PC talk system recommendations blog Facebook YouTube articles and guides links bio
game screensots email
rabb1t's Nvidia series 8 launch coverage

Woot woot woot! I was able to go to the Nvidia series 8 launch party on November 8th, 2006. Below are many shots I took of the event. There really wasn't much to see besides the demos, everything was 'in the box' so to speak, but there should be some good stuff here. Note that most of the problems in the shots are due to my taking a blury picture or translation from the screen to the camera. Seeing it first hand I can say what the tech can do is simply amazing.

Good news for shoppers, the cards are available today and are making their estimated price points of ~$500 for the GTS and ~$650 for the GTX. Those are really great prices for what you are getting and certainly affordable for high-end cards. (And, no doubt, the prices will start to drop probably after about 6 months or so.)

Every picture here has a larger version. Simply click on the picture in question to see the larger version.

Enjoy!

Typical cloudy winter day here in the bay area.

It is kind of tough to tell, but wow was that a big tent. :)

These peeps are having a lan party. The lan party was a 2 day event and Nvidia decided to hold the launch party in a tent which was adjacent to the lan party.

When the event started there were a lot of peeps showing up and the place was kind of loud. I thought that was due to the event, but it turns out that was just all the new arrivals. When I left the event the lan area was really pretty quiet.

There was decent ventilation and a little bit of a smell, but it was very tolerable.

If there were a future event which had games I'd play I may consider going. :)

This is a shot of the secondary tent where the launch event would occur.

Talk about some big screens!

This image wasn't really explained other than this was a comparison of the power of the 8800 GTX to the 7900 GTX.

I don't think this is frames per second, but some kind of rendering power measurement. As you can easily see, the rendering power of the 8800 GTX is lightyears beyond what the 7900 GTX can do.

It was mentioned that the 8 series is the first GPU that Nvidia has designed "from the ground up" since the GeForce 1. As we can see the core redesign really pays off big time.

Additionally, Nvidia has included a sort of helper chip in the G80 design, the C55, which is designed specifically for running non-gaming media, such as high-def movies.

The new Nvidia 'spokes girl' is actually based on a real girl this time.

Meet Adrianne Curry. She was the first to win "America's Top Model" and she's been in Playboy.

It was kinda funny when she came up on stage and was talking about how well the coders captured her various moods. She was particularly impressed with "pouty face". hehehe

Things to note:

This demo makes extensive use of the "sub surface scattering light pass through". This is what they call the effect of how light passes through things like skin and illuminates it in different ways due to the density of the skin and bones behind it.

This is, I think, "Cascades" and this demo was one of the ones running with DirectX 10.

No still shots will ever do this demo justice.

Things to note:

That waterfall is not pre-rendered; it is running using the new on-GPU physics.

Those rocks (of which there are actually several types to choose from) are just about completely flat. During the demo they zoomed in super close, and while it looks totally 3d, as it does in this shot, that effect is being rendered by shaders, not actual geometry.

Currently there is a short video clip of this demo on the Nvidia website so you can check this out in action. I highly recommend giving it a peep.

This demo was another one I believe they were running in DirectX 10.

There is some stuff you can do with this demo I didn't get shots of that is pretty nifty. They have included real-time deformation, and in the demo you can slap the froggy with a little hand and he will jiggle, or you can grab it and stretch parts of him out.

In the demo they stretched out his 'nose' so it was long like a duck bill and had the demo hold it there for a minute while they panned around.

Things to note:

Pay careful attention to reflections and sheen. This demo really showed off how realistic and nice the um... that stuff... can be. Like look down at the froggy arms and on the log. You can clearly tell which parts are reflecting and/or look wet and are reflecting light.

This demo is "smoke in a box". This, to me, was one of the most impressive demos shown. The smoke effect is just incredible and one demo they showed was the Nvidia logo, almost solid, and it turned into smoke and was poofed around. It really has to be seen to be believed.

Not much going on with this demo, smoke is what it's about and that's about it. :)

Currently there is a short video clip of this demo on the Nvidia website so you can check this out in action. I highly recommend giving it a peep.

Also being shown off at the launch event is AMD's "Quadfather". This, as you can guess, is a play on the Godfather theme and is the name for their new 4x4 system.

A few lucky peeps at the launch event walked away with an as-yet unreleased AMD "Quadfather" system with 4x4 and an 8800 GTX inside.

As you can see, they had WoW running on one core, a movie running on a second core, and then 2 coding programs, I think they were movie editors or something.

No large shot for this one. As you can see it's pretty blurry.

Comments and stuff Copyright E. Stryker 2006-2013
Product images are copyright of wherever I borrowed them from if borrowed, or by me if taken by me. :)

flash required for the logo
best viewed at 1280 wide resolution or higher