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Thread: NVIDIA's next graphics card - Kepler

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    A very manly muppet Mad Pino Rage's Avatar
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    Cool NVIDIA's next graphics card - Kepler

    Linked on Facebook, posting the whole story here.

    Quote Originally Posted by article
    Last year at the Game Developers Conference, Epic Games unveiled the jaw-dropping Samaritan demo, a look at the next generation of videogame graphics. Created in a dark, futuristic setting, the demo utilized a host of advanced rendering techniques that smoothly tessellated and morphed facial features, created realistic street scenes using point light reflections, and replicated the work of the best movie directors through the use of fine-tuned out of focus bokeh filters. The only downside was that it took three GeForce GTX 580s to run the demo in real-time.

    Today GDC 2012 is upon us, and once again Epic has shown the Samaritan demo, but this time with a twist - instead of three GeForce GTX 580s, the demo was shown running on a single next generation NVIDIA graphics card.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRNn5iGE-90

    At the conclusion of the demo the card in question was revealed to be our much-anticipated ‘Kepler’ GPU, the follow-up to our current-generation Fermi card. Although no further information on Kepler was given, the demo sent a clear message: the graphics in Samaritan, generally regarded as a glimpse of the gaming industry’s far-off future, will in fact be possible in the near future on PC systems running a single next-generation graphics card.

    But it wasn't just the Kepler graphics card that made the demo possible. As important was the addition of Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA), an NVIDIA-developed anti-aliasing technique aiming to improve upon the established success of Multisample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA), the form of anti-aliasing most commonly seen in today’s games. Used to smooth out jagged edges and improve visual fidelity, anti-aliasing is key to creating the incredible sights of Samaritan.

    Despite MSAA's popularity, "it is relatively costly in the demo because Samaritan uses deferred shading," explains Ignacio Llamas, a Senior Research Scientist at NVIDIA who worked with Epic on the FXAA implementation. By writing pixel attributes to off-screen render targets prior to final shading, deferred shading enables complex, realistic lighting effects that would be otherwise impossible using forward rendering, a lighting technique commonly used in many game engines. There are a couple of downsides to this: first the render targets require four times the memory since they must hold the information of four samples per pixel; and second, the deferred shading work is also multiplied by four in areas with numerous pieces of intersecting geometry.

    "Without anti-aliasing, Samaritan’s lighting pass uses about 120MB of GPU memory. Enabling 4x MSAA consumes close to 500MB, or a third of what's available on the GTX 580. This increased memory pressure makes it more challenging to fit the demo’s highly detailed textures into the GPU’s available VRAM, and led to increased paging and GPU memory thrashing, which can sometimes decrease framerates.”

    "FXAA is a shader-based anti-aliasing technique,” however, and as such “doesn't require additional memory so it's much more performance friendly for deferred renderers such as Samaritan." By freeing up this additional memory developers will have the option of reinvesting it in additional textures or other niceties, increasing graphical fidelity even further.

    FXAA can also produce gradients smoother than those of 4x MSAA, as is particularly evident in the Samaritan demo, shown below in our interactive comparison images contrasting the anti-aliasing quality of MSAA and FXAA 3.

    Click here to enlarge our zoomed 4x MSAA versus FXAA 3 comparison, and here for a full-scene 1280x720 comparison.

    As you can see, FXAA is noticeably smoother, eliminating the pronounced jagged edges that are especially visible when placed against the scene’s background lighting.

    Click here to enlarge a third interactive comparison showing Samaritan without Anti-Aliasing, and with FXAA 3 Anti-Aliasing.

    If you’d like to learn more about Samaritan, Unreal Engine 3, or any other aspect of the demo, check out our in-depth Samaritan deep dive from May 2011.
    For more info on our next-generation Kepler graphics card, stay tuned to GeForce.com.
    Source:
    http://www.geforce.com/News/articles...dia-kepler-gpu

    I just thought this might be of interest because I've seen Kepler mentioned a few times on here. I think the comparisons are amazing.
    Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
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    Senior Member crapoo16's Avatar
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    I wonder how expensive it's gonna be.... I probably will just stick to my GTX 460 though :P.

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    Senior Member ShitFace's Avatar
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    Does sound interesting...it will be better than 7970 I guess?
    Andy says:
    prince of persia is more skill than hack and slash
    ShitFace says:
    i dont think skill is a genre of game lol
    Andy says:
    of course it is you have seen the crystal maze havnt you?
    he says what next a skill physical mental?


    Blind people don't see black, they see the same thing you see out of your elbow - VengfulScars

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    A very manly muppet Mad Pino Rage's Avatar
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    I'm very hesitant about owning new technology early. Even if I had the money I wouldn't be an early adopter. I'd wait a year for the kinks to be worked out and maybe for the price to find a point of stability. If not that, I'd wait even longer for it to be cheaper but not so much out of date. However, I do feel the lust of wanting to own something like this or just wish I had a friend that would get this and let me play for a bit.

    Also this:

    Quote Originally Posted by article
    Nvidia has a busy schedule for Kepler at GDC, and we thought you might want to know about it. There are three key dates, today, Monday, and two weeks from Friday.
    Today, March 8, is the day where the press that Nvidia flew in get their ‘tech day’, basically the deep dive on Kepler. Then, like we said a few days ago, Nvidia will paper launch the cards next Monday, March 12. From that point, things get a little hazy because people are arguing over two different days. Some are saying Friday March 23, others Monday March 26, with a few more saying 23 than 26. It could be none of the above though, but if you bet on two weeks out, you won’t be far off.
    The only open question is how long they will be able to supply for. With the TSMC 28nm stoppage, initial supplies of GK104 for launch boards are likely set, but what happens after that? How many were stockpiled? We don’t know, but we can’t see all that many being available after the initial shipment. SemiAccurate’s educated guess is decent numbers at launch followed by a long wait. When TSMC restarts, and how quickly they ramp back up, will determine the answer, and we can’t shed any light there, yet.
    http://semiaccurate.com/2012/03/08/t...ch-activities/
    Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
    Albert Einstein

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    Senior Member ShitFace's Avatar
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    I agree, it's totally not worth it money wise.

    There is something nice having the absolute best tech out at the current moment though. Very nice.
    When I got my 4870x2, there wasn't anything better out...it was fucking expensive, but I don't regret it. It was awesome.

    Kepler sounds like this would be a worthy time to take such a stance imo.
    It even made me think about switching from ATI...
    Luckily my mobo supports both xfire and sli
    Andy says:
    prince of persia is more skill than hack and slash
    ShitFace says:
    i dont think skill is a genre of game lol
    Andy says:
    of course it is you have seen the crystal maze havnt you?
    he says what next a skill physical mental?


    Blind people don't see black, they see the same thing you see out of your elbow - VengfulScars

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    Senior Member Nick2.1's Avatar
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    Only rumors have been posted on kepler, we have yet to see any credible performance charts. I check every day for any new news on kepler since the 7xxx series of AMD is disappointing.

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    Senior Member ShitFace's Avatar
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    Well the fact that it runs the samaritan unreal demo on one card just as good as a triple sli system is pretty impressive.
    Andy says:
    prince of persia is more skill than hack and slash
    ShitFace says:
    i dont think skill is a genre of game lol
    Andy says:
    of course it is you have seen the crystal maze havnt you?
    he says what next a skill physical mental?


    Blind people don't see black, they see the same thing you see out of your elbow - VengfulScars

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    Senior Member Nick2.1's Avatar
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    A much better optimized version.

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    Senior Member ShitFace's Avatar
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    Really? I thought it was the same, thus showing the power of the kepler...surely if it was optimised, it isn't much of a tech demo for kepler since there isn't anything to compare it to...?
    Andy says:
    prince of persia is more skill than hack and slash
    ShitFace says:
    i dont think skill is a genre of game lol
    Andy says:
    of course it is you have seen the crystal maze havnt you?
    he says what next a skill physical mental?


    Blind people don't see black, they see the same thing you see out of your elbow - VengfulScars

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    Senior Member crapoo16's Avatar
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    It's power is still amazing, now for games to utilize all that. Also your avatars are too similar... I thought ShitFace was talking to himself..

  11. #11
    Senior Member Nick2.1's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by crapoo16 View Post
    It's power is still amazing, now for games to utilize all that. Also your avatars are too similar... I thought ShitFace was talking to himself..
    We actually don't know if it's power could be considered amazing, we haven't seen any real world performance.

  12. #12
    Mega Bore Atomic's Avatar
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    The coolest thing to me about new graphics cards is that yesterdays new graphics cards drop to an affordable price.

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    Senior Member Nick2.1's Avatar
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    The GTX 680(GK104) came out yesterday and has pretty decent performance, but the flagship card for the year is still to come, codename GK110.

  14. #14
    I toast to fat bitches Harner's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nick2.1 View Post
    The GTX 680(GK104) came out yesterday and has pretty decent performance, but the flagship card for the year is still to come, codename GK110.
    Any concrete info on a release date?

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    Senior Member Nick2.1's Avatar
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    Not before august.

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    Senior Member crapoo16's Avatar
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    Cards are already dropping in price, unless that's just coincidence

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    Senior Member Nick2.1's Avatar
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    The 500 series should have dropped a couple weeks ago, if the 7900 series dropped, it's because of the 680.

  18. #18
    A very manly muppet Mad Pino Rage's Avatar
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    I just looked up the the 600 series and they're priced at $500+, and on Newegg they're out of stock. If they're going down as you all say then maybe I'll upgrade over the next year, but I'm ultra/maxed out on Skyrim, Total War Shogun 2, and all the other games I have played.
    Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
    Albert Einstein

  19. #19
    Senior Member ShitFace's Avatar
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    get bf3
    Andy says:
    prince of persia is more skill than hack and slash
    ShitFace says:
    i dont think skill is a genre of game lol
    Andy says:
    of course it is you have seen the crystal maze havnt you?
    he says what next a skill physical mental?


    Blind people don't see black, they see the same thing you see out of your elbow - VengfulScars

  20. #20
    Senior Member Nick2.1's Avatar
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    The 600 series just came out, they won't go down in price for a long while. The 500 series already has and should go down further in a few months.

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