Event Coverage

NVIDIA's Play the Future event for HWZ members

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - 12 Jun 2015

NVIDIA's Play the Future event for HWZ members

 The event was held on 11th June, from 6 to 9pm, at the Hood Bar and Cafe.

NVIDIA's been on a roll lately. With competitor AMD currently trailing them in the GPU arena, they are the undisputed king of the PC gaming market. Games, like the upcoming Batman: Arkham Knight, use proprietary tech that only NVIDIA graphics cards support, bolstering the already notable advantage over its rivals. Here's another video snippet showcasing the latest NVIDIA tech demo, Mecha, and its using all of the company's latest rendering technology.

The company knows though, that it is where it is now due to their loyal fans, which is why it held a special invite-only event for HWZ forum members. The purpose? To give the general gaming public a look at what's in store for them.

At the event, NVIDIA had two points they wanted to drive home; the power of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti and G-Sync. We've talked at least about the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti and its variants by NVIDIA's partners, and we've even reviewed it. Suffice to say, we thought it an excellent graphics card, with performance rivaling that of the Titan X itself.

The star of the show was undoubtedly the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

That's how powerful the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti is when compared to older cards, which are likely their intended upgraders.

NVIDIA's running a contest, which ends on the 20th June, where one winner will get the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti as picture above. Unlike commercial cards, this version of the card is special - it is direct from NVIDIA themselves. To enter, participants simply have to write about yesterday's event and then place the link to their post/article on NVIDIA's Singapore's Facebook page. Here's an example we spotted from one of our participants from yesterday.

NVIDIA also showed off some of the other tech they had up their sleeves, including a new way to render for VR headsets. We've discussed this with more detail in our GeForce GTX 980 Ti article, so do check it out for more information. Here's a truncated version of it:-

Multi-res shading uses multiple resolutions, so as not to tax the system.

What's in front of you will be rendered in full resolution, while objects to the side, above and below, are rendered at lower resolutions.

Performances gains to be expected when using multi-res shading.

Gameworks VR is NVIDIA's new API to help developers squeeze out every drop of performance in an efficient manner.

NVIDIA had two rigs running the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. One of them was running Project Cars and the other a tech demo showcasing what the card can do in DirectX 12.

While the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti was the main highlight of the event, NVIDIA also showcased some of the new laptops from manufacturers like ASUS, Aftershock, Aorus and MSI which had G-Sync capable screens. We already knew about the ASUS ROG G751 with the new G-Sync display, but it was the first time we've seen the others in the flesh (or plastic).

Aftershock has two different notebooks with G-Sync displays. The P770ZM-G is a 17.3-inch machine that comes with either an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M or 970M with a Full HD display while the P750ZM-G is a 15.6-inch notebook that also comes with similar graphics card options, though the display is a 4K one.

Aorus showed up with the venerable Aorus X7 Pro-SYNC, a G-Sync capable version of the Aorus X7 Pro. It's still packing the SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M with a 17.3-inch display. The Aorus X5 (SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M, 15.6-inch) is also G-Sync capable, but it wasn't at the event.

The ASUS ROG G751 in all its glory. While we don't know the new model name, we do know that it'll be a 17.3-inch machine, have either an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M or 980M inside and comes with a Full HD display.

MSI GT72 G, a newer version of the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro. It packs an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M or 980M, is 1080p and is 17.3-inch.

Needless to say, the attendees wanted to put the machines to the test themselves.

Since NVIDIA is heavily promoting Batman: Arkham Knight, a special guest was in attendance to greet those who came.

Batman showed up too.

Can you spot the Dark Knight in this picture?

At the end of the event, attendees were treated to a scrumptious meal by NVIDIA. Batman though, has vanished.

The NVIDIA event was a hit. Attendees enjoyed themselves and had fun trying out the new technology NVIDIA had on display and striking discussion with the NVIDIA execs and distributors who were are also there to support the event. The only downside was that Batman went missing as soon as the event started.

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