Beyond3D Featured ContentIt's Dead Jim - a debate about the future of the graphics API
Love them or hate them, standardised IHV agnostic(-ish) graphics APIs have changed the landscape in a mostly positive way. Yet some bear them ill will. We set out for the truth about their future fate, hoping that we can handle it.
The director of architecture for the Xbox 360 hardware has been interviewed on Microsoft's Channel 9. Nick Baker, ex-3DO, talks about the hardware design, the collaboration with ATI for Xenos, parallel programming constructs and multi-core program development, the stripped down version of the NT kernel running on the PowerPC processor…
Business as usual in Japan: The Nintendo DS is continuing to lead the hardware sales charts, followed by Wii, selling only half the units compared to the sales leader, and PlayStation Portable.
The folks at ExtremeTech are reporting that at a lunch with Penryn architect Stephen Fischer, the Intelite revealed that a new SSE4 instruction will improve the read buffer performance between CPU and GPU by a factor of eight. Fischer noted the high-priority pathway would bypass the usual caching and "opens…
When you subtitle your article "How the designers of the HDMI standard screwed up, and what's to be done about it", then you better bring the goods in the text itself. Anti-DRM warriors can stand down, however, as Audioholics review is a purely technical analysis of the limitations of…
Real World Tech posted a very nice architectural overview of AMD's upcoming Barcelona architecture (also previously known as K8L or K10, with the apparently final nomenclature being 'AMD Family 10h processors'), comparing it both to its predecessor and Intel's competition in terms of Conroe and Penryn.
New stable and unstable versions of Envy were made available this week by Alberto Milone.
Envy is a really practical Linux (Debian-based) application written in Python that automatically detects your video card, and then downloads and installs the latest driver version available for it.
Envy is a really practical Linux (Debian-based) application written in Python that automatically detects your video card, and then downloads and installs the latest driver version available for it.
While most of the Santa Rosa announcements in the ast week or so were based on Intel or NVIDIA GPUs, it looks like HP decided to use the upcoming ATI Mobility Radeon X2600 in their high-performance 15.4" Compaq 8510p Santa Rosa notebook. This is the first sighting of an OEM…
At the same time as their announcement of the GeForce 8M family, NVIDIA also quietly released the GeForce 7050 PV + nForce 630a combo, which is a single-chip MCP/Motherboard GPU. It's an incremental update to MCP61, so there's not much new except HDMI and HDCP content protection, but NVIDIA claims…
Our reporter, Carl Bender, always intrigued by compelling displays of technology, interviews Scott Kirkland, technical director of Evolution Studios, the UK based makers of the WRC series on the PlayStation 2 and of Motorstorm on the PlayStation 3. The latter - and its engine - are at the centre of…
NVIDIA is releasing the notebook versions of their GeForce 8 Series GPUs today, specifically the G84 and G86. The highest-end model is the GeForce 8600M GT, which is unsurprisingly clocked slightly lower than the desktop equivalent but shares all of its new features, including PureVideo HD and DirectX 10 support.
Intel is currently researching data-parallel languages, reports EETimes. These languages would most likely be for massively parallel architectures, such as Larrabee and Terascale, putting them in direct competition with NVIDIA and AMD in the GPGPU market.
Released for download earlier today, PS3 firmware 1.8 improves upon the media capabilities of Sony's console by incorporating many features long desired by A/V enthusiasts. Having already earned a reputation as an excellent Blu-ray player, today's update introduces 1080p/24hz output support, allowing…
In recent analyst conferences that were publicly webcast on NVIDIA's website, Michael Hara (VP of Investor Relations) has claimed that their next-generation chip, also known as G92 in the rumour mill, will deliver close to one teraflop of performance. In a separate answer to an analyst's question,…
Digitimes is reporting that TSMC's 65nm process production is now running "beyond 100%", indicating that their current facilities are now supply-constrained due to possibly unexpected demand. In related news, a recent interview with Chuck Byers of TSMC reveals that they plan to release their 45nm eDRAM…
A busy week saw the release of sales data from two major markets: The
April NPD sales numbers for the US and Canada and the weekly Media
Create sales data for Japan.
According to Bloomberg (Link) Sony may post the biggest 4th quarter loss in 4 years, mainly due to lower demand for Sony’s new PlayStation 3 game console.The projections would put Sony’s overall net loss at 75.8 billion yen ($630 million) in…
Media Create released the sales numbers for the weeks April 23th to 29th and April 30th to May 6th, i.e Golden Week, a string of public holidays, and the week preceding it.
NVIDIA released their financial results for Q1 Fiscal 2008 yesterday, which corresponds to the period from January 29 to April 29, 2007. It came up very slightly above analysts' expectations, with gross margins hitting the magic 45%. GeForces had a record quarter, but on the other hand nForces were…
N'Gai Croal in his "Level Up" gaming Blog has recently added substance to longstanding Wii GPU architectural rumors. Performing some detective work after claims made by Microsoft's Robbie Bach that the Wii is the graphical equivalent of the original XBox,…
NVIDIA officially announced the GeForce 7200 GS today, which remains based on the 90nm G72 core that also powers the 7300 and 7500 product families. It is incredibly similar to the OEM-only GeForce 7300 SE, but uses faster RAM. The catch? Half the pixel pipelines have been disabled, as well as one…