At the GPU Technology Conference (GTC), an annual event hosted by NVIDIA, the company named the next two succeeding GPU architectures to Fermi (the current generation architecture on which are based GeForce 400 series GPUs). NVIDIA's next major GPU design change will come in the form of "Kepler", probably named after the German mathematician Johannes Kepler. The only concrete details about this architecture is that chips will be built on the 28 nanometer silicon fabrication process, and that going by the architecture's double-precision GPU compute performance per Watt represented on a graph, NVIDIA expects Kepler to be 4~5 times faster than Tesla, and over twice as fast as Fermi, again, at double-precision GPU compute performance per Watt.

Kepler is slated for 2011, though which part of the year will it be out (since AMD's answer to Fermi isn't far away), wasn't revealed. Looking much further away into the future, much like Intel mentioned Sandy Bridge's successor (Gesher) way back when unveiling Nehalem, NVIDIA talked about Kepler's successor slated for 2013. This one is called Maxwell, probably in honour of Scottish mathematician James Maxwell, with expectations of no less than three times the double-precision computation power per Watt of Kepler. These chips will be built on the 22 nanometer process.

ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world's largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and mini-PCs, today announces the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 2GB - the first ZOTAC graphics card powered by NVIDIA Fermi architecture with 2 GB of graphics memory. The new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 2 GB delivers best-in-class performance with unmatched features for a superior gaming experience gamers can rely on.

High-resolution gaming receives a performance boost with the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 2 GB and the large 2GB graphics memory. Paired with an ultra-wide 256-bit memory interface, the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 2 GB can communicate between the GPU and 2 GB of graphics memory at lightning-fast speeds to transfer ultra-quality textures for phenomenal in-game details that blur the line between the virtual world and reality.

Next-generation gaming has arrived. A GPU with performance at twice the speed for your online games is available right now. Leadtek Research Inc., known globally for its extreme visual graphics technology development, today announced the arrival of the overclocking version of WinFast GTS 450 Extreme GDDR5 1GB graphics card. Much like a race car in appearance, it delivers the best and coolest performance in comparison to others. The new product can lower GPU temperature by 10%-15% and be overclocked to up to 850 MHz.

Compared to the same level of product in the previous generation, WinFast GTS 450 Extreme dominates the competition with more than 2x the DirectX 11 geometry processing power for unparalleled game realism. Built on next-generation GeForce Fermi architecture, it is equipped with NVIDIA GeForce 106 GPU and 192 cores. The new release is specially designed to effectively dissipate heat away from the graphics card. The WinFast GTS 450 Extreme can quickly transfer heat away from the GPU and lower the temperature by a whopping 12ºC in comparison to reference designs.

New from ASUS Republic of Gamers, G53 and G73 gaming notebooks now ship with the just-released NVIDIA GTX 460M graphics engine, utilizing hardware optimized for DirectX 11, with full support for high definition 3D gaming. They also feature a gaming-dedicated design, with rear vented cooling and an ergonomic keyboard surface.

Based on the latest generation of graphics cards from NVIDIA, known to media and the public as Fermi, the NVIDIA GTX 460M offers extreme graphics performance tailored to portable PCs. It employs DirectX11 graphics with effects such as real time ray tracing and advanced tessellation. This offers the most sophisticated graphics engine from NVIDIA ever on a notebook PC.

Developed in conjunction with Bang & Olufsen ICEpower, the ASUS SonicMaster standard delivers the most advanced multimedia features available for laptop PCs. The new N Series from ASUS is the first ever range of laptops to address the problem of sub-standard audio on portable PCs. Two new Intel Core i5 models are available, 15.6" and 17.3" screens, and both combine superior audio technology with eye-catching designs. Each new model also features the latest NVIDIA GeForce 400M 3D chipset with Optimus technology for outstanding power source-optimised graphics performance.

NVIDIA reported revenue of $811.2 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2011 ended Aug. 1, 2010, down 19.0 percent from the prior quarter and up 4.5 percent from $776.5 million from the same period a year earlier.

On a GAAP basis, the company recorded a net loss of $141.0 million, or $0.25 per share, compared with net income of $137.6 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, in the previous quarter and a net loss of $105.3 million, or $0.19 per share, in the same period a year earlier. GAAP gross margin was 16.6 percent compared with 45.6 percent in the previous quarter and 20.2 percent in the same period a year earlier.

AMD has finally surpassed NVIDIA in terms of shipments of discrete graphics (graphics cards), according to market research firm Mercury Research, in a report released on Wednesday. AMD's discrete graphics products held 51% of the discrete graphics market, with NVIDIA slipping down to 49%, in terms of discrete graphics products shipments in Q2 2010. For the same quarter last year, the two were poised at 41% for AMD and 59% for NVIDIA, indicating a significant growth, fruition of AMD's DirectX 11 push of deploying a new-generation lineup that spans all price-points in a span of four months.

For the overall GPU industry, with integrated graphics included, the picture for Q2 2010 looks like Intel holding 54.3%, AMD holding 24.5%, and NVIDIA with 19.8%. Last year, in Q2 2009, NVIDIA held 29.6% versus AMD's 18.2%. NVIDIA's deployment of a DirectX 11 compliant GPU lineup has been rather slow, with only two GPUs and four SKUs deployed so far, starting at $199. NVIDIA does not have the fastest graphics card. On Wednesday, the Santa Clara based company warned that its revenue would fall short of earlier projections (set at the time of Fermi's launch). This announcement came after Apple announced a series-wide transition of graphics chips inside its Macbooks, iMac, and Mac Pro computers to AMD's ATI Radeon from NVIDIA GeForce.

NVIDIA today launched the era of the 'computational visualization workstation' for designers, engineers, researchers and animators by introducing its Quadro graphics processing units (GPUs) based on NVIDIA Fermi architecture, and by also introducing the new NVIDIA 3D Vision Pro solution. The new Quadro GPUs deliver performance that is up to five times faster for 3D applications and up to eight times faster for computational simulation, shattering previous benchmarks.

The NVIDIA Quadro Plex 7000 array, and Quadro 6000, Quadro 5000 and Quadro 4000 GPUs feature the new NVIDIA Scalable Geometry Engines and leverage NVIDIA Application Acceleration Engines (AXE) to enable the world's fastest performance across a broad range of CAD, DCC and visualization applications. Rated at an unheard of 1.3 billion triangles per second in raw performance, the Quadro 6000 enables users to interactively work with models and scenes that are five times more complex than ever before.

The Khronos Group today announced the immediate release of the OpenGL 4.1 specification, bringing the very latest graphics functionality to the most advanced and widely adopted cross-platform 2D and 3D graphics API (application programming interface). OpenGL 4.1 is the sixth update to OpenGL specification in two years, continuing the rapid evolution of this royalty-free specification. This new version continues to maintain full backwards compatibility to enable developers to begin using new features whenever they choose, while portably accessing state-of-the-art GPU functionality across diverse operating systems and platforms.

The OpenGL 4.1 specification has been defined by the OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board) working group at Khronos, and includes the GLSL 4.10 update to the OpenGL Shading language and is accompanied by a number of extensions introducing cutting-edge functionality to the OpenGL standard. The full specification is available for immediate download here.

Palit Microsystems Ltd, the leading graphics card manufacturer, announces a fresh class of Fermi architecture GeForce GTX 460 series: GTX 460 768MB, GTX 460 1GB Sonic and GTX 460 1GB Sonic Platinum. Palit GTX 460 series is ready in stores around the world in over 20 countries: Australia, Germany, Japan, Korea, Russia, UK, USA, Indonesia, Israel, Latvia, Macedonia, Romania, Singapore, Thailand and many more.

The first custom design Palit GeForce GTX 460 is base on identical Fermi architecture but with better DX11 performance. The new GTX 460 Fermi architecture is even suitable for the most popular DX10 games. Palit GTX 460 1GB Sonic provides up to 4.5x faster DX11 Tessellation performance but the crown goes to our Palit GTX 460 1GB Sonic Platinum which offers up to 5x faster DX11 Tessellation performance than our competition(HD series). And being the first to provide 1GB solution, Palit presents a new edition called "SONIC PLATINUM" with extremely outstanding benchmark performance which is more than your expectation. Palit GTX 460 1GB Sonic Platinum Edition is factory overclocked to 800 MHz core, 1GB of high speed GDDR5, memory clocked at 4GHz, and can boosts the performance 17.5% higher than non-OCed GTX460.With Palit GTX 460 1GB Sonic Platinum, you can enjoy the best gaming experience. In order to provide the highest quality, Palit use 2-Ball Bearing Fan which is more durable especially at higher temperatures but quieter at higher rotation speed, Palit 2-Ball Bearing Fan provides longer lifetime than the usual fan.

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today announced the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 460 series Graphics Cards, which includes the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 460 768MB Graphics Card, the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 460 1GB OC Graphics Card and the SPARKLE GeForce GTX 460 2GB Graphics Card.

As a deadly weapon of Fermi Family, SPARKLE GeForce GTX460 series graphics cards provide the best performance price ratio, being the the world's best $200 graphics card, it brings a new level of DirectX 11 performance to mainstream PC enthusiasts and gamers around the world.

ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world's largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, mini-PCs and small form factor platforms, today unleashes two new affordable GeForce GTX 400 series graphics cards - the new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 1GB and GeForce GTX 460 Synergy Edition. The new ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 series deliver class-leading features and technology to gamers, enthusiasts and all PC users looking for a thrilling visual experience.

Stunning visuals are made possible with the powerful NVIDIA Fermi architecture that delivers superior graphics processing power and Microsoft DirectX 11 technology that powers the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 series. Hardware tessellation takes 3D games to the next level of visual realism with the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 series by enabling increased visual details in every object and environment in the latest games DirectX 11 powered games for a cinematic gaming experience that rivals the latest CGI-animated Hollywood masterpieces.

NVIDIA today announced the latest addition to its Fermi-class of graphics processing units (GPUs), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 -- which delivers a great DX11 gaming experience and is priced right at the market's $199 sweet spot.

Built from the ground up for DirectX 11 tessellation, GeForce GTX 460 GPUs deliver monster tessellation performance with up to 4x tessellation performance over competing GPUs. The GTX 460 brings the ultimate next-generation DX11 gaming experience to a new price segment, enabling more gamers than ever to experience incredibly detailed characters, terrain and game environments with blazing fast performance and awesome visuals.

Galaxy is finally breaking ground on graphics cards with two GF100 "Fermi" GPUs from NVIDIA, with the company displaying one such design sample at the ongoing Computex event. The dual-Fermi board uses essentially the same design NVIDIA has been using for generations of its dual-GPU cards, involving an internal SLI between two GPUs, which connect to the system bus via an nForce 200 bridge chip, and are Quad SLI capable.

The power conditioning and distribution on this design consists of two sets of 4+1 phase VRM, the card draws power from two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. The GPUs carry the marking "GF100-030-A3", which indicates that it has the configuration of GeForce GTX 465, and since we count 8 memory chips per GPU system with no traces indicative of the other two memory chips per GPU sitting on their own memory channels, on the reverse side of the PCB, it is likely that the GPUs have a 256-bit wide memory interface. Galaxy, however, calls the card GTX 470 Dual. Output connectivity includes 3 DVI-D, with a small air-vent. It's likely that the cooler Galaxy designs will dissipate hot air around the graphics card, rather than out through the rear-panel.

NVIDIA's Fermi architecture seems to be finally coming of age, with the company planning to introduce mid-range GPUs derived from the architecture, which are expected to be energy-efficient and competitive with mid-range lineup of rival ATI. Identified so far by some sections of the media as GF104, the new GPU will form base for a number of new SKUs that will capture key price-points in the mainstream segment.

A new report suggests that NVIDIA might well be at the end of developing this GPU, and will be ready to talk about it to the public as early as in June, at the Computex 2010 event in Taiwan. Select groups of people, particularly board partners, OEM vendors, etc., will also be able to see engineering samples in private. In the following month (July), NVIDIA will be in a position to launch these mainstream SKUs, just about in time for Summer, which is one of the two main shopping seasons in major markets.

This morning the first of the long awaited retail GeForce GTX 480 cards arrived. The card came from Zotac and photos are below. It is from the same shipment that will be sold on store shelves in the next days. At first glance the card looks completely identical to the NVIDIA press sample, with the exception of some black foam on the back of the card. Another diffence is the BIOS which I put up for download here.

I am told that the reason for the black foam is to ensure some spacing between the cards when running in SLI mode, so that they can breathe. It also acts as safeguard against short circuits which could happen when the metal cooler surface of one card touches the back of the other card.

Thermalright is said to be working on a bolt-through kit (BTK), the GF 100 VGA BTK, that lets popular existing VGA heatsinks by the company to support the NVIDIA GF100 GPU, on GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470 graphics cards. The Thermalright Spitfire, HR-03 GT and HR-03 GTX heatsinks will be able to make use of the new BTK. The company is also said to be working on two new VRM heatsinks that are tailor-made for the reference PCBs of the two cards, the VRM GTX 480, and VRM GTX 470. These allow existing users of the above three heatsinks, and people looking to buy them some future-proofing. The GF 100 VGA BTK, VRM GTX 480 and VRM GTX 470 will be released in the weeks to come.

With the launch of GeForce GTX 400 series enthusiast-grade graphics cards based on the GF100 GPU being a stone's throw away, it is learned that work could be underway at NVIDIA to develop a new performance GPU as a successor to G92 and its various derivatives, according to 3DCenter.org, a German tech portal. Codenamed GF104, the new GPU targets performance/price sweet-spots the way G92 did back in its day with the GeForce 8800 GT and 8800 GTS-512, which delivered high-end sort of performance at "unbelievable" price points. The GF104 is a derivative of the Fermi architecture, and uses a physically down-scaled design of the GF100. It is said to pack 256 CUDA cores, 32 ROPs, 32 TMUs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. The more compact die as a result could achieve high clock speeds, like G92 did compared to the G80.

GF104 is believed to form three SKUs to fill performance-thru-mainstream market segments, starting with the fastest GeForce GTS 450, GeForce GTS 440, and GeForce GTS 430 (likely name). Among these, the GTS 450 enables all of GF104's features and specifications, with well over 700 MHz core speed, 1500 MHz shader, and 1800 MHz memory. This part could be priced at around the 240 EUR mark, and target performance levels of the ATI Radeon HD 5830. A notch lower, the GTS 440 has all the hardware inside the GF104 enabled, but has around 20% lower clock speeds, priced over 160 EUR, under 180 EUR. At the bottom is the so-called GTS 430, which could disable a few of the GPU's components, with 192 CUDA cores, and 192-bit GDDR5 memory interface, priced under $150. The lower two SKUs intend to compete with the Radeon HD 5700 series. The source says that the new SKUs could be out this summer.

A set of company slides leaked to the press reveals that NVIDIA is claiming the upper hand in tessellation performance. With this achievement, NVIDIA is looking to encourage leaps in geometric detail, probably in future games that make use of tessellation. NVIDIA's confidence comes from the way its GF100 GPU is designed (further explained here). Each GF100 GPU physically has 16 Polymorph Engines, one per streaming multiprocessor (SM) which helps in distributed, parallel geometry processing. Each Polymorph Engine has its own tessellation unit. With 15 SMs enabled on the GeForce GTX 480 and 14 on the GeForce GTX 470, there are that many independent tessellation units.

NVIDIA demonstrated its claims in the presentation using the Unigine Heaven, where the GeForce GTX 480 was pitted against a Radeon HD 5870. In many scenes where tessellation is lower, the GPUs performed neck-and-neck, with the GTX 480 performing better more often. But in scenes with heavy tessellation (particularly the "dragon" scene, where a highly detailed model of a dragon needs to be rendered with densely tessellated meshes, the GTX 480 clocks nearly a 100% performance increment over the HD 5870. NVIDIA has been confident about the tessellation performance back since January, when it detailed the GF100 architecture. The GeForce GTX 400 series graphics cards will be unveiled on the 26th of March.Images Courtesy: Techno-Labs

In several of its communications about Fermi as a GPGPU product (Next-Gen Tesla series) and GF100 GPU, NVIDIA mentioned the GF100 GPU to have 512 physical CUDA cores (shader units) on die. In the run up to the launch of GeForce 400 series however, it appears as if GeForce GTX 480, the higher-end part in the series will have only 480 of its 512 physical CUDA cores enabled, sources at Add-in Card manufacturers confirmed to Bright Side of News. This means that 15 out of 16 SMs will be enabled. It has a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface holding 1536 MB of memory.

This could be seen as a move to keep the chip's TDP down and help with yields. It's unclear if this is a late change, because if it is, benchmark scores of the product could be different when it's finally reviewed upon launch. The publication believes that while the GeForce GTX 480 targets a price point around $449-499, while the GeForce GTX 470 is expected to be priced $299-$349. The GeForce GTX 470 has 448 CUDA cores and a 320-bit GDDR5 memory interface holding 1280 MB of memory. In another report by Donanim Haber, the TDP of the GeForce GTX 480 is expected to be 298W, with GeForce GTX 470 at 225W. NVIDIA will unveil the two on the 26th of March.

The Khronos group, at the Game Developers Conference, announced the OpenGL 4.0 API specifications. OpenGL 4.0 is set to rival DirectX 11 in being able to make use of hardware tessellation offered by this generation's GPUs, drawing of data generated by OpenGL, OpenCL, or other external APIs without any intervention from the CPU, support for 64-bit Double Precision Floating Point shader operations, and a number of performance improvements. OpenGL is a multi-platform API that can run on operating environments such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS, certain gaming consoles, as well as a low-resource API for mobile devices. A list of main feature changes in OpenGL 4.0 are as follows:

• Two new shader stages that enable the GPU to offload geometry tessellation from the CPU
• Per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions for increased rendering quality and anti-aliasing flexibility
• Drawing of data generated by OpenGL, or external APIs such as OpenCL, without CPU intervention
• Shader subroutines for significantly increased programming flexibility;
• Separation of texture state and texture data through the addition of a new object type called sampler objects
• 64-bit double precision floating point shader operations and inputs/outputs for increased rendering accuracy and quality
• Performance improvements, including instanced geometry shaders, instanced arrays, and a new timer query

Arctic Cooling has a long history of making excellent aftermarket coolers for AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards. Their latest innovation is the triple slot Accelero Xtreme 5970 which supports AMD's dual-GPU HD 5970 cards. Sapphire has chosen to use this very cooling solution for their HD 5970 OC 4 GB flagship, of course the cooler will be available in retail as well.

We also got a chance to drop by the Thermaltake suite at CES. They have quite a few new items on display. Let us start with the input devices. The Challenger and Challenger Pro gaming keyboards come with onboard memory, one or two USB 2.0 ports respectively and a small cooling fan, which clips onto the top edge of the part. They will also offer a gaming mouse called "Black" with up to 4,000 DPI in combination with a weight system and a pair of headsets (not pictured).

NVIDIA's next generation graphics card based on the Fermi architecture, whose consumer variant is internally referred to as GF100 got to business at the CES event being held in Las Vegas, USA, performing live demonstration of its capabilities. The demo PC is housing one such accelerator which resembles the card in past sightings. Therefore it is safe to assume this is what the reference NVIDIA design of GF100 would look like. The accelerator draws power from 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors. It has no noticeable back-plate, a black PCB, and a cooler shroud with typical NVIDIA styling. The demo rig was seen running Unigine Heaven in a loop showing off the card's advanced tessellation capabilities in DirectX 11 mode. The most recent report suggests that its market availability can be expected in March, later this year. No performance figures have been made public as yet.A short video clip after the break.

Thermaltake announces its collaboration with NVIDIA to design and engineer the Element V NVIDIA Edition, certified for the next-generation of ultra-high performance graphic card based on the most advanced GPU computing architecture, code named Fermi.

NVIDIA shares Thermaltake's commitment to ensure enthusiast community receives the best possible products that delivers performance that is both exciting and second-to-none," commented Tom Deane, Program Manager of NVIDIA. "Through collaboration on the engineering level with world's leading gaming chassis provider, Thermaltake Element V Nvidia Edition is capable of providing the best operating environment for NVIDIA's next generation of enthusiasts graphic cards based on FERMI architecture running on 3-way SLI or Quad SLI."