GeForce Grid, Cloud Games Without Lag obviously has announced NVIDIA

GPU manufacture NVIDIA today announced GeForce Grid, a cloud gaming platform capable of “streaming next-generation games to virtually any device, without the lag that hampers current offerings.” The tech leverages NVIDIA’s Kepler-based family of graphics processors to deliver low latency gaming over the cloud. A single Grid instance can simultaneously encode up to eight game streams, allowing providers to scale efficiently with less overhead in regards to power and costs.

What’s under the hood? A Grid GPU boasts 3,072 CUDA cores — the same as NVIDIA’s flagship GTX690 card. It also includes 8GB of VRAM, with memory and shader performance clocking in at 320 GB/sec and 4.7 TFLOPS, respectively. The wattage rating comes in at a respectable 250W — reasonable when you consider how much power the card is packing.

Impressively, with the Grid tech, NVIDIA says server power-consumption per game stream has been reduced to about one-half that of previous implementations. Under ideal conditions, the Grid platform reduces server latency to as little as 10 milliseconds. According to NVIDIA, “gamers will feel like they are playing on a gaming supercomputer located in the same room. Lightning-fast play is now possible, even when the gaming supercomputer is miles away.”

OnLive competitor Gaikai will be one of the first providers to deploy the new tech. Additionally, several industry figures and developers have praised NVIDIA’s latest effort.

“Cloud has the potential to deliver an even more powerful experience in the future by enabling ultra-high-end GPUs like the GeForce GTX 680 to stream ultra-high-quality graphics such as those made possible by UE4 to a huge range of devices, well beyond console capabilities. The result will be that more people can enjoy EPIC’s games on more devices at higher quality,” said Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney.

“It is exciting to watch how cloud gaming is becoming mature and gives better and better user experience — and NVIDIA’s GeForce GRID technology is example of it. We are looking forward to see how cloud computing using this technology will change the future of gaming and the overall gaming experience and how it will affect consoles and PCs,” said CD Projekt RED lead programmer Bartlomiej Wronski.

Many have questioned the viability of cloud-driven gaming platforms in the past, but it goes without saying that NVIDIA’s Grid tech looks to be a game-changer. Going forward, it’ll be exciting to see how the platform evolves.

Read More

Shortcut glitch finally patched of Nintendo Mario Kart 7

Nintendo confirmed today that it is releasing a mandatory update for 3DS owners that will prevent players from using the game-crippling shortcuts that players have been exploiting in online matches of the game Mario Kart 7. Three shortcuts have been identified and Nintendo modified the software in such a way that anyone trying to use them will not be able to.

It became a huge issue when the game was released. There are areas within the race tracks that allow players to essentially skip more than half ot the course. The shortcuts were so extreme – and unintentional – that anyone using them has been considered a cheater. It was a big headache for Nintendo because the way the system originally worked, there was no way to patch individual 3DS games over the Internet.

However, a firmware update for the device went live earlier this year that modified the 3DS’s inner workings and made such a feat possible. This issue caused many to draw comparisons between Nintendo and Sony/Microsoft yet again, noting that Nintendo is far behind when it comes to things like online connectivity in the gaming environment.

Read More