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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BFG Technologies, a supplier of advanced nVidia-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, has announced the nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC 512MB PCI Express 2.0 graphics card.

Backed by free 24/7/365 tech support and lifetime warranty, the graphics card is overclocked out of the box and pushes the limit in ultra realistic game play with nVidia PhysX technology, offering extreme HD gaming with 3-Way SLI.

The 9800 GTX+ OC provides optimal power management with HybridPower technology. Packing more performance than the standard 9800 GTX, this graphics card promises a first-class entertainment experience.

Based on nVidia’s reference design, the new OC-branded card has 128 Stream Processors set at a frequency of 1890MHz and a GPU clocked at 780MHz, both up from the 1836MHz and 738MHz found on stock models. The GeForce 9800 GTX+ OC also has DirectX 10 support, a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 interface and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 2250MHz (2200MHz stock). It costs a sweet 167€.

Source: Biosmagazine

NVIDIA today quietly published details for its two highest-end GeForce 9M series notebook graphics chips following leaks by PC makers. The 9800M line is now NVIDIA’s flagship and is much closer to desktop-class graphics than the earlier 9600M; the top-end 9800M GTX has 112 effects processors that compares closely to the 128 of the desktop 9800, suiting it to desktop replacement portables and very compact desktops. It runs at 500MHz at its core with a 1.9GHz effective memory speed.

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The I4U Gadget Model of July is as promised a photo model spread for the NVIDIA video card fans. Meet the very sexy Katarina Van Derham and her EVGA e-Geforce 9800 GX2.

You might have seen Katarina Van Derham already as the face of several advertising campaigns such as Coors Light, Nike, AT&T, Bacardi, and RockStar Energy Drink.

See the Photos Now in our exclusive I4U Gadget Model Gallery.

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It only launched a few weeks ago, but it looks like NVIDIA could already be set to cut the price of its top-end GeForce GTX 280 graphics card — a move that would be prompted, as you might have guessed, by AMD’s cheaper but powerful Radeon HD 4800 series. According to HotHardware, that word comes from “multiple NVIDIA board partners,” who say that the card could be dropping to as low as $499 (the same as AMD’s competing card). One board partner reportedly added that the price “may be a little higher, or potentially even a little lower.” Obviously, all of that is still up in the air until we hear from NVIDIA itself but, as HotHardware points out, it could certainly pay off to hold out a couple of weeks if you’ve been considering taking the plunge on one of these.

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Everyone’s making a big stink lately about the junk people feed their children, and they should be–kids are becoming slower and fatter and lazier. So it’s only right that you make sure you’re putting only the absolute best into your baby, and by “baby,” I mean, of course, your PC. After all, you nursed it from when it was nothing but an empty shell, bought it the finest Intel motherboard, the best RAM and filled its hard drive with useful programs. Now it’s grown into the fastest, strongest kid on the (virtual) playground and there’s no way you’re going to start feeding it some crap from McDonald’s.

Source: UGO.com

Thanks to JIM for the head’s up that NVIDIA has released the WHQL version of the GeForce 175 drivers if you want to keep your drivers official. You can pick your card at NVIDIA’s download page.

• WHQL-certified driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, and 9 series GPUs.
• Improved 3D performance and load times for GeForce 8 and 9 series GPUs in some DirectX 9 and OpenGL applications as a result an improved shader optimizer.
• Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI™ technology* on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.
• Several game and application compatibility fixes. Please read the release notes for more information on product support, features, driver fixes and known compatibility issues.