Galax has brought out its own addition to add to the growing lineup of small form factor GTX 970s.  The new GTX 970 Black Edition is only 19cm long and packs as much power as a standard sized GTX 970.

Today Galax (aka Galaxy) announced a brand new videocard in its GTX 970 lineup, the GTX 970 Black Edition.  The card is meant to be a small form factor that will be compact enough to fit in many small form factor(SSF) cases.  The card is only 19cm long and has a very nice custom cooler employing twin 80mm fans sitting atop a aluminum fins fed by three heat-pipes.  The card come factory overclocked with a base clock of 1126MHz and a boost clock of 1266MHz.  Galax decided to leave the memory alone as it is running the standard 7GHz memory clock.  The card will be available very shortly for about €320 from a variety of retailers and etailers.

The Nvidia GTX 970 is currently the “it” card of the moment as it is quite frankly the model that provides the best price to performance ratio.  The GTX 970s have been in a constant state of in-stock and out of stock from various sellers due to the popularity.  This has created a lot of frustration for consumers who are wanting to upgrade only to find that it is constantly out of stock, and it becomes a game of check the store for availability.  The fact is that these cards are so powerful and so energy efficient that to be able to build a small form factor build with one of these new cards would be just as powerful as a full sized system.  The small form factor builds are becoming increasingly popular amount enthusiast and with the Intel X99 motherboards coming out in mATX sizes users can now create powerful rigs that take only a fraction of the space as they used to while being more powerful.

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MSI just announced that they are making a special limited edition version of the Nvidia GTX 970 Gaming 4G, with with an all copper heatsink and heatpipes.  MSI calls it the Golden Edition and it is available in the US exclusively through Newegg.com.

MSI (TPE:2377) has released the Nvidia GTX 970 Gaming 4G Golden Edition and is available in limited quantities in the US and APAC regions. The sole retailer in the US is Newegg.com where the card is currently in stock and available for $399.99.  This means it is commanding a $50 premium over the standard 970 Gaming 4G that goes out of stock as soon as they replenish the inventory. Nvidia GTX 970 is sure the hot item in the industry this last month or so and that is rightfully so since the card is a great buy in the mid $300 range and it performs like a champion.  Not to mention that with these cards users have huge overclocking potential, making their money go farther in terms of performance.  Speaking of performance this new Golden Edition also comes with a base clock of 1165MHz and a boost clock of 1317MHz and opposed the the standard Gaming 4G’s 1140/1279.  But really with a full copper Twin Frozr V cooler this card should be able to run much higher while staying safe and cool.  The cooler is less than two slots wide and should be ideal for use in multi-card SLI setups.  To top things off the heatsink has been treated to prevent any tarnish on the beautiful finish.

This new Golden Edition follows in the footsteps of the N465GTX Twin Frozr II Golden Edition.  In 2010 MSI released a special limited release of GTX 465 GPUs with all copper heatsinks and heatpipes.  In 2010 they were a big hit and owners soon found out that they could flash them to a GTX 470.  Here in the US, MSI cards are the preferred brand for those who like to modify the cooling by replacing the thermal interface material or using a watercooling block.  The US office is pretty nice about letting people do this as long as users do not physically damage the card in any way.

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ARM today announced its latest graphics IP which includes three new GPUs as well as new video and display processors. With the introduction of ARM’s new Mali 8 series graphics IP, the company put a bigger focus on power efficiency and is looking to target products across a broad spectrum of capabilities and power envelopes. ARM’s announcement today introduces the Mali-T860, Mali-T830 and Mali-T820 GPUs as well as the Mali-V550 and Mali-DP550.

The new Mali graphics IP, as shown above, is part of ARM’s effort to make their graphics solutions even more efficient than their predecessors. This includes the ARM Mali-T800 series which is a successor to the currently available Mali-T700 series. The first of this graphics IP, the Mali-T800 series is designed to be more for the mid-range of devices as opposed to the high-end, however, ARM did state that the ARM Mali-T860 is still a high performance part.

The Mali-T860 is, according to ARM, a much more efficient GPU than the previous generations stating that it is 45% more efficient at certain tasks than the T628, which was the company’s high performance part before the T700 series cam out. It also has 16 scalable shader cores, meaning that you don’t have to fully implement all cores in the design, but I suspect most that choose to license it will go for the 16 core design.

ARM also claims support for 4K, which very likely means the ability to display 4K pixels and maybe 4K UIs without much more than that. Because realistically, no mobile platform is really capable of 4K gaming right now unless they upscale 1080P content. Additionally, the GPU will support OpenGL ES 3.1 and OpenCL 1.2, but no Open CL 2.0. There is also going to be DirectX 11.1 support, but no DirectX 11.3 or 12.0 support. And last but not least, they also will support renderscript compute for all of the Android implementations. The lack of OpenCL 2.0 may be due to the fact that these are designed to be more mainstream or because OpenCL 2.0 is so new, but the lack of DirectX 12 is a bit interesting since this GPU will be in products sometime next year, which is around the time of Windows 10 (and DX12) launch.

That brings us to the Mali-T830 and T820 which are ARM Mali’s even more power efficient GPUs designed for the mainstream performance. These GPUs essentially carry many of the same capabilities of the T860 but with only four shader cores and no 4K support. They also lack an advanced tiling unit, which the T860 has. With these ARM Mali graphic chips, the company claims 50% better areal efficiency and 55% faster performance over the T622 generation of ARM Mali graphics, which preceded the current T720 generation of Mali GPUs.

Last but not least, are ARM’s Mali Video and Display processors which are designed to bring ARM’s goal of efficiency all the way from the GPU to the display processor. The way that they achieve this is with their new Mali-V550 and Mali-DP550 processors each designed for high efficiency operation in conjunction with the ARM Mali 800 series GPUs.  As you can see from the slides below, the Mali-V550 also brings HEVC (h.265) encode and decode capability to ARM’s video processors and brings the ability to support multiple standards. The V550 also scales from doing 1080 at 60 FPS with a single video care to 4K at 120 FPS with 8 video cores and it supports multiple simultaneous encode and decode streams.

The Mali-DP550 further enables a lot of what the T860 and V550 can do with improved power and memory efficiency as well as the ability to scale to 4K resolution. ARM is clearly ready to hop aboard the 4K bandwagon, with Qualcomm leading the charge. They also support 3rd party display differentiation which allows for 3rd party/SoC vendor IP into the Mali display pipeline.

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Sci-Fi fans are quite aware that what is usually the realm of science fiction can eventually become science-fact. For instance, while ultra-portable video-communicators were just a novelty item on series like Star Trek in the early 1970s, video-enabled IP-based communications is now readily available to anyone who has a smartphone. It’s the same with other technologies predicted by Sci-Fi writers, which tend to become a reality once the right technology and resources are available.

One such example is OTOY’s holographic capture and display system, which is set to be out in the market within the coming year. The cloud graphics firm has announced the availability of its holographic video pipeline platform, which includes a full 360-degree holographic capture system. The platform enables content creators to capture real-world objects in full 3D, and then store or capture the content for later consumption. Content can then be adopted for use on virtual-reality headsets like the Oculus Rift. OTOY is also developing a free-standing light field display that can output the holographic content, akin to the Holodeck concept found in Sci-Fi series Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as other fictional settings that employ holographic sequences for purposes like communications and training.

“OTOY’s breakthroughs in compression and rendering have dramatically reduced the barriers to holographic video, making it a viable media format that gives content creators everywhere a simple, cost-effective way to bring high quality, interactive 3D content to multiple platforms for the world to enjoy,” said Jules Orbach, Founder and CEO, OTOY, in a statement.

The new technology is expected to have an impact in various industries, including film, gaming, military training and other entertainment media. OTOY’s free-standing holographic equipment is set to be launched in 2015, although the company’s holographic video pipeline is already available to the industry in several components. These include the LightStage set for capture of people, objects and environments, and OctaneRender for image rendering. The platform supports the ORBX format, which delivers up to 4K and 8K video resolution, which provide 16 times the resolution of 1080P high-definition displays. The format also supports up to 32K, HDR, as well as holographic video.

OTOY’s technologies have actually received industry acclaim, particularly from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which means that there is potential for both industry and consumer markets to gain access to quality holodeck-like technologies once OTOY releases its stand-alone devices.

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In its recent earnings report, Advanced Micro Devices  reported an improvement its second quarter of 2014, compared with the same period the previous year.

The company posted a loss of $36 million ($0.05 per share) during the period, a reduction, compared with $74 million loss ($0.10 per share)  in the same period the previous year. This comes amid a growth in sales in the second-quarter of 2014, as well as new product releases expected to grow the company’s market share in both consumer and commercial markets. The Sunnyvale chipmaker’s performance has fallen short of analyst expectations, although it is still within the company’s own forecast.

A sound strategy

AMD’s recent restructuring strategy is also considered to have had a positive impact on its nominal improvement in earnings. The company has finished the first two phases of this three-phase strategy, which include scaling back on manpower, improving its cash flow, and executing its 2013 roadmap.  By focusing its resources on high-growth markets like ultra-low processors, semi-custom platforms, professional graphics processors and embedded solutions, the company is banking on innovations targeted at addressing the current trends in high-performance, cloud and mobile computing.

AMD is said to be in a unique position amid the rise of mobility-oriented technologies popularized by smartphones and tablets that cater to both consumer and enterprise needs. The chipmaker straddles two industries: one is the predominantly x86-based desktop architecture business currently dominated by Intel, and the other is the ARM-based architecture that powers a majority of mobile devices and low-power applications in the market. It is in the latter that the chipmaker is likely to dominate or at least grow significantly.

New releases

In the recent weeks, AMD launched a few technologies targeted at improving its position in the commercial and enthusiast market, particularly with the FirePro S9150 server card, which delivers up to 2.53 TFLOPS of peak double-precision compute performance, at a TDP of 235 Watts. According to AMD, this is the company’s first architecture designed specifically with high performance computing (HPC) workloads in mind, and is actually the first to break the 2.0 TFLOPS barrier. The new platform caters to cloud computing providers, enterprise clients, as well as the enthusiast market.

AMD has also launched its Opetron 64-bit ARM-based developer kits. Codenamed “Seattle”, the ultra-low power ARM-based kits are supposedly faster and more powerful than current low-power x86 chipsets. This chipset targets cloud services and data center providers.

Meanwhile, AMD is also targeting the emerging markets with its launch of two accelerated processing units (APUs) in China: the FX-8300 CPU and the Athlon X4 860K. The FX-8300 is geared toward providing multi-threaded performance at a low price point, targeting OEMs. The Athlon X4 860K is targeted at the gaming and enthusiast market, pushing four Steamroller cores clocked at 3.7 GHz with 2MB L2 cache.

Can the market share hold?

As it stands, AMD’s market share in the server industry has declined to 5% since its peak of 24% in 2006, although the company itself forecasts a gain toward 20% by end 2015 or by 2016. The chipmaker has traditionally been viewed to compete directly with Intel, although its recent thrust in focusing on high-performance and ultra-low power offerings may be seen as the company’s saving grace. AMD’s stock price fell 15% to  when it announced Q3 forecasts, which are largely conservative. However, the stock price rose 5% in the week after the company announced its latest Opetron and FirePro series, signaling that there could be interest in strong financials if the third phase of AMD’s restructuring plan is a deemed to be a success.

AMD expects that by 2016, the company will focus 50% of its business on high-growth markets by 2016, thereby leaving the other half to focus on the traditional PC market — a sound decision considering it is in the high-growth portion where the company’s strength now lies. It will now depend on the computing market’s uptake of AMD products and platforms, whether the company can follow through with its last phase of restructuring, which is geared toward ensuring profitability from an improved market position.

AMD’s stock is currently trading at $4.10, with volume picking up in the wake of its second-quarter 2014 earnings announcement.

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Yes, Asetek was recently granted a patent (2 weeks ago) that basically gave them a blank check to sue anyone that uses an form of liquid (or non-liquid) cooling on any add-in card. That includes any GPUs, RAID controllers, network cards or ANY device that may need additional cooling that isn’t air cooled (passively or not). Obviously, Asetek believed that they could get away with this patent because they wouldn’t directly butt heads with AMD and Nvidia because both of these companies mostly manufacture air cooled graphics cards, so friction is minimal. However, many of their AIBs and aftermarket companies like Swiftech and EK are directly going to be in infringement of this patent. And so will CoolIt, Asetek’s biggest competitor, if they make a GPU cooling solution to follow their CoolIT Omni GPU cooling solution.

Sure, Asetek’s patent has actually been in the works for the past 6 years, but that doesn’t change the fact that their solution is in no way unique or novel to what has already been implemented before. They’ve intentionally made their patent vague so that it wouldn’t appear to target graphics cards exactly, but the reality is that GPUs are the hottest possible add-in card you could install in your system and Asetek knows it. They’ve also made their patent intentionally vague in order to catch any other possible implementations where something like a Xeon Phi add-in card (as opposed to the socketed ones) would require cooling but isn’t technically a graphics card.

Their first patent application mentions a “graphics card thermal interposer” but fails to mention any innovations such as microchannels, which didn’t exist at that time but is mentioned in this granted patent filing. In fact, the actual patent that was granted changes the language to “Thermal interposer liquid cooling system” and includes both liquid cooling systems and cold plate assemblies. There are some included drawings as well, but if you get the jist of it, using the drawings and the claimed language, they’re basically trying to claim a patent on a self-contained GPU water cooling system where the radiator has a fan and is not directly attached to the GPU. So, if you read our review of the R9 295X2, you’ll know exactly what system we’re talking about. There’s no denying that they’ve designed an amazing system, the question is whether or not they really have the right to exclusively claim such a design when others have effectively already done the same thing.

But as you can see, Asetek has had quite a few patents for various things which include server liquid cooling and generic liquid cooling solutions. However, Asetek has done this before time and time again, by patenting something that their competitors already have on the market and then using that patent to either kill their products or to get some sort of a cut. I remember the days of Asetek’s Vapochill (and the patents that went along with that) and their watercooling solutions. However, ever since Asetek has gone into LCLC (low cost liquid cooling) which are mostly self-contained systems, they’ve been on a patent rampage and have made the world of liquid cooling much less exciting. In our patent digging, we also found that Asetek’s founder actually has some patents of his own including some recent ones.

Either way, what Asetek is referring to in their patents may be something that they’re incredibly good at, but I don’t see anything that makes their own application unique or worthy of a patent.

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Today was an interesting day in AMDland, first the company announced their latest GPU, the FirePro W8100 and then later in the day they announced a program where you could buy any of their latest GPUs for a whopping 50% as long as its the first one, every subsequent one will be full price.  But first, you have to go through an ‘approval process’. Now, let’s get back to the new GPU AMD just announced, what is it exactly? Well, the FirePro W8100 is part of AMD’s professional line of graphics cards branded as FirePro.

So, looking at the rough specs we can see that the W8100 delivers over 2 TFLOPs of double precision, which is actually less than what Intel’s new Knight’s Landing is capable of delivering, which was announced today. It does, however, also do over 4 TFLOPs of single precision which is quite impressive since its double Nvidia’s K5000’s 2.1 TFLOPs. This GPU is effectively a professional version of AMD’s R9 290 GPU which we reviewed and found overall to be a very impressive GPU for the money, and it still is. What makes this GPU different, however is that it can drive four 4K displays simultaneously and has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory as opposed to 4 GB, making better use of the 512-bit memory bus on the Hawaii Pro GPU inside. This is, however, less than what the W9100 supports which is six 4K displays. But realistically you won’t be doing any gaming on these 4K displays so it doesn’t seem outrageous to think someone could be using 32 million pixels. AMD accomplishes this through putting four DisplayPort 1.2 connectors on the back of the card as you can see above and below.

W8100 Specifications, current and future

As you can see from the above specs, AMD has decided to change the GPU’s name to an engine and say its clocked at 824 MHz, a solid 123 MHz less than the R9 290 gaming graphics card that it mimics. It does, however have double the memory of the R9 290 which is why it is capable of driving up to four 4K displays. AMD also powers it with two 6-pin power connectors, drawing 220W and supporting PCIe 3.0, everything pretty standard here. It also supports OpenCL 1.2 and already has OpenCL 2.0 support baked-in, which is good to know for anyone planning to buy a ‘future-proof’ GPU. It also supports OpenGL 4.3 and will support OpenGL 4.4, which isn’t that much of a feat as most of that support will be accomplished though a driver update. What is interesting, though, is that it supports DirectX 11.2, but AMD is making no mention of future compatibility with DirectX 12 at all, which seems a bit missing. It isn’t anything shocking since this graphics card is based on a GPU that was announced in 2013, but it is still interesting that AMD has nothing to mention there.

AMD also couldn’t help but compare themselves to Nvidia’s Quadro K5000, Nvidia’s older professional workstation GPU (as they’re currently on the K6000) so naturally, here in AMD’s comparison they basically spank Nvidia. Yes, the W8100 is $2499, which makes it more price comparable with the K5000 as opposed to the K6000 which sells for a whopping $4,999 and is more comparable with AMD’s W9100.

AMD also draws a comparison against Nvidia’s Maximus 2 development platform, which we also reviewed, as that solution is absolutely bulletproof but also incredibly expensive. Here AMD is claiming that they deliver more performance and doing it with fewer GPUs and with comparable memory. However, AMD doesn’t talk about the development scenarios that it enables or how good their professional drivers are compared to Nvidia’s. The Maximus 2 platform (and subsequent versions) are all about stability and reliability and not necessarily about performance as we learned in our review. So, until AMD can put these GPUs in our hands and show us that their GPUs and platforms are as stable as Nvidia’s in the same applications, then we’re not entirely sure that AMD can draw these comparisons. Yes, fewer GPUs will consume less power, but sometimes power isn’t as much of a concern when in professional graphics scenarios.

Last but not least, AMD’s W8100 was benchmarked in a ton of AMD-favorable benchmarks and applications (mostly OpenCL heavy) and they obviously won pretty well. However, the most interesting benchmark to me that isn’t cherry picked by AMD was their DaVinci Resolve performance benchmark showing scaling in Resolve using W8100’s. In that benchmark they show almost 100% scaling with DaVinci Resolve, which may be incredibly attractive to professionals that do lots of heavy post-processing.

DaVinci Resolve performance scaling with W8100

Also, in regards to AMD’s 50% off promotion, there are actually only specific GPUs eligible for the promotion, including the W9100. And frankly, if you’re going to use the 50% off promotion, you might as well use it on their fastest and most expensive (and capable) professional graphics card. Other options include $800 off the MSRP of the W8000, $450 off the MSRP of the W7000, $1250 off the S9000’s MSRP and $715 off the S7000 at MSRP price. So, obviously it isn’t 50% off all professional graphic cards, but rather up to 50% off some of them.

I’m not sure why AMD is doing this, maybe to introduce people to their GPUs by getting to buy one cheaply, which isn’t a bad sales strategy. However, it may also be that they’re desperate to sell these GPUs and are cherry picking specific models and prices in order to make sure that they’re still making a profit on them.

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Oracle used the Imagination Summit 2014 in Santa Clara, California to announce their affiliation with Imagination Technologies of the UK. The collaboration is aimed at enhancing Java for embedded applications, including those used for the Internet of Things (IoT) and to optimize Java for the MIPS CPU architecture.

Oracle shared their vision of the Internet of Things at the Imagination Summit 2014

The MIPS32 and MIPS64 systems will gain support through Oracle’s Java Development Kit (JDK) for developing, debugging, and monitoring Java applications. Developers can use Java in various applications including routers, wireless access points, residential gateways, networking equipment, and mobile devices. Krishna Yarlagadda, President of Imagination in North America, indicated that his company is extremely committed to growing the MIPS ecosystem.

Henrik Stahl, Oracle’s VP of Product Management for Java & Internet of Things, appeared on stage at the Imagination Summit 2014

Imagination’s BusBridge 2 Module features an easily configurable, high-performance, low latency MIPS core interface. It is designed for semiconductor manufacturing companies, ASIC developers, and system OEMs who want to quickly integrate a MIPS core into an AHB-based system. AHB is a bus protocol introduced in Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture version 2 from ARM.

Imagination’s BusBridge 3 family of synthesizable functional blocks help SoC designers integrate MIPS32 CPU’s into the most popular high performance chip bus hierarchies. The OCP2AXI bridge works to connect the MIPS32 OCP{Open Core Protocol) interface to an AXI system bus while the OCP Splitter, a small, synthesizable function block has an OCP input that expands to two OCP outputs. Downloads and User Guides are available on line. Imagination also provides a MIPS Developer Forum.

Additionally a joint effort between Oracle and Imagination will be aimed at improving Java on systems involving Imagination’s PowerVR graphics, a product for multimedia processing, including 2D and 3D graphics. The PowerVR architecture is based on Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR), in contrast to Immediate Mode Rendering (IMR) used by most graphics engines in the PC and games console worlds.

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As we had already reported, a component of the AMD technology coined as FreeSync has finally been ratified and standardized by VESA as part of the DisplayPort 1.2a standard. As of today, however, the standard will be known as Adaptive-Sync. While it may not be as catchy for companies like AMD, which liked to brag about the fact that their version of adaptive refresh rate syncing was a ‘free’ upgrade the truth is the technology is best named Adaptive-Sync. This is a more open version of what Nvidia’s currently doing with their G-Sync technology, which is also an adaptive-sync technology, but requires Nvidia GPU and Nvidia monitor electronics both of which are not only cost prohibitive but fairly closed in terms of accessibility to others. As such, Nvidia must be applauded for having brought this technology to market and for having made the issue a topic of discussion and ultimately resulting in DisplayPort’s supporting of this new adaptive-sync technology.

How Adaptive-Sync works in different scenarios

Adaptive-Sync is a great technology because it will allow both gaming desktop and notebook manufacturers to not only smooth out the frame rates of gaming and graphics, but also to only refresh the monitor as many times as the GPU is capable of delivering frames. This means that with fewer refreshes we could see much better power consumption and battery life out of these displays, which ultimately results in better power bills for people that always have their monitors on and better battery life for mobile devices that connect to an external display. Adaptive-Sync has been a part of VESA’s embedded DisplayPort, eDP, spec since 2009 and as a result, a lot of adaptive-sync technology is already incorporated into a lot of the components for displays that rely on eDP for internal signaling.

Implementation of DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync technology is offered to VESA members free without any license fee, which means we will likely see big monitor manufacturers like Dell and Samsung adopting this standard fairly quickly. This announcement, as we had stated earlier would likely happen in May, and precede VESA’s DisplayPort 1.3 announcement. This announcement is expected to come around the late Q2, early Q3 timeframe and will include all of the DisplayPort 1.2a features including adaptive-sync. And thanks to the inclusion of adaptive-sync into DisplayPort 1.2, the DisplayPort 1.3 standard may have an easier time enabling things like 8K video since supporting 8K video at variable lower frame rates going to be less bandwidth intensive than 30 or 60p. While we don’t know what the exact final specifications of DisplayPort 1.3 will be, we do know it will likely include VESA’s new video compression standard called Display Stream Compression which is designed to support up to 8K video. As we’ve said before, the people at VESA would really like to be able to maintain the same cabling as DisplayPort 1.1 and 1.2, however it may not be possible in order to enable 8K and 4K 3D technologies. Until then, we’ll keep you updated and informed on the latest from VESA and all of the video standards.

Update 11:35 am: AMD has sent us a series of Q&A about the new DisplayPort Adaptive-sync technology addressing some people’s questions

Q:What is DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync?
A: DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync is a new addition to the DisplayPort™ 1.2a specification, ported from the embedded DisplayPort™ v1.0 specification. DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync provides an industry-standard mechanism that enables real-time adjustment of a monitor’s refresh rate of a display over a DisplayPort™ link.

Q: What is Project FreeSync?
A: Project FreeSync is an AMD effort to leverage industry standards, like DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync, to deliver dynamic refresh rates. Dynamic refresh rates synchronize the refresh rate of a compatible monitor to the framerate of a user’s AMD Radeon™ graphics to reduce or eliminate stuttering, juddering and/or tearing during gaming and video playback.

Q: How are DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync and Project FreeSync different?
A: DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync is an ingredient DisplayPort™ feature that enables real-time adjustment of monitor refresh rates required by technologies like Project FreeSync. Project FreeSync is a unique AMD hardware/software solution that utilizes DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync protocols to enable user-facing benefits: smooth, tearing-free and low-latency gameplay and video.

Q: Is DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync the industry-standard version of Project FreeSync?
A: The DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync specification was ported from the Embedded DisplayPort™ specification through a proposal to the VESA group by AMD. DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync is an ingredient feature of a DisplayPort™ link and an industry standard that enables technologies like Project FreeSync.

Q: What are the requirements to use FreeSync?
A: To take advantage of the benefits of Project FreeSync, users will require: a monitor compatible with DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync, a compatible AMD Radeon™ GPU with a DisplayPort™ connection, and a compatible AMD Catalyst™ graphics driver. AMD plans to release a compatible graphics driver to coincide with the introduction of the first DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync monitors.

Q: When can I buy a monitor compatible with Project FreeSync?
A: AMD has undertaken every necessary effort to enable Project FreeSync in the display ecosystem. Monitor vendors are now integrating the DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync specification and productizing compatible displays. AMD is working closely with these vendors to bring products to market, and we expect compatible monitors within 6-12 months.

Q: What AMD Radeon™ GPUs are compatible with Project FreeSync?
A: The first discrete GPUs compatible with Project FreeSync are the AMD Radeon™ R9 290X, R9 290, R7 260X and R7 260 graphics cards. Project FreeSync is also compatible with AMD APUs codenamed “Kabini,” “Temash,” “Beema,” and “Mullins.” All compatible products must be connected via DisplayPort™ to a display that supports DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync.

Q: How is Project Freesync different from NVIDIA G-Sync?
A: While both technologies have similar benefits, G-Sync uses expensive and proprietary hardware. In contrast, Project FreeSync utilizes the industry-standard DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync specification to promote wider adoption, lower cost of ownership, and a broad ecosystem of compatibility.

Q: Why should gamers purchase a system that utilizes Project FreeSync?
A: Project FreeSync’s ability to synchronize the refresh rate of a display to the framerate of a graphics card can eliminate visual artifacts that many gamers are especially sensitive to: screen tearing, input lag, and stuttering. Project FreeSync aims to accomplish this through an open ecosystem that does not require licensing fees from participants, which encourages broad adoption and low end-user costs.

Q: What is the supported range of refresh rates with FreeSync and DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync?
A: AMD Radeon™ graphics cards will support a wide variety of dynamic refresh ranges with Project FreeSync. Using DisplayPort™ Adaptive-Sync, the graphics card can detect and set an appropriate maximum and minimum refresh rate based on the capabilities reported by the display. Potential ranges include 36-240Hz, 21-144Hz, 17-120Hz and 9-60Hz.

The post Adaptive-Sync Added to VESA DisplayPort 1.2a Standard appeared first on VR World.

Not too long ago I received a message from a friend, linking to a mining rig/case on FrozenCPU. I took a quick look at it and thought that it was just what I had been waiting for. Over the last year I have gotten into alternative currency mining. During that time I have assembled a few rigs. For housing the multiple gpu rigs I had jerry-rigged them on wire shelving. The kind of wire shelving that you can find at Target or Wal-Mart for less than $50. This has been working out nicely for me up to now. I am trying to redo my office and keep it nice and tidy, so the racks have to go. They sure take up a lot of room, not to mention being an eye sore in my office. I decided that the Hasher could be just the ticket, as it looked to be an organized and stackable unit. So I placed my pre-order for two PrimoChill Hasher units.

I will taking a closer look at the Hasher, PrimoChill’s new mining rack offering. I am evaluating the Hasher based on the reasons you would upgrade to one: ease of use, looks, assembly, and quality.

Hasher’s features as stated by PrimoChill:
• Foam cushions for the GPUs – No contact with metal
• Sliding top GPU holder
• Extremely rugged to protect your investment
• Easy and fun to assemble
• Unlimited upgrade paths
• A movable 3 piece motherboard tray for perfect positioning
• Rubber case feet to help with vibration
• Adjustable video card height – Several placement options
• Made in the USA

The Hasher is currently priced at $129.99 and is available from FrozenCPU.com. The unit was delivered in a plain brown box with the small parts in baggies, and the larger parts plastic wrapped together. There was very noticeable odor coming from the parts which was likely caused from the laser
cutting of the plastic pieces. I have had surgery on my sinuses and it bothered them greatly, but others I have talked to were not too affected by the smell.

The assembly is fairly easy but does take a bit of time to complete. One of the first things I noticed was there were no paper instructions for the unit. Surprisingly there was only a small piece of paper with the PrimoChill product page for the Hasher. There they have a YouTube video with instructions to build it, which was a nice idea but flawed. Seeing as I was building the unit in my living room I only had my phone on me, I relied on that to watch the video. This wouldn’t be so bad if the screws that they provide to build the Hasher were not covered in oil. As I was pausing and rewinding the video to watch the next steps I was getting more and more oil on my phone. This was a real frustration as even when I toweled the screws down they were still quite oily. That was the only major flaw I found in the assembly of the item. I was informed that PrimoChill now has a PDF file for building reference PrimoChill provided a nice Allen wrench that you can assemble the whole thing with. You will only need a small flat head screwdriver to attach wires to the power and reset buttons. Everything just slides into place nicely andit comes out looking very sharp.

The Hasher allows for dual PSUs and comes with a harness to hook them up. It makes it so much easier by not having to jump one with a bit of wire.

The buttons are good quality and really make the Hasher look nice and clean.

The motherboard “tray” is just a few strips of plastic with standoffs that float in the channel of the frame.

There are spacing options for five or six cards, and there seems to be a few different ways that you can choose to secure them in front. I went with the front two supports locking them in and the rear strip holding the ends up. I recommend using a ruler to set the height of the bars on each side so you keep it even.

PrimoChill offers cooling upgrade options. There are fan brackets and a ducted exhaust box that mount to the Hasher. These add-ons keep the same pleasing aesthetics as the Hasher. These will definitely be of use to provide a constant supply of fresh air when running multiple graphics cards.

The Hasher is built with quality parts and looks great which is nice since I will be keeping this in my office. The fact that I can stack two or more on top of each other is another big bonus to save as much space in my office as I can. I think that with this item the biggest drawback is its price which at $129.99 is a lot more than $30-$50 wire shelving that many miners use to store multiple rigs on. If you are looking to have the highest return on your investment on the hardware this is not for you. This is a great option for being able to have a mining rig that is well organized, stackable, and something that looks great.. After I moved from a wire rack to the Hasher I am quite happy with it. So at the end of the day this does exactly what it promised, with minor inconveniences in the assembly (and for me smell). I won’t hesitate to recommend this product to someone who wants a cleaner setup over the wire rack.

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As promised, we’ve selected the winners for our Nvidia 5th Anniversary Giveaway. This giveaway was the second massive giveaway of our multi-week-long giveaway to commemorate our 5th anniversary as a site. It followed our Thermaltake and Titanfall giveaways. We had over 876 entries in the giveaway and we’ve selected the winners based on their comments, tweets, FB shares and Google+ +1’s. Some contestants did not follow the rules and attempted to leave multiple comments under the same user name or under different user names using different IP addresses. So, please, do not try to cheat the system. You end up cheating yourself out of a prize. In this case, one of you lost the chance to win an Nvidia SHIELD, so next time follow the rules and leave a comment, not comments. We’re happy to run these giveaways for our readers, but we also want to ensure that those winners are ones that have won the prize fair and square.

The winners of the contest are as follows:

GTX Titan:
Jake P

Nvidia SHIELD:
Jason Li

Nvidia Tegra Note 7 with Smartcover:
David (no last name, from the UK)
Mack Brown

Congratulations to the winners and we hope that you guys remember to claim your prizes within 24 hours at our giveaways at brightsideofnews dot com email address. Thank you all for participating and don’t forget that we’re going to have a TON more giveaways these coming weeks and that we’re only about half way through with our pile of hardware to give away…

Once again, thank you all for participating and good luck in our other giveaways!

The post BSN 5th Anniversary Nvidia Giveaway Winners Selected! appeared first on VR World.

WARP10 is also supporting hyper-threading feature, since Core i7 matched clock-per-clock scored 7.36 fps (442 fpm). This is a major victory for Hyper-Threading technology, since it manages to render 101 frames more than clock-per-clock matched Core 2 Quad. Truth to be told, all of these results come into play when you compare the performance with one of the cheapest and slowest cards on the market, Nvidia’s GeForce 8400GS. That card will render Crysis (same settings) at 33.89 fps or 2033 frames in a single minute.

In my view, the path of the future is very simple – either CPU rendering for unacceptable performance, or decent discrete/integrated performance from AMD and Nvidia. Personally, I would not recommend Intel graphics until the company comes out with Larrabee. Their CPUs are other thing, though. But at this moment, Intel’s graphics performance is just not acceptable.

The post Microsoft WARP proves that Intel’s current graphics suck appeared first on VR World.

BTW, don’t believe recession talk. Both Intel and AMD scored big results while Wall Street melted, and I would expect that strong sales will continue in Q4. Because when times are tough, people will stay inside house and play games, watch movies etc. No better time than to buy a new graphics chip.

The post AMD wins big in GPU wars appeared first on VR World.

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