NVIDIA Conference Vlog Part 2.1 -The Way It's Meant To Be Played 2013
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
3,548 words · ~17 min read
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the fractal design toine R4 case gets featured on the wow build logs of the
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week section more than any other case click now to learn more about it all
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right guys so it's sort of day two it's actually still kind of day one but I'm
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splitting up the Vlog a little bit just cuz uh things are happening or they're
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not happening anyway we came back uh very recently from the Pretty
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underwhelming Ubisoft tour I think everyone's expectations were a little
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bit higher given how much hype there was but basically we walked through a
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building which was cool you know seeing a Game Dev studio um where lots of
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people were working at desks and then we
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uh we saw like kind of a cool like video about how they do some motion capture
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stuff but no real details and then uh
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and then we left so it was it was pretty short so that was a little bit
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disappointing but I'm on my way to the hockey game now so hopefully uh that'll
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be much much more entertaining going to go see some Habs action going to boo
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them yeah I'm going to boo them all
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right so we're going to the game now they split up me and this guy on
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account of uh he can get kind of Rowdy and we're we're liable to end up
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scrapping at some point I to beat up any Canadians really really that's you're
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going to assume that you'd be beating me up you you won't even call it a fight
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you're just going to call it a beat down bullying right basically bullying not
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even that much taller than me you got maybe 25 lbs on me yeah maybe maybe yeah
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okay fine everybody's 6 in taller than me I'm
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up your height though I'm just I'm just being
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obser this is the uh this is the dessert tray so it's like the largest carrot
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cake ever oh oh I almost got in the way
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yeah oh someone finally got the uh the
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chocolate Paradise destroyed the last one this is the second chocolate oh
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that's the second one okay cuz I'm going to need a piece of that one can I get one of those choc yes
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please oh we're out of plates what are you going
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to no plates so I'm back after the hockey game
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that was fun I might have lost my voice a little bit but not too bad what I
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heard through the grape vine is that there's something crazy going down
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tomorrow so without further Ado I'm going to go edit some video there's my
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computer get some sleep and uh hopefully we're going to have some really exciting
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stuff to show you in just a moment here after I sleep
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tired I was up late last night editing and uploading and then trolling slick on
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Twitch so I'm pretty tired hopefully I get a reasonably good seed I'm going to
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be I'm going to be 2 minutes late for breakfast
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so I'm ready I'm ready for something crazy
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to happen it's all Rowdy and crazy and
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everyone's running to get the best seats at least I guess this is about as Rowdy
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and crazy as uh as like Tech press
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gets I do want a good seat though so so
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this much is true I'm going to go for this one yeah this one right
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here things have changed a fair bit in here since yesterday so there there's uh
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a bunch of Prodigy based gaming rigs all over the sides here so I guess
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they're going to be demoing something with those
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presumably they're like all around the
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back here we go there's people manning the stations presumably we should see
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what happens if we try to touch
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one just just for fun just for fun let's
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try and like play with one I can use
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this already right I don't have to wait until after the
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presentation main thing is we don't want want to mess with these just yet yes
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okay so so as predicted I am not allowed to use it
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yet a little patience okay so as promised guys what
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we saw down here today was absolutely
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incredible So Yesterday yeah they had
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Flex so that was different types of physics calculations interacting with
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each other they showed us the new Global illumination techniques which are
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outstanding um and really can be total game changers
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because it's taking away the individual
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nitpicking of programming lighting and instead just giving you a system that
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just works kind of on its own they've got flameworks which I wasn't as sold on
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the demo for that one it was Dynamic Fire I mean unfortunately the demo that
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they did was a dragon breathing fire which is very different from a more
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natural fire so I would have liked to see a demo that included that as well
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but you know we'll we'll wait for we'll wait for that but today what they showed
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off was absolutely crazy so first up was gam Stream So gam stream is basically an
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evolution of what we already saw with Shield so in your home you can already
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take a Kepler equipped GeForce graphics card equipped PC and then you can stream
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your PC games to NVIDIA shield and 720p
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over Wi-Fi now we've seen this implemented in
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other ways so at P we saw NVIDIA grid
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which is their cloud-based uh centralized Computing server type
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machine intended for cloud-based gaming and we saw that streaming to Shield
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wirelessly so you look at that technology and you go okay well this is
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going somewhere well gam stream is where it's going so they've got a 4K TV demo
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that they did earlier on in the uh in the presentation where they had a shield
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being used as a game console effectively so you close it it goes into console
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mode and then you can stream to your shield from your PC you can use a third
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party controller with Shield rather than just relying on the controller that's
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built into it through Bluetooth and they've got validated controllers that
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are supposed to be very low latency and then you can either through a wired
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connection stream at 1080P or through a wireless connection stream at 720p this
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you guys is what I'm talking about this is why the game console as we know it
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doesn't really need to exist anymore particularly for PC Gamers who already
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have a decent PC because you can centralize your computing power in one
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place and then you can use it on something like a shield around the house
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or you can use it on your TV and you only need one device for that now so
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that is absolutely fantastic to me so you couple that with the game bundles
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that was another thing that they announced today but it was on NVIDIA.com
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or GeForce.com pardon me yesterday so
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they're giving a $100 off a shield with 770 780 and Titan and presumably 780 Ti
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which they also announced today and then they're also giving you three games so
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it was Splinter Cell Blacklist it was Batman Arkham Origins and there was one
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other one oh I feel like I'm forgetting the most important
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thing anyway sorry my my brain's kind of going a mile a minute here anyway and
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then on lower end gpus I think 660 and up but don't quote me on that you get
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$50 off of Shield so they want you to do this game streaming thing where you've
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got a powerful PC and then you're able to use it in other ways next up is
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Shadow play so they're announcing Shadow play again sort of I guess availability
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is probably coming soon the build that they were running here was a
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beta and they've announced new functionality for shadow play so aside
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from recording the last 20 minutes of your game play and allowing you to save
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that on demand they showed off exactly
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how low the performance impact is and it's very very low I mean if I'm someone
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like um a media for example I'm looking
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at something like Shadow play going oh ball
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because anyone running a gForce graphics card will not have a reason unless they
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must capture to an external PC for some
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reason to use a device like that because you can just record to your computer and
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there's very little performance impact I mean it looked like less than a couple
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percent just based on the numbers that we saw and then they've also announced
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that shadow play is going to have integration with twitch so they're
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rather than relying necessarily on xsplit although xplit flexibility is
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looks a little bit more than what they've got there but
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they're allowing you to have your game you can stream at 1080p 720p you can
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overlay your webcam and whichever corner you can adjust the size so very
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rudimentary but very simple to use from the look of things so the interface is
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pretty well thought out the next thing they showed off was you know what
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actually I'm going to save that for last so they showed off 780 Ti which
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presumably is I don't know 780 with a clock bump and some more Cuda cor or
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something like that or maybe it's more like something like Titan but without
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the um the full double Precision performance so so that'll be a slightly
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faster 780 which is cool and maybe we'll see a price drop on 780 we don't we
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don't know yet so more details on that to come the ID is very similar so it looks
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the same but that could mean anything cuz all of NVIDIA's graphics cards
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lately have looked outstanding okay so let's move on to gsync that's the one
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where they have demo set up all around the room and they talked a lot about the
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fundamental problems that we have as PC Gamers or gamers in general because on
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the console they spend a lot of time optimizing the title and yes that
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includes optimization for visual Fidelity and programming as close to
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Bare Metal as they can on the hardware and all those console optimizations that
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we're used to talking about but what they can also optimize for is a target
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frame rate and making sure that it stays there so it delivers a consistent
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experience at a consistent frame rate so you don't see those issues like
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stuttering and tearing that you do on PC
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games because on a PC you're monitor
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most monitors these days are refreshing at 60 HZ high performance ones are up to
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120 or 144 Hertz you don't have to deal
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with the fact that your graphics card is going to be drawing frames at a much
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different rate than your monitor so whenever those two things don't match up
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perfectly in an Ideal World I'm hopefully going to remember to put a
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slide up here right now that shows you how it would work so your GPU would
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within the refresh rate of the monitor would draw a new frame then your monitor
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would display it to you and while it's displaying it to you your GPU would draw
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a new frame and it would be ready to go when the monitor is ready to refresh in
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the real world that's not really how it works so you can turn on vsync in order
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to make sure that the monitor only draws a frame so so basically the graphics
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card will wait for the monitor to refresh but what happens is anytime the
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frame rate dips below 60 FPS you're going to see what's called stuttering
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where sometimes the same frame is displayed on the monitor for two full
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refresh Cycles or heaven forbid even even more
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and that's very noticeable in games now they introduced adaptive vsync a while
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ago and that somewhat alleviated the issue because it would turn vsync on and
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off dynamically depending on what FPS you were running the game at but now we
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have a more permanent solution so okay so hold on but vsync introduces lag as
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well because the monitor is waiting or
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the graphics card rather is waiting for the monitor to display something before it continues to work so you're wasting
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GPU Cycles effectively you can turn vsync off and you can get less leg which
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means that the GPU will output as soon as it's ready but you're going to
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sometimes have the monitor refresh when you're halfway through rendering one
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scene and halfway you you're still looking at the last thing you saw and
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that's called tearing so that's where you have those vertical lines where the
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the scene is you're looking at one scene and then and sometimes multiple scenes
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if the frame rate is very very high on the same frame on your monitor so that's
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not really optimal either so gsync is
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NVIDIA's technology that will allow
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those issues to go away and the problem existed because the graphics card and
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the monitor were never working in sync the monitor was displaying at its frame
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rate and the graphics card was displaying its frame rate and they were
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independent of each other whereas now with gsync and gsync enabled monitors
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which is a hardware chip so guys for those of you wondering is this going to
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work on Radeon graphics cards is this going to work on my current monitor the
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answer is I mean they haven't said that it's not going to work on radon graphics
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cards but I can tell you with a fair degree of confidence that the answer is
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no it will not you will be expected to buy a certified Monitor and a Kepler or
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greater GPU from NVIDIA in order to take advantage of g-sync and what gsync does
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is allows the GPU to control the refresh rate of the monitor so when the frame
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rate dips the monitor's refresh rate will actually lower so that they match
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so we're getting the vsync experience without the leg because the GPU can
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output whatever it wants whenever it wants and the monitor will be ready for
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it because it's actually taking a from the GPU for the display now this isn't
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something that unfortunately I can show on camera because we're we have another
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fixed frame rate device the camera that's sitting right in front of me
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that's how am I going to show you a variable frame rate on one monitor versus one side by side but they have
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side by side demos all over the place here you guys and um it
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is it is very very real and very very
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impressive it works and it's a game Cher
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so a lot of folks were speculating that NVIDIA would have some kind of a
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response to mantle um they haven't announced any
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kind of proprietary API so there's no direct response to
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mantle but the way that the landscape is
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changing right now is going to make the job of
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demonstrating how great a gaming experience is much different than it
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used to be it's not a matter of firing up fraps and seeing which GPU runs at a
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higher FPS AMD had a demo at their event
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where there were three 4K monitors running dirt three uh in ifinity with uh
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two cards running in crossfire and I actually ended up half arguing with the
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guy about what frame rate it was running at because he told me it was 60 which
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with fraps running it turned out to be but it was very noticeably not running
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at a perceived FPS and that's that's the
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the frame timing issue that AMD is struggling with right now there are
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driver fixes that they're working on they've partially fixed it in certain
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scenarios but 4K ifinity isn't one of them so it was very noticeable now
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NVIDIA so okay so let's say mantle dramatically improves the frame rates
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that an AMD graphics card can kick out but if NVIDIA is able to run at a lower
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frame rate but eliminate those issues to
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the point where it looks butter smooth to the gamer
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right right well that's that's good
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too
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so yeah today was uh unbelievable I mean
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the fact that they've got live demos here that we can sit and play with and how noticeable and tangible the
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performance Improvement is I mean I already love Shield I might be one of
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the only six people in the world who actually think Shield's awesome and I
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just got yet another great reason to care about Shield I'm actually going to
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have to upgrade the networking in house cuz I'm using power line to my TV right
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now I'm going to want to run giggy so that I can run at full
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1080p but um so they've given me another great reason to care about Shield
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they've given us g-sync which we have no idea how much the monitors are going to
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cost we're looking at q124 availability
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so you know I think it's all kind of up in the air right now in terms of how
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easy they're going to be to get how many are going to be available how much they're going to cost it is going to be
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a significant investment into the
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ecosystem for someone who doesn't already have a Kepler GPU to buy that
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GeForce graphics card and buy that g-sync monitor but one of the cool
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things about it is that NVIDIA is showing this off with a GTX 760 they
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didn't load up all of these test systems with Titans or dual Titans or anything
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like that so what they're really showing off is that you don't have to spend
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$1,000 on the GPU necessarily to have a great gaming experience you could get a
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reasonable GPU and then you could get a g-sync monitor and have a great gaming
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experience that way
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he's saying Montreal is a beautiful city which it is and you're right anyway guys
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I think that's pretty much it for the update for right now this has been an
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unbelievable two days yesterday was unbelievably not as exciting as I had
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hoped with that Ubisoft tour that was very uh uninspiring uh today has been
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unbelievable because we saw some crazy awesome stuff I got to I got to like
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Instagram this
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um so yeah of course I'm not going to pass up a photo op
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right so I I'm spending all my time at Aus right now and I think that the the
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head mounted displays have there's a lot of what I'm doing now that feels a lot
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like the early days of 3D of the first person stuff and I'm having a blast I
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mean I'm working on the core technology stuff you know in many ways I I feel
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more like myself than I have for a long time you know I'm I'm in there spending
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all of my time on these hard technical problems writing tons of code making
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things happen and you know it feels like it's for a worthy cause glad to hear
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Sean thanks a lot thank you for your time we'll see you the enforcers back
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he's stealing John carac from us sorry I'm really not a bad guy
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as there goes the bad guy Ste
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you all right there we go guys so unfortunately they need to steal him for
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the panel but the good news is that means that you can probably watch the
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panel at some point here although they stole him took him over
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there look at this enforcer just wants a photo op I
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bet see look look I'm going to get him in all
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kinds of trouble see he just wanted a photo op with John
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carac and that is why he took him away from
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us see he claims to not want a photo op
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and yet that is a camera phone and that was a
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flash
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he