Khronos Announces OpenGL 4.0 Specifications
The Khronos group, at the Game Developers Conference, announced the OpenGL 4.0 API specifications. OpenGL 4.0 is set to rival DirectX 11 in being able to make use of hardware tessellation offered by this generation's GPUs, drawing of data generated by OpenGL, OpenCL, or other external APIs without any intervention from the CPU, support for 64-bit Double Precision Floating Point shader operations, and a number of performance improvements. OpenGL is a multi-platform API that can run on operating environments such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS, certain gaming consoles, as well as a low-resource API for mobile devices. A list of main feature changes in OpenGL 4.0 are as follows:
- Two new shader stages that enable the GPU to offload geometry tessellation from the CPU
- Per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions for increased rendering quality and anti-aliasing flexibility
- Drawing of data generated by OpenGL, or external APIs such as OpenCL, without CPU intervention
- Shader subroutines for significantly increased programming flexibility;
- Separation of texture state and texture data through the addition of a new object type called sampler objects
- 64-bit double precision floating point shader operations and inputs/outputs for increased rendering accuracy and quality
- Performance improvements, including instanced geometry shaders, instanced arrays, and a new timer query
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I-O Data Intros 12x Blu-ray Writer Drive
I-O Data introduced a new internal Blu-ray disc writer that burns 25 GB and 50 GB Blu-ray discs at speeds of up to 12x. Specific to the media, the drive has write speeds of 12x for BD-R, 2x for BR-RE, 16x for DVD-R, 12x for DVD-RAM, 8x for DVD-R/DVD+R DL and DVD+R, 6x for DVD-RW, 48x for CD-R and 24x for CD-RW. The drive uses SATA interface, and has a buffer of 4 MB. It is backed by 1 year warranty, and is priced at US $315.
Source: TechConnect Magazine
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Galaxy Dual GTS 250 Accelerator Tested
Galaxy's graphics card in the works that uses two GeForce GTS 250 GPUs has finally taken shape. Galaxy designed this card out of NVIDIA's specifications, from scratch. The company also designed a cooler that uses two GPU heatsinks, each with spirally-projecting aluminum fins, with its own 80 mm fan, and a heatsink over other parts of the card such as memory and VRM. The card draws power from two 6-pin power connectors. It has 512 MB of GDDR3 memory per GPU.
Out of the box, the card comes with clock speeds of 600/1500/1000 MHz (core/shader/memory). With the bundled Galaxy Magic Panel HD software, it can be overclocked further. In a certain test, clock speeds of 675/1000/1696 MHz were used. A 3DMark Vantage run with Performance preset yielded a score of P13964. In the pictures, the piece of PCB sticking out next to the PCI-Express interface is a rudimentary spacer. It won't be present on retail cards.
Source: Expreview
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(PR) Razer Reaffirms Commitment to Support Mac Users
Today at the Game Developers Conference, Razer, the world's leading manufacturer of high-end precision gaming and lifestyle peripherals, announced an effort to increase support for Mac users by issuing driver support for all upcoming Razer products, including the Razer StarCraft II peripheral suite.
"I'm very proud to say that at Razer, we are committed to supporting both Mac and PC gamers," said Robert "Razerguy" Krakoff, president, Razer USA. "We are constantly working to increase driver support for Mac with our existing Razer products and have plans to release all of our new products with dedicated Mac and PC drivers. This is a really exciting opportunity to expand the gaming industry and make it more inclusive for Mac users by providing the same level of support that we give to our PC users."
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Intel Lets Loose Core i7 980X Performance Evaluations
On the occasion of Game Developers Conference, an annual conclave of game developers, in San Fransisco, USA, Intel previewed to audiences its latest Core i7 980X Extreme Edition six-core processor. This meant that the media could publish performance evaluations of the new processor. Intel seems to have pulled it off with this launch. There is a broad consensus among the media that the six-core processor has a performance incentive with most of today's multi-threaded application that scales up well compared to quad-core processors.
The 980X is also the first high-performance processor based on the 32 nm Westmere architecture. The processor is able to maintain a TDP rating of 130W, on par with its 45 nm Nehalem quad-core counterparts. It has six cores operating at 3.33 GHz, with HyperThreading technology enabled, there are 12 logical CPUs (threads) for the operating system to deal with. Each core has 64 KB L1, 256 KB L2 caches, while a large 12 MB L3 cache is shared between all the cores. The Core i7 980X comes in the LGA-1366 package. Most existing motherboards with the Intel X58 Express chipset will be able to support it with a BIOS update. Intel will formally release the processor by April, at an estimated price of US $999.
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(PR) WD Announces New My Passport AV Portable Media Drives
WD, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its new My Passport AV portable media drives. Designed specifically for video storage and playback, the new My Passport AV portable media drives deliver a plug-and-play experience for digital media enthusiasts. Available now at select retailers and WD's online store, the My Passport AV portable media drive is offered with 320 GB of capacity.
A large and increasing number of game consoles, camcorders, TVs, DVRs, Blu-ray players and media players, including the WD TV Media Player family, allow consumers to connect a USB drive and play the multimedia content from the drive on an HD TV. The My Passport AV portable media drive is designed to meet the requirements of this demanding video streaming environment. It delivers the formatting and low-power consumption that assures out-of-the-box compatibility with many leading CE (consumer electronics) devices.
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(PR) OCZ Technology Makes Solid State Storage Affordable with Onyx SSDs
OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), today unveiled the OCZ Onyx SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, an ultra-affordable MultiLevel Cell (MLC)-based solid state storage solution designed for consumers looking to take advantage of flash-based storage technology. Offering a faster and more durable alternative to traditional hard drives in a cost-efficient SSD, the Onyx delivers reliable performance without the high price normally associated with SSD drives.
"As new technologies become available, OCZ continues to expand both our enterprise and consumer SSD lines, and one of our goals is to make SSDs more affordable to end-users. Our new Onyx series SSD does exactly that and is a perfect solution for netbooks, laptops, or home desktop PCs," commented Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "Designed to offer the best of both worlds, the new OCZ Onyx SSD delivers the speed and reliability of solid state storage to mainstream consumers at an aggressive price point that makes the technology more accessible to customers who want to take advantage of all the benefits of the SSDs without incurring the high cost normally associated with the solution."
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