The PSP 3000: Just a few tiny changes from last year’s version.

(Credit: Sony via Joystiq)

Sony officially unveiled the PSP 3000 Wednesday at the Leipzig Games Convention in Germany, confirming rumors that had popped up online in recent weeks. But before you get excited (or–if you just bought a PSP–exasperated), note that this appears to be an even more subtle upgrade than the slimmed-down PSP 2000 that debuted in September 2007. The main changes, according to Sony:

• An antireflective screen, “which enables users to see the screen more clearly in well-lit places, even when used outdoors.” [Update (08/21/2008): According to Engadget Japan (as translated by sister site PSPfanboy), the screen improvements don't stop at the antireflective screen. Sony has apparently also doubled the response time, improved the contrast ratio, and bumped up the color gamut.]
• A built-in microphone, which will allow users to use voice features in certain games and use the PSP’s built-in Skype functionality without the need for a mic-enabled headset.
• The addition of 480i output for gameplay when the PSP is connected to a TV screen via a composite or S-Video cable. (The previous model only allowed playback at 480p, effectively restricting the usefulness of the feature to newer HDTVs with component video inputs.)

The PSP 3000 is expected to hit stores worldwide (Japan, Asia, North America, and Europe) in October, with some markets getting up to three colors: black, pearl white, and silver. Pricing and bundles weren’t disclosed, but we’re guessing Sony will stick with the tried and true $169 barebones/$199 bundle price points that have helped propel the handheld’s strong sales.

Source: Cnet

Posted on Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:00:00 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

NVIDIA Corporation released beta drivers for the new OpenGL 3.0 cross-platform, 3D graphics standard.
The new drivers implement the OpenGL 3.0 API and the GLSL 1.30 shading language for both Windows XP and Windows Vista on selected GeForce and Quadro boards.
With these drivers any developer can now explore the capabilities of the new OpenGL 3.0 specification.

The OpenGL specification provides software developers a broad set of programmable 3D and 2D graphics rendering, visualization, and hardware acceleration functions, allowing a program to run on a wide variety of hardware platforms. An open, vendor-neutral standard, OpenGL is the industry’s most widely used and supported programming interface and is available on major computer platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

OpenGL is controlled by the Khronos Group and the new 3.0 version introduces dozens of new features to increase the functionality, flexibility, and performance of the open, cross-platform standard for 3D graphics acceleration. The new functionality includes: vertex array objects, enhanced vertex buffer objects, 32-bit floating-point textures, render and depth buffers, new texture compression schemes, sRGB frame buffers, and an upgraded shading language.
NVIDIA will be releasing production drivers for OpenGL 3.0 as a part of its regular driver development program.
More information and the drivers are available free on the NVIDIA site.

by Matthew posted on August 13, 2008 12:02 pm

Nvidia has released a range of new software it is classifying under the name of “Power Pack“. The applications contained within this pack show off the use of GeForce 8 series cards for tasks other than gaming as well as introducing PhysX support.

The first Power Pack contains the following:

• GeForce driver version 177.83
• Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX mod
• Badaboom media converter Beta version
• Warmonger full game
• Folding@Home
• Sneak peak demo of Nurien
• Sneak Peak demo of Metal Knight Zero
• The Great Kulu technology demo
• Fluids technology demo

Be prepared for a long wait if you decide to grab all the applications with a download size of over 2.7GB. Thankfully you can choose which applications you want to download.

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It’s not a direct response to AMD unveiling the HD Radeon 4850 X2 and 4870 X2 yesterday, but NVIDIA also came to play at SIGGRAPH, and it’s got lots of new GPU-as-CPU toys for us this morning — and what’s more, they’re free. Like we’d been hearing, GeForce 8, 9, and 200-series cards are all getting PhysX support as of today via a free GeForce Power Pack that contains a free full copy of Warmonger, three PhysX-enabled Unreal Tournament 3 maps, demos of Metal Knight Zero and the Nurien UT3-based social networking service, and a couple tech demos. The Power Pack also includes some new CUDA apps to play with, including a new Folding@Home client (ahem) and a trial version of the Badaboom video transcoder. That’s a lot of new toys, so get downloading and let us know what you think!

Read - PhysX GeForce Power Pack apps
Read - CUDA GeForce Power Pack apps

It’s arriving a month later than anticipated, but at least it’s arriving (we hope). According to a first look at PhysX on NVIDIA’s GeForce cards, The Tech Report is reporting (ahem) that the graphical outfit will dish out new drivers that add PhysX support on August 12th. The new software will allow owners of GeForce 8, GeForce 9 and GeForce GTX 200-series cards to use PhysX acceleration without shelling out any additional coinage, which means that you all will surely be giving it a shot just for kicks, right? Keep next Tuesday clear — you and Unreal Tournament 3 have a date, like it or not.

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