Thursday, May 26, 2016

[LEAK] AMD's mid range Polaris card beats GTX 980 and nears GTX 1080 in CrossFire!


AMD fans must be salivating right now because this is some amazing news. Well, not officially. Leaked benchmarks show the AMD card which will probably be called the R9 480 beating GTX 980 in 3Dmark and falling short of the HBM powered R9 Fury. 

amds-next-gen-polaris-10-beats-titan-leaked-benchmarks_04

However, some truly amazing results can be seen when the cards are CrossFired, with results approaching the newly announced Pascal card GTX 1080! The implications of this are huge, because industry experts were expecting about the same levels of performance from Polaris as we saw from Pascal.

The GTX 1060, as we posted earlier, seems to be boasting performance comparable to the GTX 970, so its rival AMD card beating the 980 is a huge advantage for AMD. 


Earlier we posted about the expected announcement date and event for this card along with the next gen AMD APUs. This leak has upped the ante even further, as hype for the AMD Polaris cards increases day by day.

Author- Ishaan

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

[RUMOUR] GTX 1060 to offer VR level power with 4-8GB VRAM and a 256-bit bus

Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 Featured

The very highly awaited GTX 1060 has been spotted on shipping manifests. Even though Nvidia hasn't officially confirmed any rumours about the card, the industry has been on fire with rumours and speculations. 

A very interesting piece of information that the manifest entry reveals is that the card is shipping with a 256 bit bus, which is double its predecessors. The bus on the GTX 960 acted as a bottleneck and this improvement will definitely boost performance, just like in the 1070 and 1080.




This card is also expected to cross the VR-threshold, resulting in further ease of VR adaptation. The cheaper getting across the VR threshold seems to be getting, the more salty the prices of the VR headsets themselves start to seem. It's expected to go for around $250-$300. 



The card is expected to pack in 1280 CUDA cores, down from 1920 on the GTX 1070. That points to the card giving out around 60% the performance of a GTX 1070. This would make it comparable to the GTX 970 as of now. Another exciting factor is the power consumption. Seeing the trend as we have in the Pascal cards, more graphics power for less power consumption, the 960 might have a TDP comparable to the 950 or maybe even the 750ti, although this is speculation. That 256 bus is bound to drive the consumption up a bit and it will be interesting to see how it all finally adds up.

Author: Ishaan
Source

Friday, May 20, 2016

[STABLE] Android N: The Un-Named Android

At the Google I/O 2016 keynote, Google announced that a beta-quality Android N release is coming out, and there are three areas of focus for Android N: performance, security and productivity. Native VR support has now also been confirmed, with a new VR platform called Daydream.

The name of the new Android OS was not presented during the keynote. You can suggest a name by clicking here.



Performance


Google began by talking about the Vulkan graphics API. A new JIT compiler means that apps should install up to 75 percent faster, and compiler code should be reduced by 50 percent. The irritating Android is starting... dialogue box will be gone for good, thanks to this new compiler, as well. App size reduced by 50 percent, making for 75 percent faster installs.





Security

Google stressed improvements in security through file-based encryption, media framework hardening and seamless updates. 
In particular, these seamless updates mean that your phone will download new software images in the background and prepare them for the next time you restart your device. Thanks to the file-based encryption, you also won't need to enter your device password upon restarting.

Productivity


Productivity is also now a focus. Google says that most people only use their seven most recent apps from the recent app drawer, so the wheel will be limited to these. There is also going to be a Clear all button, which received a rush of applause for a grateful I/O audience. By double-tapping the recent apps button, you can quickly switch to the previous app, although, on many devices, this feature was already available via a long press on the same button.





The new multi-window mode: picture in picture. Multi-window mode sees two uses folded in: the standard, split-screen view, and picture-in-picture, designed for Android TV. This latter mode lets you shrink what's on the screen to a large box in the corner of the screen and do something else in the dominant, full-screen window. 
Elsewhere, replying from within notifications was covered, as well as notification visibility, letting you quickly block or hide similar notifications in the future via a long press, and support for Unicode 9.0 Emoji, all features we've already looked at below.

Virtual Reality




Native support for VR was also formally introduced. Daydream, a platform for mobile VR was announced, which comes with a set of specs phones have to meet in order to be compatible. Many manufacturers are making Daydream-compatible devices, including Samsung, HTC, LG, Xiaomi and Huawei. Daydream is the new Google VR platform. 





Author : Saatvik Awasthi

[REVEALED] AMD announces event for Polaris GPUs and 7th Gen ZEN APUs!



AMD Announced today that it will hold a press conference and live webcast on the 1st of June at Computex regarding the Polaris GPUs and the 7th Gen APUs. The event will be held in Computex Taipei in Taiwan. Speakers include AMD’s President and CEO Lisa Su as well as AMD’s head of the Radeon Technologies Group Raja Koduri in addition to the company’s head of the CPU & APU side of the business, Jim Anderson.

This is the first time AMD has published any news about the highly anticipated Polaris GPUs, the anticipation for which is at an all time high now that Nvidia has officially launched the GTX 1080 and 1070 and the cards will hit the markets later this month.




A real-time video webcast of the event will be accessible on AMD’s Computex page (www.amd.com/computex) and on AMD’s Investor Relations home page (ir.amd.com). A replay of the webcast can be accessed a few hours after the conclusion of the live event on both pages and will be available there for one year after the event.

AMD GPUs have seen an uplift in sales and an increased market share continuously through the later part of 2015 and the start of 2016. It is expected that AMD will follow a release strategy contrary to Nvidia's and release information about their mid to low end cards initially, later followed by their high-end powerhouses. As of now, no information about the AMD cards is available. As far as performance gains are concerned, the same levels as Pascal cards are expected, although we all are hoping for something amazing.

The APUs will skip the aging FM2+ and AM3 sockets for an all new AM4 socket for it's chips. A socket that these chips will share with AMD’s hotly anticipated high-performance Summit Ridge family of CPUs. Summit Ridge is AMD’s upcoming FX family of enthusiast/high-end desktop CPUs featuring AMD’s brand new high performance x86 CPU core “Zen”, the development of which was spearheaded by the legendary CPU architect Jim Keller.




The summit ridge and Zen platforms are very eagerly being awaited all over the world as right now the pretty old FX chips and their brothers are the only alternative to the costlier Intel CPUs, with Intel eating a huge chunk of the market share.

Author: Ishaan Singh


Source : click here

Thursday, May 19, 2016

[REVEALED] Nvidia confirms GeForce GTX 1070 specifications !

Nvidia GTX 1070 Specs confirmed!



The rumour mill went into overdrive yesterday as the 'leaked' slide below spread through the internet like wildfire, apparently stating one of The new Kings of Gaming, i.e. Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 specifications. Since then,  PCWorld has confirmed the rumours. These indeed, are the specifications of the best bang-for-the-buck GeForce GTX 1070. 




The discussions and rumours about the possible 1070 specifications have been a hot topic ever since the Nvidia GeForce GTX  1080/1070 were revealed at the Austin, Texas event. We got the 1080 details but all Nvidia teased about the 970 successor, GTX 1070, was that it has 8 GB  GDDR5 VRAM and current-gen gaming beast GTX Titan X comparable performance, which stunned many.

Nvidia launched hours ago the GTX 1070 official page on their site, and you can find the specifications on it here


The GTX 1070 is going to harbour the following specs, which are extremely impressive upon comparison with its predecessor, the GTX 970. 

  • 16nm GP104 silicon, with 7.2 billion transistors 
  • 1,920 CUDA cores, 15 out of 20 Streaming Multiprocessors enabled on the GP104 silicon 
  • 120 TMUs, 64 ROPs 
  • 256-bit GDDR5 memory, 8GB 
  • 1,683MHz max GPU boost core clock frequency 
  • 6.75 TFLOP/s single-precision floating point performance 
  • 150W TDP, single 8-pin PCIe power connector 
  • 3x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x HDMI 2.0b 
  • 2-way SLI with SLI HB bridge support

These specifications show us great power and performance delivery skills of this card while having a mere 150W TDP. We still have to wait to see how it actually performs in the real world conditions.

Author : Ishaan Singh

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

[FEATURED] ANSEL : The ART of in-Game Photography



NVIDIA showcased a new technology named ANSEL along with the next-generation PASCAL based GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1070 launch on 6th May. So what is this new technology so hyped about ?

ANSEL is the new in-game Photography tool which would be implemented in the future upcoming games and game updates by the the developers which would help the Gamers and in-Game photographers take undeniably excellent screenshots from any angle, in any size and the quality they dream of !

According to NVIDIA,
Game photography is undeniably a new art form - screenshots can be posed and framed, and those with a great eye will select the best scenes and most beautiful vistas, just as a real world photographer would. The very best screenshots from famous game photographers like Duncan Harris, James Pollock, Leonardo Sang and Joshua Taylor are shown in exhibitions, printed and framed, and admired by millions of gamers online.


Many of us would love to take similar screenshots, and try as we might we simply can't work around the limitations of traditional game capture - views and camera angles can't be changed, enemies continue to attack, and you can only capture a generic shot with the HUD visible.


Professional game photographers are able to overcome these limitations with exclusive access to developers' internal game builds, custom tools built specially for their work, and the very best computer hardware.

That changes now however with the introduction of NVIDIA Ansel, a revolutionary, accessible game capture tool built in cooperation with leading game developers.



Simply put, Ansel enables you to make and capture your own unique and personally-framed screenshots via an easy-to-use user interface, on NVIDIA GeForce GTX graphics cards.

Within Ansel there are numerous functions, features and modes, detailed below, that help you take amazing screenshots.


Free Camera - Compose Your Shot, Anywhere, From Any Angle

Start your game photography career by activating Ansel, at which time the game will be paused, and a freecam enabled, allowing you to compose your scene and take unlimited high-quality shots until you achieve that perfect image. In other words, you can escape the confines of a game’s first or third person camera and take a screenshot from any angle, until you have the perfect shot.

Roll, zoom, and reposition - do whatever you like to achieve the perfect game photo that real-life photographers may only get once in a lifetime. With this functionality Ansel instantly overcomes the limitations of traditional game capture, enabling you to capture any type of screenshot you can imagine.



Game developers, of course, will have the ability to restrict camera movement in multi-player games so Ansel users don’t gain an unfair advantage through use of the feature.


Super Resolution - Capture Every Detail With Gigapixel Images


Once you’ve positioned and framed your shot, simply select “High Resolution” in the Ansel in-game overlay and you can capture screenshots tens of thousands of pixels in size. Ordinarily this would be impossible given the resources required to capture such a high resolution screenshot, but by using the CUDA Cores present on NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs we can render and save these screenshots with ease via an in-game overlay.

These super resolution screenshots can be viewed in Irfanview and other applications, and shared online via file sharing sites, forums, or any other service that supports the uploading of large files.


But why would you want to capture screenshots at super resolutions tens of thousands of pixels in size? Well, the resulting screenshot is almost entirely free of aliasing, detail is significantly sharper and clear, crops of any part of the screenshot are at maximum fidelity levels, and screenshots can be downsampled to lower resolutions for wall prints, posters, or super high-quality desktop wallpapers.

By saving at such a high resolution you can view incredible amounts of detail in games - take The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt screenshot below, for instance. In that image, Geralt of Rivia’s eye is less than a pixel in size, yet we can zoom in and see his eye and entire face in full detail. Below Geralt is another room that players pass through at the start of the game - by zooming in there we can read the words in the books in full detail.

Download the original 46080x25920, 1.7GB screenshot here.

Post-Process Filters - Adjust The Look & Mood Of Your Favorite Games


If you want to tweak the look, feel and mood of your screenshot before saving, Ansel includes brightness, vignette, sketch, color enhancer, and special FX options for tweaking the image. Moreover, Ansel allows users to create and share their own special FX filters, as they currently do for ReShade and other post-process applications.


OpenEXR Capture - Capture In The Widest Color Spectrum For HDR Images & Color Tweaking


If you're equipped with a HDR TV or monitor, you can export Ansel screenshots in the OpenEXR format, enabling you to view High Dynamic Range Super Resolution screenshots at the highest possible fidelity.

Alternatively, export in OpenEXR to enable in-depth Photoshopping - great for users who wish to further adjust the look of their screenshot captures.





360 Capture - Snap 360-Degree Panorama Photos In Mono and Stereo For Desktop & Virtual Reality Applications


360 degree video, Google Cardboard, and Virtual Reality are all in the news right now - 360 degree film and photo capture solutions are being sold by leading firms, and the results enjoyed by millions of people on YouTube, Google Photos, and other services. Additionally, there are tens of millions of high resolution phones are compatible with Google's entry-level Google Cardboard VR solution, and Virtual Reality headsets from HTC, Oculus VR and Samsung are all on sale.

With Ansel you can create screenshots for these services and devices, with full 360 degree stereo views - simply select the 360゜ you wish to use in Ansel, and follow the instructions on our NVIDIA Ansel technology page to share and view the images on the web, in Google Cardboard, and in Virtual Reality headsets. It's that easy

For Cardboard users, we've released the NVIDIA VR Viewer bundled with Ansel 360 Capture screenshots that you can view today. Download the app and check it out!


To view some 360゜images click here

NVIDIA's Ansel, A Revolutionary Game Photography Tool, Coming Soon


Our revolutionary Ansel technology is coming soon to a number of top games, including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Epic Games' Fortnite, Paragon and Unreal Tournament, Cyan Worlds' Obduction, Thekla’s The Witness, Boss Key Productions’ Lawbreakers, Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division, and the highly-anticipated No Man’s Sky from Hello Games.

So this was all about NVIDIA's latest in-game Photography software with the help of which you can pursue a career in in-gem Photography, if you get enough paid though !

Leave us a comment below on what's your views on this !

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi

Saturday, May 7, 2016

[RELEASED] Nvidia Releases their new flagship cards GTX 1080 and GTX 1070



Nvidia launched their latest flagship Graphics card in 1000 series today. As per the leaks of the heat spreaders and the graphics card shroud were, which we covered before, the latest addition to the Green Team are The GTX 1080 and The GTX 1070 based on the new Pascal architecture. A per Nvidia GTX 1080 will be available for public worldwide on May 27th and GTX 1070 would be available on June 10th, that is in a month's time yes !



The new GTX 1080 is based on the FinFET architecture that provides massive increase in transistor density well maintaining the amazing performance per watt power usage.

Watch the official Video here :



Nvidia Announces GTX 1080 for $599 USD






The latest flagship addition and the next-generation Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 is the next chapter in high-end performance gaming graphics cards. Featuring the latest Pascal architecture designed by Nvidia, the GeForce GTX 1080 will allow gamers to play 4K and VR contents at a much improved Graphics Quality and FPS when compared to the current generation graphics cards.


The performance of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 is mindblowing ! Nvidia's CEO, Jen-Hsun mentioned at the announcement that the GeForce GTX 1080 is not only faster than one GTX 980 but it also crushes away two GTX 980s in SLI setup ! 



Also when compared to the GrForce GTX Titan X, which is a 8 billion transistor and 3072 CUDA Cores with 12 GB GDDR5 memory monster, the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 is a whole lot faster ! Which means this new performance monster beats the crap out of GeForce GTX 980Ti and GeForce GTX Titan X at just 180W power consumption.





The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 features the GP104 GPU (GP104-400-A1) core which comprises of 2560 CUDA cores. NVIDIA’s FinFET architecture allows significant increase in clock frequency increase. The GeForce GTX 1080 was shown clocking in at 2.1 GHz clock speeds on air cooling. The actual clock speed are maintained at 1607 MHz base and 1733 MHz boost but the FinFET architecture allows for extreme overclocking as demoed at the event. The chip features 8 GB of next generation of GDDR5X memory featured across 256-bit bus and clocked at 10 GB/s. This leads to a total bandwidth of 320 GB/s.


The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 draws just 180W TDP powered by only a single 8-pin power connector, one of the most power efficient GPU architecture ever designed for enthusiast level gaming. The display output ports for the card includes Display Port 1.4, HDMI 2.0b and Duallink DVI which means that it is capable of support to all next-gen displays with new standards.


The GPU cooler was also seen as a symbol of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX products but NVIDIA had been running the same GPU cooler for years. Cards based on Kepler GPUs and even the latest Titan X used a slightly modified version. But after two generations of NVIDIA GeForce cards, NVIDIA has finally built the updated version of the NVTTM design that features a bold and aggressive look. 


Designed with the same magnesium alloy metal used on the original cooler, the GTX 1080 cooler design takes things ahead with better cooling and acoustics. This solution provides 67C temperatures in gaming at an insane clock speed of 2.1 GHz.


The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 launches on 27th May in both reference variants for $599 US and founders edition for $699 US. Expect custom models to be unveiled at Computex 2016 from various NVIDIA partners.


Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

[LEAK] Intel's New Broadwell-E 6850K Benchmarks and comparison with 5820K


The first benchmarks of Intel’s upcoming Broadwell-E Core i7-6850K processor have been unveiled. Posted over at overclock.net forums by user “Maintenance Bot”, the benchmarks pit a 14nm Broadwell-E CPU against 22nm Haswell-E which was launched back in 2014. Both chips were ran at the same clock speeds to show the overall IPC improvements.




The processors that were used for testing included the Core i7-6850K (Broadwell-E) and a Core i7-5820K (Haswell-E) chip. The Broadwell processors utilize the modern 14nm process node while the Haswell CPUs utilize the 22nm process node. Comparing the both chips, we don’t see any major difference in the specs.




For instance, the Core i7-5820K features 6 cores, 12 threads and clock speeds of 3.3 GHz base / 3.6 GHz boost. The chip has a 140W TDP and a MSRP of $396.00 US. The Core i7-6850K features the same 6 cores and 12 thread design. The core clocks are maintained at 3.60 GHz base and 3.80 GHz boost with TDPs of 140W. This chip is expected to retail around the same $450 US price range.



Both chips might look similar technically but under the die, both feature a different architecture. Broadwell on average delivers up to 10% better IPC than Haswell which leads to better performance in a number of apps that include gaming. To make the results interesting, the user overclocked both chips to 4.2 GHz and stated that he didn’t go higher because that’s the limit for his 5820K, suggesting that the Broadwell-E chip could go even more higher.




First thing we note is that Broadwell-E chips feature a new IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader) which cover more area compared Haswell-E IHS. On the bottom, the contact pin layout is the same although the transistors and power regulation has changed. The Broadwell-E chips are much thinner compared to Haswell-E parts with the Core i7-6850K measuring at just 1.12mm while the Core i7-5820K measures 1.87mm.

Finally coming to the benchmarks, the user didn’t post a lot of them but they are enough to give us an estimate of the IPC improvements we will be getting on Broadwell-E. Do note that these results are from an Engineering sample so final results should be a slight bit better



In 3DMark Firestrike, the chip scores 19065 points in Physics Scores compared to 16598 points with a Core i7-5820K. Similarly, the chip gets 1311 points in Cinebench R15 benchmark while the Core i7-5820K manages just 1191 points. Both chips were clocked at 4.2 GHz, the 5820K being a retail chip was able to achieve this clock as its max overclock frequency while the Broadwell-E could be overclocked even higher provided that you have adequate cooling.



We also would like to add benchmarks of the Core i7-6900K (stock clocks) to the mix just for comparison sake. The chip scores 1471 points in multi-threaded and 15.14 points in single threaded performance test on CB15. The Core i7-5960X has a single-threaded performance of 13.04 points in the same benchmark.


Intel Core i7-6850K vs Core i7-5820K Firestrike:


Processor Name  Processor Clock   Firestrike Physics Score
Intel Core i7-6850K  4.20 GHz   19065 Points
Intel Core i7-5820K  4.20 GHz   16598 Points


The links to these benchmark score are:


6850K : click here
5820K : click here

Intel Core i7-6850K vs Core i7-5820K CineBench:


Processor Name  Processor Clock   CineBench R15 (Multi-Threaded)
Intel Core i7-6900K  3.60 GHz   1471 Points
Intel Core i7-6850K  4.20 GHz   1311 Points
Intel Core i7-5820K  4.20 GHz   1191 Points


The benchmarks of the Broadwell-E processors show us some good improvement. We can just hope that they feature decent overclocking performance too.

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi

Source : click here

Monday, May 2, 2016

[LAUNCHED] HP and GOOGLE launched their new all-metal Chromebook 13


Here's the first Chromebook in a while that's worth paying attention to: the HP Chromebook 13. It's a thin, all-metal machine with surprisingly capable specs.

This is the first Chromebook to use one of Intel's Core m Skylake processors (as far as we can tell), it can be configured with up to 16GB of RAM, and its 13.3-inch display can be upgraded to use a 3200 x 1800 display. The Chromebook 13 is a little bit like HP's answer to the question: what would it look like if the MacBook ran Chrome?






HP introduced this new Chromebook at their in Google's New York office. Google is said to have collaborated on the laptop's design. Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising: Google has long been looking for higher-end machines to show what Chrome OS is capable of and make the ecosystem look more attractive. With the Pixel now a year old — and still priced at $999 — the Chromebook 13 seemingly serves as a fresher, more accessible alternative.

While Core m's lower processing power is somewhat limiting to computers like the MacBook, it may not be a problem for Chromebooks. Sure, a lot of tabs are still likely to bog it down, but the processor won't be running much beyond those tabs, which should provide more leeway. Using Core m is also supposed to provide 11.5 hours of battery life (on par with the MacBook).





The Chromebook 13 has two USB-C ports, a USB 3.0 port, a headphone jack, and a microSD card reader. It measures just over half an inch thick and weighs 2.86 pounds. Its body is made with brushed aluminum, which gives it a solid look, but also a mid-2000s iTunes vibe.

HP is also pushing this Chromebook as a solution for business users. That might be a hard sell for anyone whose company isn't entirely reliant on Google's ecosystem, but HP thinks a dock might help convince them. Alongside the laptop, HP is also introducing something called the Elite USB-C Docking Station, which is able to hook the Chromebook 13 up to two displays and a series of peripherals.


The Chromebook 13 is supposed to begin shipping in May, with sales opening today. Pricing starts at $499, but you'll have to pay a lot more for the fully specced model. At $499, you get the same build quality but far more limited internals — it won't even have a Core m processor; just a low-end Pentium chip. And no matter how much you spend, no model is available with a touchscreen.






Still, this is a good time to see a powerful new Chromebook hit the market. Google's big developer conference is coming up, and it's looking more and more likely that we're going to see Chrome and Android begin to cross paths. Already, we've seen signs that Android apps will open up to Chromebooks. That'd suddenly make laptops like the Chromebook 13 far more useful than they are today. We'll have to wait a few weeks to see how that plays out, but this next month could be great for Chromebooks.

Author : Anushk Keshri Rastogi

Source : click here