NVIDIA has just released its latest GeForce Game Ready driver update, and it brings their ray-tracing capabilities to the older 10-series GTX cards. Up until this latest update, ray-tracing has been reserved for its pricier GeForce 20-series RTX graphics cards, due to the GPUs’ underlying Turing architecture boasting dedicated RT cores for handling the complex calculations ray-tracing needs. “With this new driver however, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and higher GPUs can execute ray-tracing instructions on traditional shader cores, giving gamers a taste, albeit at lower RT quality settings and resolutions, of how ray tracing will dramatically change the way games are experienced,” said the company. Read more for benchmark comparison videos and additional information.
Why valet park, when autonomous summon technology can have your car navigate parking lots or streets to pick you up? During the GPU Technology Conference last month, Clarion demonstrated its long-range autonomous summon technology, running on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier. Using just a smartphone, you can call a parked, driverless vehicle to a pick-up spot. It automatically navigates around pedestrians, other vehicles and obstacles on the route to smoothly meet its passengers. Read more for another video of the NVIDIA Drive AGX and additional information.
NVIDIA introduces GeForce RTX R.O.N., a revolutionary AI-powered holographic assistant that delivers the unique thrill of personalized PC gaming, but unfortunately, it’s just their 2019 April Fools’ Day prank. If this device were real, it would tap into the full power of your GeForce RTX 20 Series-powered gaming rig to connect to your games, coach you through gameplay, and stay up-to-date on everything happening in the world of gaming. Plus, it can even create and project 3D AR displays of maps, levels, and data to help you consistently dominate in battle. Read more for a video, additional pictures and information.
NVIDIA’s Jetson Nano is basically an artificial intelligence computer that makes it possible to create millions of intelligent systems. Available as a $99 devkit for developers and the $129 production-ready module, this tiny CUDA-X AI computer delivers 472 GFLOPS of compute performance for running modern AI workloads and is highly power-efficient, consuming as little as 5 watts. Not only does it support high-resolution sensors, process many sensors in parallel and run multiple modern neural networks on each sensor stream, it also supports many popular AI frameworks, making it easy for developers to integrate their preferred models and frameworks into the product. Read more for a video showing Intelligent Video Analytics for 8 channels at 1080P 30FPS powered by DeepStream SDK running on a Jetson Nano.
NVIDIA has developed a deep learning model capable of transforming rough sketches into photorealistic art, thanks to generative adversarial networks, or GANs, to convert segmentation maps into lifelike images. GauGAN, a tribute to post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, is the interactive app using the model. “It’s much easier to brainstorm designs with simple sketches, and this technology is able to convert sketches into highly realistic images,” said Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning research at NVIDIA. Read more for a video and additional information.
NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is a pricey graphics card to say the least, but things just got a lot more expensive, thanks to Colorful’s limited edition iGame Kudan model. This Steampunk-inspired card will be limited to just 1,000-units and priced at a whopping $3,000. It’s not all about the looks, as it does come factory overclocked to 1,800MHz, and for comparison, the Founder’s Edition clocks in at 1,635MHz, while 1,545MHz for a reference card. Other upgrades include a triple-slot cooler that combines air and water cooling with three fans as well as numerous heatpipes. Read more for additional pictures and information.
Photo credit: Laptop Mag
Micro-Star International’s (MSI) GS75 Stealth proves that gaming laptops don’t need to be bulky, as it features the latest GeForce RTX 2080 graphics in a svelte 2.2 kg package with dimensions up to 60% smaller than regular 17″ laptops. Its immersive 17.3″ 144Hz IPS-level display provides gamers a panoramic view of the playing field, while the golden hinge accent and aluminum alloy add to both rigidity and aesthetics. There’s also an extra-large touchpad with a silky smooth glass surface for improved responsiveness and pinpoint accuracy. Boasting the first passive radiator design on laptop speakers, the GS75 is able to deliver stunning audio bass and ‘extra oomph’. Read more for another video review and additional information.
For those unfamiliar with NVIDIA G-Sync, it’s basically a proprietary adaptive sync technology developed aimed primarily at eliminating screen tearing and the need for software alternatives such as Vsync. It eliminates screen tearing by allowing a video display to adapt to the frame rate of the output device (GPU) rather than it adapting to the display, which could traditionally be refreshed halfway through the process of a frame being output by the device, resulting in screen tearing, or two or more frames being shown at once. NVIDIA announced at CES 2019 that it would support some of AMD’s FreeSync displays, thanks to a new GeForce GPU driver. Read more for another video and additional information.
NVIDIA introduced DRIVE AutoPilot at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, the world’s first commercially available Level 2+ automated driving solution that uniquely provides both world-class autonomous driving perception and an intelligent cockpit. The platform is based on the DRIVE AGX Xavier system-on-a-chip (SoC) and DRIVE Software, integrating for the first time the company’s DRIVE AV autonomous driving and DRIVE IX intelligent experience capabilities. DRIVE AutoPilot is part of NVIDIA’s DRIVE platform, which is being used by “hundreds of companies worldwide to build autonomous vehicle solutions that increase road safety while reducing driver fatigue and stress on long drives or in stop-and-go traffic,” said the company. Read more for another video and additional information.
NVIDIA’s press conference with CEO Jensen Huang kicks off tonight at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, and we’re expecting lots of new gaming, artificial intelligence, robotics, as well as auto technology announcements. However, due to the current cryptocurrency downswing, there most likely won’t be too much news on crypto-mining. It’s rumored that the leaked RTX 2060 graphics card will make an appearance as well. Read more for another video about possible new products, a livestream link, and additional information.