Epic Games adds Vulkan support to Unreal Engine 4

Linux gamers are banking a lot on Vulkan and heres hoping the performance gains are realised!

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2016/02/22/vulkan-unreal-engine-4/1

Looks like AMD has a fighting chance in the high end this generation

Ars sums it up best here:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/06/amd-fury-x-reviews-show-strong-4k-performance-but-doesnt-beat-980-ti-overall/

As much as I love the top end I've kinda given up on it as it's usually let down by poorly supported drivers and price premiums which don't reflect the experience expected of them. I usually end up going for a midstream card with a good few months on the shelf and release drivers that have been a little more fine-tuned.  I'm running AMD in my main Windows machine at the moment and am pleasantly surprised as I didn't think i'd go back.

NVIDIA Maxwell GM107 GPU pictured and detailed

Worth a read as their table included doesn't give all the details. (and thus not re-posted here). Sounds like its worth skipping this revision and waiting for the 20nm parts, probably in Q3... 

http://videocardz.com/49517/nvidia-maxwell-gm107-gpu-pictured-detailed

V-Ray 3.0 For 3ds Max by Chaos Group

The team at Chaos have made significant optimisations to the ray tracing core which has now enabled up to 5x performance increase for Brute Force CI, Progressive Path Tracing, Reflections and Refractions.

Artists will find that V-Ray 3.0 offers improved Subsurface Scattering (SSS) including options for object-based and ray traced illumination, faster hair rendering speeds (up to 15x), view-dependent tessellation that automatically smoothes hair curves, and a dedicated Skin Shader with layered reflections. Now with UDIM and UVTILE support, it’s even easier to move MARI and Autodesk® Mudbox® assets into V-Ray.

In addition, V-Ray 3.0 offers a number of additional workflow shortcuts, technical advances and support for open sources technologies, these include:

Render Mask – Users can define render regions using an object selection or image mask
Reflection/ Refraction Trace Sets – Provides more direct control in choosing whether reflections and refractions are visible in objects
Max Ray Intensity – Will easily fix artifacts from over-bright sources
Probabilistic Lights – Increases the speed of scenes with a high number of lights
V-Ray RT GPU – Improved with support for Render Elements
V-Ray Frame Buffer – Improved with added color correction controls
Open Source Technologies
Alembic integration with support for hair and particles
Deep Data output support including OpenEXR 2.0
Ptex object-space vector displacement support
Open Shading Language (OSL) support for programmable shaders
OpenColorIO support for advanced color management

In Theory: Can Xbox One multi-platform games compete with PlayStation 4?

 Good article. PS4 comes out on top but i'm starting to sway back to the Xbox One with all the expected U-turns.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-can-xbox-one-multi-platform-games-compete-with-ps4

Shuttle SP35p2 and a AMD HD 7870 will work happily.

Everything went beautifully with the upgrade in physical terms.

UPDATE: Sadly after months of trying to diagnose the reboots I was getting I seem to have established that the cards cooler is pretty poor. I saw temps as high as 80oC in the case. I even modded a 120mm into the roof of the shuttle (looks so cool with blue LEDs) but I could not get it to stay cool.

I think it's only once ever got to the end of a run of 3D Mark and that was when I under clocked the card massively using the catalyst drivers sliders.It's pretty disapointing. You would have thought they would have designed the coolers to force the hot air out of the case and though the fins that way instead of having such as open design.

Even with the case off and all fans at 100% (it sounds like a jet engine) you still reboots.

The old GTX 275:

Without the GPU:

The new card (left) and the old (right):

Top down view:

The new card going in:

Everything back in the case:


PSU info (I doubt the Shuttle PC55 would make a difference as it not got the same efficiency rating):

Anandtech has detailed info on Nvidia's next mobile graphics family.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6873/nvidias-geforce-700m-family-full-details-and-specs

Shuttle SP35P2 Vs VTX3D HD 7870 Black Edition 2 GB

Time to see if a VTX3D HD 7870 will fit in my Shuttle. It's in the post. It'll be replacing a Nvdia Asus GTX 275. It recommends a 500W power supply and the shuttle has a 450W gold PSU so it'll be an interesting combo. I just hope it fits! 

Replacing my old GTX 275:

Mac Pro News

The Mac Pro is well over due a complete overhaul.

Media & VFX houses demand computational power and Apple has been losing market share for a while now. Yes they have a nice unix based OS vs but Microsoft has come a long way with Windows Server 2012 and software companies really driving their software to do more on PC!

It's good to see some rumours and developments on the Mac Pro front.

The Mac Pro is off the market in the EU at the moment and from the articles below it's going to be a while before we see a new one as Apple wait on Intel's new chips (a good call in my opinion).

I would love to see Apple experiment with some own brand Thunderbolt graphics solutions.

Nvidia with CUDA, SLI and some Thunderbolt arrays would be an interesting mix. Same goes for AMD and crossfire... You could turn a little Mac mini a rather dent little gaming machine and revive an ageing MacBook Pro.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/03/04/apple-building-2tb-solid-state-drives-for-next-mac-pro-release/

http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http://www.pcgameshardware.de/AMD-Radeon-Hardware-255597/News/Sapphire-zeigt-Radeon-HD-7950-Mac-Edition-auf-der-Cebit-1058864/&authuser=0

Graphics upgrade?

OK so I have some fairly hefty constraints on what I can upgrade my ageing Shuttle PC with.

First and foremost is power constraints with only a 450W PSU in the case ...
Then comes dimensions...With a precarious motherboard power connected in the lower left. I barely got my GTX 275 in there!

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-275,2266-14.html

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/graphics_cards_buy_now_uk.html

I'm thinking this Zotac will fit the bill in terms of size and power draw.

http://www.ebuyer.com/393783-zotac-gtx-660-ti-2gb-gddr5-dual-dvi-hdmi-displayport-pci-e-graphics-zt-60801-10p

But can it run Crisis?

Maximum PC: You Built a New PC, But Can It Run Crysis 3?

Wow, my Nvidia GTX 275 simply doesn't cut it with just under 1Gb of ram and no dx 11...That's just for the minimum specs!

A New Dawn for NVIDIA graphics

Hexus: http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/42865-a-new-dawn-nvidia-graphics/