD 5770 Vapor-X cards from Sapphire have been a little light on the stream processors. Some users have reported that instead of the usual 800 stream processors, the cards seem to only have 720, like a HD 5750. Besides the missing shaders, the clock speeds and everything else are the same as they should be.

However, the good news is that if you have an affected card, you should be able to get things back to snuff with a BIOS update for your video card. The new BIOS can be downloaded directly from Sapphire.

To check to see how many shaders you have on your video card, we recommend the program GPU-Z. Any Sapphire HD 5770 with BIOS Version: 012.014.000.004 (dated 2009/12/03) seems to be affected by this problem.

DirectCompute 10.1, OpenGL 3.2, and additional fixes noted

ATI's 9.12 driver set was released recently if you haven't caught it, bringing us DirectCompute 10.1 and OpenGL 3.2, on top of a list of bug fixes and additional support. Linux users should be pleased, too, as there's lots of love there in the form of new OS support and big enhancements to the Catalyst Control Center.

Grab the the drivers at the source, but not before uninstalling the old set and cleaning them out with Driver Sweeper. A hotfix can be downloaded here, for which the release note highlights are below.

Support for the OpenCL™ GPU component of the ATI Stream SDK v2.0

• The ATI Catalyst 9.12 hotfix release provides full support for GPU acceleration of OpenCL when used in conjunction with the ATI Stream SDK v2.0.   This feature is supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5970 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series, ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series and the AMD FireStream™ 9200 Series of products.

Support for ATI CrossFireX™ technology on configurations employing ATI Eyefinity technology configurations The ATI Catalyst 9.12 hotfix release provides support for ATI CrossFireX™ technology on configurations employing ATI Eyefinity technology, allowing users to take advantage of their additional GPUs for increased gaming performance when driving high resolution displays

• Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5970 Series, ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series

Support for DisplayPort audio

• The ATI Catalyst 9.12 hotfix release adds support for DisplayPort audio for DisplayPort panels

Fixes the following issues:

• Resident Evil 5 – Performance drop during the opening cinematic
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare – Negative performance observed with a configuration supporting  ATI CrossFireX™ technology when using the thermal scope
• Wheelman – Game freezes while loading the game menu
• Flashing in various OpenGL titles – City of Heroes, Enemy Territories: Quake Wars, and Chronicles of Riddick
• Heaven benchmark (DirectX 9 mode) – Grass flicker and white boarders observed around the edges

No surprises: GTX 360, GTX 380, HD 5890, HD 5830 mentioned

Cooler company SilenX seems to have accidentally leaked word of upcoming GPUs.

In a graphic (pictured above) SilenX listed all the many different kinds of video cards that would fit their new GPU cooler. On the list are a number of yet-unreleased video cards. However this news isn't that exciting, in the sense that all the cards listed have been expected new additions to the GeForce and Radeon families. 

The unreleased video cards mentioned include most notably Nvidia's new generation, the GeForce 300 series. Judging from the use of the forward slashes, we can suspect that the GTX 360 and GTX 380 will be on the same design of PCB. Probably, like last generation's GTX 260 and GTX 280, the GTX 380 and GTX 360 will have the same outwards appearance, and only be differentiated by the capabilities of the yet-unreleased GPU. 

For the rest of the new GeForce lineup, it looks like a GT 330, GTS 340 and GTS 350 are in the works. While the appearance of the GTS 350 is no real surprise, the notable question here is whether it will be a rebranded GTX 260 video card, similar to how the GTS 250 was a rebranded 9800 GTX+, or whether it will incorporate new GPU architecture. 

As for the Radeon family, it looks like a HD 5890 will be coming, along with a HD 5830. This seems reasonable -- so far the HD 5000 series has been unveiled in the same manner as the HD 4000 series was. We imagine, from rumors read, that the HD 5890 will come out around the same time as the GTX 380, in order to better compete with Nvidia's new levels of performance reached.

Right now, there is still drought of DirectX 11 parts available on the market. It'll be great to see all these new products hit the hardware stores.

With speed increases of over 300x

The list of CUDA-powered software continues to grow quickly, with security company Kaspersky Labs recently announcing that they are jumping aboard.

For those of you aren't familiar, CUDA is a method of programming software that runs primarily on your NVIDIA GPU, instead of your CPU. Some tasks benefit tremendously from being ported to take advantage of the parallel processing capabilities of the modern day GPU.

Russian data security company Kaspersky Labs will be using NVIDIA Tesla S1070 video cards in their computing infrastructure, in order to assist with running anti-viral scans on clients' computers. Using the Tesla cards, the server software can quickly scan suspicious files against over 50 million virus signatures, in an effort to sneak out problematic malware. This has given improved the processing time of files for them by a factor of over 300x -- which is quite something, especially if you are scanning many thousands of files.

So far, CUDA programming methods are predominantly used by researchers and scientists who need to crunch massive math problems, commonly in software used for modeling. For now, it looks like Kaspersky Labs will not be using CUDA methods for their retail software, but it seems likely they would want to make a CUDA-based scanner for home users. It would definitely be nice to have a home virus scanner that was 300x faster.

Sapphire introduces a new, lower-cost Radeon

Sapphire, the world's biggest supplier of ATI video cards, recently launched a new member of the HD 4000 series that they came up with themselves. The HD 4860 recently arrived on some of the larger hardware e-tailers.

The HD 4860, listed for $129.99 USD, can be considered a more cost effective version of the best ATI part of that generation, the HD 4890. With 640 stream processors, a 700 MHz core clock, and a 256 bit memory interface, while the HD 5000's remain in short supply, many gamers will probably find the price and performance of the HD 4860 a better fit for them.

As for the performance of this card, we'd need to get our hands on it though, before we know for sure how it'll behave. The HD 4870 and HD 4890 both have 800 stream processors, so we imagine that'd the HD 4860 would not be able to keep up; perhaps somewhere between a HD 4850 and HD 4870's performance would be where the HD 4860 might slot in.

New gen of Blu-ray to support 3D as well

According to Germany-based website ATI-Forum (citing "trusted source") the upcoming milestone ATI Catalyst driver 10.1 will support a new 3D mode enabling playback of 3D videos and movies with the right hardware.

Normally this rumor would seem a little on the improbable side -- however, it matches up well AMD's recent announcement of an unveiling of a new 3D encoding standard for Blu-ray discs at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, in about a month.

At this point there are no details; but we guess a few of them. First off, AMD's press release on the 3D Blu-ray format mentions "stereoscopic 3D for HD gaming" but it seems like the 3D movies will come much sooner than the games will because making 3D drivers for games is an intensive project. Nvidia had been working on their 3D drivers for a long time before they launched the 3D Vision glasses. 

It seems likely that AMD's 3D methods will rely not on 3D eyewear, but an upcoming generation of 3D display technologies, as mentioned in this week's earlier press release: " 3D DLP televisions, dual-panel and line interleaved 3D monitors."

While this is speculation on our part, Cyberlink's prominent mention in the aforementioned press release may feasibly indicate that this software company, best known for their DVD playing program PowerDVD, may be working on a program to handle the 3D playback of the upcoming 3D Blu-ray discs. Cyberlink software has been bundled with Radeon cards for a long time now -- so it is easy to imagine a 'Power3D'-type video playing software being bundled with new graphics cards.

While we supposed in our earlier news story on the upcoming Blu-ray announcement that 3D support will be a feature in upcoming generations of ATI video cards, now it seems that the 3D support will be backwards compatible with existing Radeon products. Handling 3D doesn't take any particular form of GPU architecture, so unless ATI wants to limit the software to only run on HD 5000 cards, we will probably see the last couple of generations of Radeons able to handle 3D (back to the HD 3000 series perhaps).

With more and more 3D technologies coming out every few months, companies investing more money in the technology, and 3D movies making big money in theaters, it looks like this decade might be one long transition from 2D entertainment to 3D.

New cooler looks like 5750's

AMD is reportedly revising their reference design of the HD 5770 video card. New PowerColor, Sapphire and MSI cards have been pictured, and other board partners are expected to soon follow suit.

The new design looks like it was brought in as a  cost saving measure. As you can tell from our review of the HD 5770, the 'old' HD 5770, as we might want to call it now, looked like the little brother of the HD 5870, with a similar cooler on it. The 'new' HD 5770 uses a the same sort of cooler as found on the HD 5750 -- one that uses less metal.

The cooler isn't that only thing changed either; the PCB has been shifted around a little bit. We'll have to wait to get our hands on one for testing before we are able to say for sure that this smaller cooler is able to handle its cooling duties as well as the original design.

However one thing will remain the same: the performance level. The revised HD 5770 has the same specs.

Free or paid guide explains the inner workings of Microsoft's OS, offers tips and tricks

Many tech junkies are aware of TweakGuides, a quality website dedicated to the tweaking of games, software and hardware. Though its owner Koroush Ghazi has sadly since given up guides as such for PC games (console ports, exhaustive efforts, and all that), he has just released one for Windows 7, which should be great for anyone with the new OS.

The TweakGuides Tweaking Companion, as it is called, is written in plain language, intended to be understood by and useful for the most amateur to the most advanced computer users. It covers everything from new features to what all that craziness in your BIOS actually means, and offers a variety of guidelines for getting every bit of performance out of the OS and your games you can, given your needs.

The guide comes in a 415 page free version, or a 578 page paid version with screenshots, illustrations and the like, priced at $4.50. Both will be updated regularly (free). We recommend everyone pick up a copy!

First member of the 'new' gen an entry level part

An interesting web page was up for a while on HP's site yesterday. It showed an unreleased part: the GeForce 310.

And now today, on Hangover Day Thanksgiving, Nvidia has officially launched the product. It isn't exactly a terribly exciting product, so there wasn't any big fanfare or Nvidia hoopla to mark the occasion. 

The GeForce 310 looks like a OEM part, and is more a refresh of the GeForce 210 than anything else. The 310 uses current generation Nvidia parts and doesn't seem to incorporate any really new GeForce tech. Somewhat disappointingly, it doesn't even seem to support DX 11 either. But none of this that surprising -- the real introduction of the GeForce 300 series will come when Fermi is finally ready to go.

As you probably know, Nvidia's Fermi architecture -- the name of their upcoming new gen -- is far behind the schedule that many people where anticipating. Fermi had a sort-of unveiling/introduction at this years Nvidia GPU Technology Conference, and judging from shortages of HD 5000 parts even ATI thought the card would have arrived by now, but many roadblocks have reportedly been encountered in Fermi's coming. Our guess is that the GTX 380 won't touch down until at least February.

Update: After going over the numbers most closely, it looks like the 310 is in fact exactly the same as the GeForce 210 -- but with a different name. Unfortunately this has been another recent occasion were Nvidia has rebranded a product with a newer part number.

Here are the 310's specs, taken from Nvidia's website:

NVIDIA PureVideo® Technology*
NVIDIA CUDA™ Technology
Microsoft DirectX	10.1
OpenGL	3.1
Bus Support	PCI-E 2.0
Certified for Windows Vista

Maximum Digital Resolution	2560x1600
Maximum VGA Resolution	2048x1536
Standard Display Connectors	DVI VGA DisplayPort
Multi Monitor
HDCP*
HDMI*	Via dongle (DVI-HDMI or DP-HDMI)
Audio Input for HDMI	Internal

Improves upon the stability of 195.55 drivers

New Forceware 195.62 beta Nvidia drivers came out today. If you haven't updated your video card drivers in a while (let's say 6 months or more), and you have a GeForce card, you should download 195.62 right now.

According to release notes these drivers are much like 195.55 drivers, but have increased stability. It seems the 195.55's where crashing in some uncommon circumstances. Such as when you tried to play some kinds of HD content at 1080p in the Windows Media Center in Vista and Windows 7, with a GeForce 210. This problem has been fixed. Also, a problem with Badaboom failed transcoding sometimes, when browsing videos, has been fixed.

A few games did however receive some performance updates. Such as Fallout 3, Need For Speed: Shift, and probably the best news to hear: you can now enable AA support for Borderlands through the Nvidia control panel.

The drivers can be downloaded here.

Check out this beast of a machine

NVIDIA teamed up the folks at Smooth Creations and a world-class case modder by the name of Richard “Darth Beavis” Surroz to build a hell of a gaming PC that is now for sale on eBay.

The idea came from NVIDIA employee, and former hardware editor guy, Paul Jastrzebski, who has had a friend of his recently diagnosed with a multiple myeloma -- a cancer of the blood. 100 percent of the proceeds of this sale will be going to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  And as you can see from the pictures, this system is pretty bad ass.

The case goes without saying; as for the rest of it: you get the best CPU out right now, the Core i7 975 Extreme Edition, watercooled, and dual GTX 295s are on graphics duty. Then you get 3D Vision (which we have a review of coming soon, by the way), and 12GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR3. Two 256GB SSD's in a Raid 0 setup will be storing the games, and two 1TB drives will take care of everything else. An Asus Rampage II Gene X58 motherboard gets the job done here.

So whatta-ya say? Want to place a bid? Right now the system is at $3,500 USD; NVIDIA probably hopes it sell for at least $10,000 USD. 

If your parents, wife, or whomever is not convinced that you need this computer, just tell them it is for charity.

Improved HQ video playback, increased support for ATI video converter, and bug fixes included

Hot on the heels of NVIDIA, ATI has just released its 9.11 set of video card drivers today for HD2000 series cards and newer, running under Windows XP, Windows Vista or 7.

Also like NVIDIA, ATI has improved high quality video streaming in light of Adobe's latest flash release, as well as improved support for their video converter tool, on top of a ton of resolved issues. If you care to see the difference in streaming, look no further:

Your highlights are below; grab the full release notes and the drivers at the source. Of course, uninstall the old set and clean them out with Driver Sweeper before installing the new.

New Features

GPU Acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ supports the new Hardware Acceleration features of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta for video encoded in the H.264 format.

• Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth video playback, reduced system resource utilization, and to help preserve battery life.

• Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta is expected to be available for download from Adobe Labs (labs.adobe.com) before the end of the year. This feature is supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800, ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 and ATI Radeon HD™ 4000 Series of products.

High Quality downscaling for Video Transcoding MSE

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ includes an enhancement for the ATI Video converter for users Transcoding high quality interlaced content (1920×1080i @60i videos) down to small resolution progressive content (320×240 @30p – iPod videos as an example), by maintaining high visual quality when down-scaling by a significant amount and converting interlaced video content to progressive.

Highlights of the Linux ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 release include:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:

• RHEL 5.4 support
• openSUSE 11.2 early look support

Smoother HD playback, DirectCompute support, and more SLI and multi-GPU support inside

NVIDIA has today released its 195.55 set of drivers for select laptop and desktop GPUs (to see if yours is supported, see below, or the 'Supported Products' tab at the source for the full list).

As of 11AM PST at least, 32-bit versions of Windows XP don't get to take advantage of this update, so it could be time to consider switching to Windows 7.

Highlights of the highlights include smoother playback of HD videos, DirectCompute support for 7 users, and added SLI/multi-GPU support. The list is below (note some items apply only to Windows Vista and 7); hit the source for the full release notes, where of course you can also grab the drivers.

As always, uninstall the old set first and use a program like Driver Sweeper to clean 'em out before installing the new set.

RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS :

This driver supports the following NVIDIA GPUs (there are some exceptions – please refer to the Products Supported tab):

• GeForce 8M, 9M, 100M, and 200M-series notebook GPUs.
• Quadro NVS-series notebook GPUs (only those that support DirectX 10 or higher).
• Quadro FX-series notebook GPUs (only those that support DirectX 10 or higher).

New in this release:

• Adds GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with the new Adobe Flash 10.1 beta. Learn more here.
• Adds support for DirectCompute with Windows 7.
• Adds support for OpenGL 3.2.
• Adds support for OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language).
• Adds support for CUDA Toolkit 3.0 features and performance enhancements. See CUDA Zone for more details.
• Adds SLI and multi-GPU support for many top new gaming titles including Borderlands, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, FIFA Soccer 10, and more.
• Includes numerous bug fixes including improved performance for Need for Speed: Shift. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.
• Installs NVIDIA PhysX System Software v9.09.0814.

No additional Windows 7 support for some older cards

Following the recent launch of the HD 5000 series (and DirectX 11), ATI is taking a moment to rearrange their driver priorities. Today they listed a slew of cards that will not be receiving fresh driver updates. The following cards have been relegated to 'legacy' driver status:

ATI Radeon 9500 Series
ATI Radeon 9550 Series
ATI Radeon 9600 Series
ATI Radeon 9700 Series
ATI Radeon 9800 Series
ATI Radeon X300 Series
ATI Radeon X550 Series
ATI Radeon X600 Series
ATI Radeon X700 Series
ATI Radeon X800 Series
ATI Radeon X850 Series
ATI Radeon X1050 Series
ATI Radeon X1300 Series
ATI Radeon X1550 Series
ATI Radeon X1600 Series
ATI Radeon X1650 Series
ATI Radeon X1800 Series
ATI Radeon X1900 Series
ATI Radeon Xpress Series
ATI Radeon X1200 Series
ATI Radeon X1250 Series
ATI Radeon X2100 Series

If you have one of these video cards, and worried about Windows 7 compatibility, rest assured --  you don't have too much cause for concern. While Windows 7 support is not 'official' for these aging cards, you still should not have any trouble using the recent Vista Catalyst 9.8 drivers without too many problems in Win 7.

If you are miffed that your card has been deemed a 'legacy' product, a good way of dealing with the situation is taking it as a great excuse to justifying spending money on a new gaming graphics card.  

See Unigine's 'Heaven' in action in these videos

Hot on the heels of Microsoft's Windows 7 release, software developer Unigine has unleashed the world's first DirectX 11 benchmark unto the world after five years of development, dubbing it 'Heaven.'

Unigine's engine makes use of hardware tesselation, a feature that has been present on ATI graphics card for a few generations, but is now being put to full use. Without going into too much detail, it adds polygons within polygons so developers can use compressed JPEG images without sacrificing image quality. In other words, we get better looking graphics and, best of all, without a performance hit on DirectX 11 hardware. The video below show's tesselation in action compared to low quality textures rendered normally.

As you can see, the benchmark is nothing short of impressive and, surprisingly, performance is actually pretty good.

In case you haven't picked up an HD5000-series card yet, the benchmark is also backward compatible with DirectX 9 and 10 as well as OpenGL. However, only the full blown DirectX 11 can take advantage of the latest features including DirectCompute and tesselation. If you're still riding the XP bandwagon, you will need to upgrade in order to enjoy those latest advancements in graphics technologies.

Oh and if you feel the urge to start your own game studio and use Unigine's product, it's going to cost you right around $25,000. Of course, it's easier to simply pick up an HD5000 card while waiting for one of the upcoming DirectX 11 titles including DiRT 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Aliens vs Predator or the already-released Battleforge.

Full 5800 series support, Ubuntu 9.10 support, and multiple resolved issues noted

ATI today releases its 9.10 set of drivers for HD2000 series cards and newer, running under Windows XP, Vista or 7, coinciding with the latter operating system's launch.

For those who have picked up a card or two in the new 5800 series, this release is especially good news as it provides full support (unlike the previous beta drivers), including super sample anti-aliasing.

Aside from that, there's also a range of bug fixes and more to be had. Check out the details in the release notes below, and remember to uninstall your old set of drivers and clean them out with Driver Sweeper before installing the new set. Grab the 9.10 download via the AMD Graphics Drivers & Software link at bottom.

New Features:

Official ATI Catalyst WHQL release supporting ATI Radeon HD 5800 series GPUs

• ATI Catalyst 9.10 now includes full GPU support for the award winning ATI HD Radeon 5800 series GPUS!

Super Sample Anti-Aliasing for the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series

• ATI Catalyst 9.10 provides support for a new Anti-Aliasing method on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series.  Users can now experience the high level of anti-aliasing image quality using Super Sampling anti-aliasing while maintaining good performance levels. 

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 9.10 release for Linux includes:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems

• • This release of ATI Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
    • Ubuntu 9.10 early look support

Highlights of resolved issues

• Ghostbusters video game no longer flickers between desktop and game play when anti-aliasing is set to 8X and game resolution set to 2560×1600
• Enabling Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option in “Riddick 2 Dark Athena” no longer causes the game to fail under Multi-GPU configurations
• Severe flickering no longer observed while running 3D games/samples on specific HDMI displays with configurations using ATI CrossFireX™ technology in tri and quad modes
• Desktop flashing no longer observed after driver installation and reboot with systems configured with Radeon ASIC in the primary PCIe slot and ATI Fire Stream™ ASIC in the secondary PCIe slot
• “Combat Mission Shock Force” no longer fails after a duration of game play

• Underscan/Overscan settings for TV can now be applied from the ATI Catalyst Control Center – TV Properties Adjustments page
• Changes to the “All Settings” and “Basic Quality” pages in ATI Catalyst Control Center - Avivo™ Video will now be retained after reboot

Anticipation grows for the next-gen design

As you have probably heard, AMD/ATI has launched their next generation of GPUs recently. With the HD 5870 and HD 5770 flying off the shelves, more and more people are wondering when NVIDIA will show off what is has been working on in the last little while.

Unfortunately we don't have a date to give you for the big release of Fermi -- the name of the new architecture from NVIDIA. From folks we talked to, and things we saw the other week in California at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference, the best guess we can give you is that'll it arrive a few weeks before Christmas.

Fermi represents a real shake-up for NVIDIA's focus. Well, it might be more correct to say that the change of focus has already happened, and Fermi is the evidence of this change. What's the big change? NVIDIA is positioning their next generation of GPUs not only as good for handling graphics, but as a sort of parallel co-processor for your computer.

NVIDIA is investing heavily in the development of CUDA, as witnessed by the release of Nexus, and native support for C++. They are banking on many software developers being attracted to the relative ease of programming specialized apps for CUDA, which will make NVIDIA the only provider of the specialized hardware needed to take advantage of this new breed of GPU-designated code.

"Fermi is a radically different way of building GPUs", said NVIDIA founder Jen-Hsun Huang, in a press conference for Fermi. He continued to say Fermi will bring the "first unified environment for a heterogeneous computing situation" -- heterogeneous in the sense that a computer with Fermi will have a general purpose CPU, and a then a parallel processor in the GPU.

Fermi is certainly going to bring the horses. The top GT300 / GF100 40nm chip has some mammoth specs: a whopping 3 billion transistors, 384-bit memory interface supporting (possibly) upwards of 6GB of GDDR5 for the Tesla and Quadro parts (with the GeForce 380 perhaps sporting 1.5GB), 512 'CUDA' cores (also known as shader cores), 1MB L2 cache, and a 768KB L2 cache. 

"We need something big and new," Jen-Hsun said, "[something] to bring back the sex appeal."

When asked about whether they were very worried with the big market hit by releasing Fermi a few months after the HD 5800 launched, if Jen-Hsun was concerned he did a good job of hiding it. He explained that Fermi was about a new vision for the GPU -- so, NVIDIA was more concerned with getting this new vision right and launching it successfully than it was in merely keeping pace with the rising GPU horsepower from ATI.

Is NVIDIA's focus on CUDA merely maintained as a relief valve for the pressure of having to keep up with ATI's speedy 40nm GPU development? There have been rumors that NVIDIA has had trouble crafting chips, and there has been a great deal of product rebranding over the last year. Or, instead, does Fermi really represent what the company sees as their best method of growing forward into the next decade? The adoption of CUDA by developers does seem to be the crux of their next big Fermi push. Researchers and private industry have been getting aboard wholeheartedly on CUDA, but there has not been a huge deluge of apps for people like you and me. And there are about 10,000 of you and me for every research scientist.*

From what we've seen, NVIDIA has the hardware ready to go, and now its a matter of inspiring the development of many more CUDA-powered apps. We will have to wait to see how it all turns out; but, one thing is for sure: the GPU isn't just about games and graphics any more.

*obviously just making this number up for Hyperbole's sake

For Vista and 7 users

ATI late yesterday appears to have released an update for their new HD 5800 series cards, running under Windows Vista or 7 in 32/64-bit editions.

No release notes are included as such, but naturally it's recommended to grab these for the latest improvements; hit the source for the new package.

As always, uninstall the old set and use a cleaning program like the free Driver Sweeper before installing the new.

For the rest of us, ATI says we can expect the 9.10 drivers when Windows 7 launches -- October 22.

Leaked pictures of an upcoming product?

In an attempt to beat the green team and its leader the Green Goblin, ATI has got Batman & Robin onboard. They are now working on a proprietary machine that, if the rumors are true, will be called the Bat5870.

If the HD5870 is any indication of that machine's performance, it will undoubtedly give them an edge in that epic battle!

Seriously though, the image is a joke; I hope you guessed it. The idea behind this masterpiece probably came to mind in an attempt to find a use for the decorative vents present on the HD5870. Thanks to the user Heinz68 on NVnews forums for the excellent Photoshop job!

OpenGL 3.2/SLI support, improved performance, and tons of fixes noted

NVIDIA has today released its 191.07 set of drivers for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200 and ION series cards running under Windows XP, Vista or 7.

The latest update is particularly important, as not only does it bring niceities like OpenGL 3.2 and SLI support, there's also better performance for games like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Far Cry 2, and a heap of fixes, including an imperative one for overclocking enthusiasts.

Release highlights are below; for the full notes, these are separated by operating system on NVIDIA's site (link below), where of course you can also nab the drivers. As usual, uninstall the old set and run Driver Sweeper or an equivalent before installing the new.

New in Version 191.07

• Adds support for OpenGL 3.2 for GeForce 8, 9, 100, and 200-series GPUs and ION GPUs.
• Accelerates performance in several gaming applications. The following are examples of improvements measured with version 191.07 drivers vs. version 190.62 drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):
  • Up to 12% performance increase in ARMA 2
  • Up to 8% performance increase in Batman: Arkham Asylum with GPU PhysX enabled
  • Up to 50% performance increase in Call of Juarez: Blood in Bound with SLI enabled
  • Up to 14% performance increase in Fallout 3 (indoor scenes) with antialiasing enabled
  • Up to 10% performance increase in Far Cry 2 (DX9 version) with antialiasing enabled
  • Up to 34% performance increase in Prototype with antialiasing enabled
• Adds SLI support for Aion, Darkfall, Dawn of Magic 2: Time of Shadows, Dreamkiller, Fuel, Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, Need for Speed: Shift and more.
• Includes numerous bug fixes, including the following key fix (additional bug fixes can be found in the release notes on the documentation tab): For graphics cards supporting multiple clock states, 3D clocks correctly return to 2D clocks after exiting a 3D application.

Have a song on MySpace? Win some exposure and cash!

To promote the new PSP version of Beaterator -- a 8-track, music-making application -- Rockstar, Timbaland and MySpace are having a contest. If you have any music making skills, and some songs on sitting on Myspace, you might be interested in taking a stab at this one.

Entering is easy -- just go over here, and submit the links to your MySpace profile that has your tunes. It looks like October 11th is the deadline, and you have to be an American to play. For the first round, any sort of song will do; then, up to 100 artists will be chosen for round two. For round two, they will receive a PSP and a copy of Beaterator, from which they'll have two to make use of the 'portable studio' application to make a new song for the next round. From there, the public will vote on which track they like the best. Winner gets $5000 USD and a bunch of exposure.

Sounds like a good contest to us. 100 PSPs up for grabs makes some fairly good odds. Especially f you already have a MySpace track up, this contest might be fun.

Mending the gap left by Havok and PhysX

PC gamers are in a bit of a state of flux at the moment when it comes to physics; NVIDIA has the aptly named PhysX, Intel the Havok engine. While it's been planned to have any game using either engine work with any card, NVIDIA has recently pulled its support, allowing the disparity to continue.

Nevertheless, AMD has jumped in with a mission to cure what ails you, developing an open source GPU physics solution that will work with either brand of card out there. Dubbed "Bullet Physics", this one is already used in console games (most recently Trials HD) and mobile titles; with AMD's help, it will be brought to the PC with a new engine.

Written in OpenCL, Bullet Physics will make things easier for programmers, in turn meaning better results for gamers. Pixelux Entertainment is the creator of the API, and will also be working with AMD to bring the solution to DirectCompute, DirectX 11's GPU offloading standard.

“Proprietary physics solutions divide consumers and ISVs, while stifling true innovation," says AMD’s CTO of Graphics Eric Demers. "Our competitors even develop code that they themselves admit will not work on hardware other than theirs. By working with Pixelux and others to enable open support of physics on OpenCL and DirectX 11 capable devices we are taking the exact opposite approach.”

“Pixelux wants ensure that our technology can take advantage of the computing resources that any particular hardware platform offers without locking in our users to any single platform,” said Mitchell Bunnell, CEO of Pixelux. “By working with AMD to run our software in OpenCL we stay true to that goal.”

In short, there's a lot to look forward to this upcoming generation. Smile!

ATI's latest card hits shelves

Update: drivers for the 5800 series have surfaced -- grab them here.

ATI's next generation of GPUs, the HD 5000 series, launched last night. The first to make it to the party is the HD 5870.

Featuring DirectX 11 support, Eyefinity technology allowing multiple monitors to make a meta-display, and 1600 shader processors are some of the key elements to this new HD 5870, capable of sustaining over 2 TerraFlops of computing power. The video card is beast -- cards just seem to be getting larger and larger -- and will support HDMI and DisplayPort, along with the two standard DVI outputs.

If you want some serious gaming power, $380 USD seems to be the going rate today, on many online retailers.

Neoseeker is currently testing our recently arrived HD 5870, and our review of this monster will soon be forthcoming.

$9000 cash, and Gigabyte goodies up for grabs

Are you an overclocking fan? Do you sleep next to a giant tub of liquid nitrogen? Well if you do, perhaps you'll be interested to hear that Gigabyte is getting an overclocking competition underway, to raise some exposure for their new Super Overclocked Series of video cards.

The competition is called "Beat me if you dare", and is taking place in three rounds. The first round begins on October 1st, and will be open to people with GTX 260 cards -- that's right, you don't need a Gigabyte brand card; you can enter with any GTX 260.

Each round winner will make a cool $1,500 USD. Beyond that, there is a ton of Gigabyte hardware that'll be dispensed, such as high-end Nvidia cards, and Gigabyte's new gaming mouse, the GM-M8000. Furthermore, any contestants that beat the Gigabyte team's scores will be able to double their prize reward. 

Scores will be tallied in two programs: Vantage and Resident Evil 5.

There is no word yet on what cooling methods are acceptable -- but we will assume exotic cooling is okay. There is a Facebook page and Twitter page set up with contest details, but unfortunately, no web page with all the rules in one location.

Bug fix release covering HD2000 series cards and newer

ATI 9.9 set of drivers are newly available for HD2000 series and newer cards running under Windows XP, Vista or 7. This release is strictly for bug fixes and contains no performance improvements, sadly, but hey, a release is a release.

Your resolved issues are below; hit the source for the full release notes (and the drivers) to check any remaining known issues if you wish. As always, uninstall your old set of drivers first via Control Panel and clean them out with something like Driver Sweeper before installing the new set.

Resolved Issues for All Windows Operating Systems

• Catalyst Control Center - Basic now responds properly after exiting Quick Adjust Video Settings
• Edge enhancement and de-noise sliders in Catalyst Control Center no longer lags or appears out of sync with mouse movement
• Launching Hotkeys Manager in Catalyst Control Center no longer causes an unhandled exception error
• The "Desktop Rotation" page in Catalyst Control Center no longer shows additional information for the second display when the secondary adapter is connected
• HDMI is now detected properly as DTV (HDMI) instead of DTV (DVI) when the HDMI display is hotplugged for the first time
• Catalyst Control Center no longer displays error message when specific HDMI displays are hot unplugged and hotplugged back

Resolved Issues for the Windows 7 Operating System

• Intermittent failures no longer occur with MediaShow Espresso once a transcoding process has been completed

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

• Running OpenGL applications in windowed mode on extended desktop no longer causes the secondary display to go blank for some ASICs
• Task switching between the desktop and a game in progress no longer has a visible delay (7-10 seconds)
• Enabling Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option in "Riddick 2 Dark Athena" no longer causes the game to fail under Multi-GPU configurations
• Catalyst Control Center no longer shows both HDMI displays as DVI when they are connected via HDMI port and to DVI port via HDMI-DVI dongle
• Windows Aero Glass Effects now works properly during HD Blu-ray playback 

Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System

• Resuming video playback after S1 sleep no longer causes HDMI audio to disappear
• Changes to AVIVO Basic color settings are now retained after Catalyst Control Center is re-opened
• AVIVO Basic color setting changes can now be applied during HD DVD playback on specific ASICs on XP Media Center Edition