NVIDIA Releases New 310.54 Driver, Up to 16% Performance Improvement

NVIDIA is stepping up to the plate by offering their GeForce customers something similar. While the primary focus of their new 310.54 drivers are to offer optimal release-day performance and DX11 optimizations for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Assassin’s Creed III, there are some additional benefits included as well. According to the driver’s release notes, many games will see up to 16% better framerates even though the lion’s share of improvements are reserved for the aforementioned big-name titles.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Assassin’s Creed III are likely going to be two of this holiday season’s hottest titles and NVIDIA worked with both game’s developers to include TXAA support. This should lead to high quality anti-aliasing without a significant framerate reduction. Additional optimizations for these titles are included within the 310.54 driver as well, allowing for an approximate 26% framerate increase over the WHQL version currently posted on NVIDIA’s download page. If you have an NVIDIA card and will be buying Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or Assassin’s Creed III, be sure to install this driver.

Source: GeForce.com

Alongside the aforementioned items, NVIDIA has added an automatic LOD bias for SGSSAA  which can be applied through NVIDIA’s Inspector tool. The passage below is from a GeForce.com post which details the changes to this ultra-high quality AA routine:
Several years ago Fullscene Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing was added to the GeForce drivers as an advanced anti-aliasing option for those with high-end systems. When enabled and correctly configured, SGSSAA significantly increases the quality of Multisample Anti-Aliasing, helping remove aliasing that even 8xMSAA struggles with.
Configuring SGSSAA to reach this level of detail can at times be tricky due to the need to counteract texture blurring that occurs when using the technique. With a Negative LOD Bias, applied via NVIDIA Inspector, texture quality can be restored, but unfortunately the correct value can only be ascertained through trial and error.
Following repeated calls from users for a solution, we silently introduced an automatic LOD Bias feature in last month’s 310.33 beta driver, which we’re pleased to officially announce today. Now, users need only enable Sparse Grid Supersampling in the profile of a compatible game in NVIDIA Inspector, and the new feature will do the rest.
NVIDIA continues their work on improving multi card scaling and the 310.54 stack adds SLI profiles for Hitman: Absolution, Hawken, Natural Selection 2 and Primal Carnage.by skymtl

Danger Den to Close its Doors, Cuts Prices by 75%

After being in the business of supplying PC enthusiasts for over a decade, water cooling product manufacturer Danger Den is in the process of closing its doors and winding down operations.
Long thought of as a pioneer in the water cooling business, Danger Den has announced that its time as a leading manufacturer of everything from CPU blocks to reservoirs to PC cases is coming to an abrupt end. It looks like the viability of supplying and developing new products for an ever-shrinking market was no longer financially viable.

In a short post on their site, Dan, Jeremy, Dennis and Rokk announced their decision:
“After 12 years our hobby has come to an end. It’s time to pursue other interests and Danger Den will be closing its doors. Thank you for all your support over the years, we’ve enjoyed being part of your modding community.”

To many, this will be a particularly sad day as Danger Den was always thought of as one of as a major player within the water cooling niche. They have been around since the dawn of liquid cooling and their products were well received by enthusiasts all over the world.

In order to get rid of in-stock merchandise, their online store is offering 75% off every single item until Monday. At this time, there isn’t much left but this could be an opportunity for some people to stock up on parts that won’t be available anymore.by skymtl

I Pad Mini Hands On

We just spent a good amount of time with the iPad mini and the easiest way to describe the device is that it's lighter than you'd expect. The build quality and finish both feel good as you'd expect, but the device is just considerably lighter than the iPad which results in superior in hand feel.
The display doesn't feel cramped either thanks to the reasonably large diagonal size. It's clear that the iPad mini is a nod to those who want something even more portable than the standard iPad.
In terms of performance, there's a pretty noticeable difference between the A5 in the iPad mini and the A6X in the 4th gen iPad as you'd expect. I do wish that Apple had brought the A6 to the mini, however something has to give in pursuit of the lower price point.

The LTE version of the iPad mini has an RF window at the top of the unit similar to the standard iPad, although it does blend in a bit better on the black model. by lai shimpi

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: October

Since our last monthly update, Nvidia launched three new graphics cards: the GeForce GTX 650, 650 Ti, and 660.

The GeForce GTX 650 is essentially a GeForce GT 640 with a higher-clocked 1058 MHz core and 1250 MHz GDDR5 (instead of 891 MHz DDR3 memory). That increased memory bandwidth immediately uncorks this card's performance, putting it head-to-head against the Radeon HD 7750. A $120 price point sounds about right until you hop online and see AMD's Radeon HD 7750 selling for $105. The notably faster Radeon HD 7770 goes for $125. After a series of price drops from AMD, the GeForce GTX 650 needs to get closer to $105 before it's really competitive.

Next, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is built around the same GK106 GPU found on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660, but with a single GPC cluster disabled. The result is a processor with 768 shaders, 64 texture units, and two ROP partitions capable of 16 raster operations per clock. The card's core operates at 925 MHz, and its GDDR5 memory runs at 1350 MHz. All told, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti outperforms AMD's Radeon HD 6850 and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 460, nearly reaching the same performance levels as the GeForce GTX 560 and Radeon HD 6870. Unfortunately, a rather narrow 128-bit memory interface hampers frame rates at higher resolutions with MSAA enabled. Nevertheless, GeForce GTX 650 Ti is the highest-performing $150 card on the market
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You might think that this fact alone would earn the GeForce GTX 650 Ti an easy recommendation. But AMD's counter-strike cannot be ignored. A discounted 1 GB version of the Radeon HD 7850 for $170. The 650 Ti is quite a bit slower, and saving $20 doesn't make up the difference. Nvidia's other issue is that street prices on the GeForce GTX 650 Ti are notably higher than $155. We'd want to see wider availability in the $140 to $150 range for this new card to earn more than an honorable mention.
Finally, the GeForce GTX 660 employs an uncut version of the same GK106 processor, giving it 960 cores, 80 texture units, and three ROP partitions. It sports a 980 MHz core clock rate and 1502 MHz GDDR5 memory on an aggregate 192-bit interface. Selling for $230, it's very attractive next to a $250 Radeon HD 7870. But because it takes a performance hit when MSAA is applied, it shares our recommendation around $240 with AMD's Radeon card.by don woligroski