Feature Articles
NVIDIA GeForce Day - Great Graphics For The Masses
Kepler Goes Mainstream
In spite of the rainy weather last Saturday, a huge wave of crowd attended the NVIDIA GeForce Day which was staged at the main hall of SM City North EDSA in Quezon City. Led by its Philippines representative Glenn Serrano, NVIDIA highlighted during the event the entry-level graphics card of the GeForce 600 series, namely the GT 610, GT 620, and the GT 630. Joining the occasion were AIC partners ASUS, Inno3D, Manli, MSI, Palit, and Sparkle.
Earlier this year, NVIDIA already released high-end graphics cards of the GeForce 600 series such as the GTX 690, GTX 680, and the GTX 670. Although these cards are capable of delivering stellar graphics performance, they are not affordable for many consumers. With the GT 610, GT 620, and the GT 630, NVIDIA’s goal is to make the technologies based on the Kepler architecture experienced by more people at less expensive price points. Additionally, NVIDIA emphasizes that consumers do not have to purchase expensive graphics cards to be able to play popular games like Diablo III, DOTA, and Starcraft II. These objectives are in line with the event’s theme ‘Every PC Deserves Great Graphics’.
While today’s integrated graphics options are much better than their predecessors, they still manifest limitations. One example, in the case of Intel’s HD 2500, some details of the game Starcraft II are missing. Discrete graphics systems like GT 610, GT 620, and the GT 630 resolve this issue. Additionally, with the help of today’s processors, these cards speed up overall computing processes and applications like Adobe Photoshop.
The GT 610, GT 620, and the GT 630 offer the capabilities that are found on their high-end equivalents. Delivering better graphics performance, the new cards support FXAA which is 60% faster and has better anti-aliasing than 4x MSAA. Featuring Adaptive Vertical Sync, they also reduce issues brought by stuttering and tearing. At affordable price points, multi-display connectivity of up to four monitors is a possibility, thanks to the integration of dual-DVI, HDMI, and VGA connectors. Auspiciously, GPU Boost, a feature which we first experienced with the GTX range of the 600 series, is also one of the highlights of the latest entry-level cards from NVIDIA. GPU Boost adds additional GPU clock of around 100MHz on top of a card’s overclocked speed. Other technologies that are featured include 3D Vision, 3D Vision Surround, and PhysX.
During the event, participating AIC partners showcased the capabilities of NVIDIA’s entry-level graphics cards. In the case of ASUS, it featured its own version of the GeForce GT 620 1GB GDDR3. Per ASUS’ claim, the card has 2.5x longer lifespan, thanks to its use of fan dustproof fan alloyed components that help in lowering overall temperature and power loss. Overclocking is also possible with this card, thanks to ASUS’ GPU Tweak application which allows real-time tweaking.
Inno3D on the other hand featured its rendition of the GeForce GT 630. At the core of this graphics card, it is powered by a GPU packed with 96 CUDA cores, running at 1620MHz clock. It also takes onboard 1GB GDDR5 VRAM with 3200MHz memory clock.
The NVIDIA GeForce Day would not be complete without a cosplay and a gaming event. For cosplay, participants were inspired by the characters from Diablo III. Noteworthy, many guests got a great treat from NVIDIA as it gave away over a hundred graphics cards at the venue!
