NV40 Unveiling

By Josh Walrath

            These gamers showed up before 9am on the morning of the 13^th to get in line so they could setup and start to play in an all day LAN affair.  The excitement of these people was tangible, as they could not wait to participate in this LAN, see the new NV40, and get the chance to win one of these cards at the end of the day.

            While some will chalk this up to simple marketing, I think that NVIDIA extending a hand to its customers like this is a very good thing to do.  While NVIDIA is there to make money, it doesn’t mean that they can’t have a little fun along the way.  Supporting an event like this will not crater the bottom line, and it can only help to keep the brand loyalty that NVIDIA has developed thus far.  Plus, when you talk to the NVIDIA employees who worked this event, they honestly had a good time.  I hope other companies will adopt releases like this, as it makes the marketplace that much more fun and interesting.

            The part that really got the gamers’ attention was the fact that NVIDIA was giving away GeForce 6800 Ultra boards in a variety of situations.  All told 28 GeForce 6800 Ultra boards were given away, 6 of which were housed in “Dream Machines”.  All in all, the prizes were worth approximately $40,000 in retail dollars.  Slightly over 5% of the people attending the LAN walked away with a GeForce 6800.  When compared to winning the lottery, or a giveaway open to tens of thousands of people, the chance to walk away with a new card (or a new system) was pretty good.  NVIDIA did not provide the cards or systems at that time, but the winners will get their prizes once product has actually been released to the market.

            Here are the specs for the systems given away: Asus SK8N NForce3 motherboard, AMD FX51 processor, 1GB ECC Samsung PC2700, Cooler Master Wave Master case, 80gb Seagate Barracuda HDD 7200rpm, Sony DVD-rom, Cooler Master green cathodes, and of course the GeForce 6800 Ultra.

Some of the very interesting stained glass at the Nob Hill Masonic center (and no, I am not a Mason, so I have no clue what the symbolism means).

The Show

            For one reason or another, the media turnout to this show was not as great as was hoped for.  Much of this can be attributed to ATI having its own “Editor’s Day” in Toronto at exactly the same time.  NVIDIA did have a good turnout at its own Editor’s Day two weeks earlier, so apparently many of these news organizations didn’t feel it necessary to cover the event.

            The event was held at the Nob Hill Masonic Center, which turned out to be a very good venue for the release and LAN Party.  The only real problem was parking, but much of that was taken care of by a 900 car parking garage under the complex (and valet parking).  The weather was cool, but of course inside it was nice.  Once inside, all of the press converged upon the bar where free alcohol was being served.  Around the bar were placed quite a few computers featuring logos from the different hardware partners.  Notables were BFG Tech, eVGA, Asus, MSI, Chaintech, and others.

            Once enough talking and drinking was done, NVIDIA opened the doors to the hall so we could all be seated.  Jen-Hsun Huang was one of the first speakers up, and he was very gracious in thanking the hardworking NVIDIA employees for the release of the NV40.  In attendance were over 100 of the engineers that had worked on the NV40 project, and they were justifiably proud of their accomplishment.  They then went over the architecture of the NV40 (which I will handle shortly).

Nalu is not an unattractive mermaid.  Note the reflections, diffuse light, iridescence, and other effects that NVIDIA has included in this lovely demo.

            The most impressive part of the show was the demos made for the NV40, as well as the Unreal 3 demo brought by Epic.  The Nalu demo was very luminous, and really showed off what can be done with Shader Model 3.0 effects on the NV40.  The overall realism was very impressive, and the lighting and subtleties of the scene were breathtaking.  The Timbury demo was also very impressive in that at first I thought I was watching A Bug’s Life.  The rendering was seriously on par with that title.  The lighting also showed NVIDIA’s High Precision Dynamic Range, and again the overall effect was very impressive.  The final demo was that of a pirate ship going through the sea.  This one wasn’t nearly as spectacular, but it did show off the per-pixel and per-vertex effects that made up the moving ocean and its effects on the ship.

Next: The Show Continued