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As we all know Crysis is the second version of the Crytek engine. The game was originally called Far Cry if I remember correctly which was back then a brilliant graphics engine for out door environments. I know Crysis (Crytek Engine 2) has been out a couple of months now but I think this game is a perfect way of benchmarking your system in terms of gaming performance.

Over these last few months I have read all about Crysis and how its engine needs a large amount of computation i.e an expensive computer. For example a crossfire/ SLI system running either of the latest graphics offerings with an Intel core extreme processor could run Crysis in full detail around 40 FPS. Ok that sounds good but is it really worth it? For the highest settings!?

Dont be fooled, I then had the impression that the game is basically unplayable on dual core processors and systems with 8800 series Nvidia graphics but I found this was not the case. If your a mainstream gamer then high settings or the word Ultra High dont exists.  But! whats up with medium detail? If you enjoy games as much as me then  you will like the game play, graphics and physics but remember, treat the game as a benchmark! Think of it as an investment for your gaming future!

Benchmarking. Ok so We have a system running a AMD dual core processor 2g of ddr2 and a 8800GS Graphics Card, what will this system produce in terms of performance? Well Medium detail would suffice. The only issue is under intense game play or open areas of the island which usually mean struggling hardware. So we can easily  pin-point the issue and diagnose the P.C with a low clock speed processor please upgrade! Eventually this should evolve into a fast gaming p.c. able to run the likes of crysis in FULL/ MEGA HIGH detail not to mention future games which will probebly use the crytek 2 engine.

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Intel is already heavily pitching its Larrabee technology to its business partners. Even though the technology behind the cGPU still remains a mystery, somehow business men alike are drawn to the new product, who wouldn’t! A German publication has provided more clues based on Larrabee and how its built on two decade old P5 architecture!

This may remind you of Parallel and serial computation but hardware architecture design usually in some way or another use older original design.

In the German Article, when Intel decided to create the cGPU Larrabee architecture they looked into obsolete technology the result? second generation p54C core using Pentium 600nm process.

The first Pentium processor P5 used 800 nm and was clocked between 60 to 66 Mhz and was developed in 1989. The P54C on ther other hand had a clock speed of 120Mhz. Intel also released the P54CS core 200Mhz and 55C Core 230nm, they cores had 250nm and 280nm respectfully.

The Larrabee processor will use 32 cores equppied with new MMX extensions called AVX, this would mean that Larrabee will be used on a 45nm P54CS core. The 32 core also supports 512-bit wide AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions) instead of the old MMX used in previous Pentiums.

The processor is said to run at 2 GHz and have compuation of 2 Tflop/sec. If this is true Intel may be able to hit twice the performance in a single precision calucation as Nvidia and AMD. With both graphics vendors doubling their floating point performance its predicted that GPUs may hit 3 to 4 Tflops/sec in single core Graphical processors.

Take the ATI Radeon 4870 x2 clocked at 778Mhz this has an estimated performance rate of 2.49 Tflop/sec. Lets just see how this turns out!

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A driver hacker had recently achieved something I would consider quite difficult in the driver world. ‘the guy’ claims to have hacked Nvidia Physx driver to run on ATI based hardware.

Screen shots of CPU-Z showing the Ageia driver settings and £d Mark Vantage with a score of 22606 CPU Points. The CPU score is only attainable using Physx Nvidia hardware/ software.

This may cause controversy between the vendors as they are in constant competition over bragging rights of software/ hardware. ATI is not likely to use the Physx driver in anyway because we know that ATI have struck a deal with Havok, who were purchased by Intel in 2007. Hmmm I guess Intel preffered ATI over Nvidia!

A good point I must mention is, will ATI benefit from using the driver since most games use the Physix engine over Havok. Could ATI loose support?

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Nvidia has launched a beta version of the 177.39 drivers have introduced the PhysX support to a number of Nvidia graphics cards. I assume the support will be for the 9800 series and 200 series cards. At present the driver is only supported for the GTX, GTX 280 and GTX 260 graphics cards. The beta driver includes the PhysX software version 8.06.12.

The beta 177.30 driver includes

• Driver for windows vista!
• PhysX technology for PhysX GPU hardware acceleration
• Includes the Unreal Tournament 3 Physx mod pack
• Support SLI technology for DirectX 9 and 10 cards
• Supports CUDA Technology
• GPU overclocking and temperature monitor support

The download page for the viewers who may be interested in the download Nvidia 177.39 Beta PhysX driver.

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AMD will be launching the HD4870 x2 will be released sooner rather than later. Funnily enough the card will be the same colour as the Nvidia Geforce 9800 GTX+ which is black. I cant see ATI adopting a green colored card that’s for sure.

The sales for ATI 4800 series cards are apparently hitting new heights, the current 4850 card is selling out throughout Europe. Lets see what ATI’s 4870 card can deliver and lets hope the ATI 4870 series x2 card can hit the top section of the enthusiasts benchmarking.

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Now that Nvidia and ATi have released their latest graphics cards Nvidia needed to re think their strategy to counter act the competitive sales from ATI.  ATI released their Radeon HD 4850 last week with their forthcoming HD4870 which is yet to be released.

Nvidia Decided to create the 9800 GTX+ which uses a 55nm process. If I remember correctly Nvida was to rethink their naming convention with the GTX 250, if this card doesnt confuse matters and dont know what will!

Nvidia will release the card in July but for the views among us will have to wait for the super modded  Xtreme yes X not ex (We mean business!!!) will need to wait that little longer.

The 9800GTX+ offers the reference clock speed of 738MHz core and 1836MHz shader clock. The GDDR3 memory of 512 Mb is clocked at 2,200MHz 200MHz higher than Nvidias default specifications. As we are aware Nvidia have joined PhysX SO Nvidia will be adding PhysX support for physics portion of graphical computation.

There is not confirmed release date and the pricing is set to be around $229. With ATI dominating the low end/ main stream markets will Nvidia snap up the mid to high end markets with this marketing strategy. N will continue to dominate the high end markets and the 9800 GTX+ could affect ATI 4000 series cards.

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As we are all aware AMD’s Radeon 4850 has been out since last week. The 4870 is yet to be released, if you was interested! AMD has issued a hotfix. The hotfix ‘#737-35298′ in AMD’s knowledge base includes display driver, catalyst control centre and is said to improve overall performance and stability.

Its available from the official AMD support website for both 32, 64 bit of windows XP and Windows Vista. AMD haven’t spoken up about the fix but users have apparently been getting gain in performance. If you have a Radeon HD 4850 and your lucky, then pick up the hot fix -> AMD Radeon 4850 HotFix.

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There has been speculation on the actual release date of the ATI graphics card. ATI have decided to release the card today! This has caused problems for reviewing/ press releasing websites. On the other hand its a great time for the consumer!

The image above shows the latest offering by ATI. It actually looks very similar to the 8800 series cards. Now for the specifications. The card has 800 unified stream processors (die size must be huge!) The Graphics processor is clocked at 625Mhz and uses 512Mb of GDDR3 memory running at 1GHz. No GDDR4? I guess not.

Now for the software sided specification. The card uses shader model 4.1 and has support for direct x 10.1. This is where ATi has the upper hand compared to Nvidia, Nvidia does not support this version.

I have looked into the benchmarking of the graphics board and it seems slower than 8800 GTX offerings! How can this be? I would like to think this is a driver issue. Considering ATI havn’t released anything since the last HD cards Nvidia are now another model in-front of ATI.

But lets keep it real here. current benchmarks are stating that the card is slower than Nvidia’s last offerings. Crysis doesn’t look good either, running 1920 x 1200 with AA off equates to 31 FPS. I was at least hoping for some sort of massive advance but i’m afraid not.

Processor technology seems to be moving on with x86 Architecture but where does Graphics processing stand. Are the main Vendors concentrating on other products such as miniature laptops and so-forth?

I dont think I will consider a upgrade till Crysis can run at a steady 60 FPS vsync on!

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The latest Geforce GTx200 cards by EVGA currently lack HDMI connectivity. The guys at EVGA have realised this is a good selling point for latest graphics hardware. Computer enthusiast with the graphics card can register their product online, in return they will be given a free adapter.

There is one slight problem! The consumer must wait till the 26th of June for an official, certified fully HDMI compliant version. On the other hand, if you cant wait, try third party versions which are available.

Consumers who will qualify for the adapter must have bought the card after June 16th and you will need your serial number!

Oh, Sorry for not posting on the latest graphics from Nvidia, I will be posting a article on the latest hardware. My tip, wait for ATI’s offering then we can truly see the difference in performance.

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It’s friday the 13th!  Now that I have your attention and sure you will be interested in what news I have for you today!

As we all know Nehalem motherboards and chips were show cased at Computex 2008. The show casing of the up-coming processors was an indication that the processors at set to launch within the 4th quarter of this year. Now with that information is out what news has Intel got for the general public?

Intel will be releasing information on their Larrabee Graphics device. You can read some of my older graphics related posts here …. Larrabee will be unveiling the technology at Siggraph 2008 or international conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques.

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