Posts with tag nVidia

12 Days of Winter Veil is under way here at WoW Insider. That means 12 days of giveaways, from loot codes to literature and gaming mice to graphics cards. Even if you've been a good goblin or a naughty night elf, there's a chance that WoW Insider has a holiday gift for you this season.

The new year is here and, surprise, we have another great graphics card to give away courtesy of NVIDIA. The Palit GeForce GTX 470 card is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 GPU, supports PCI Express 2.0, Microsoft DirectX11 and Open GL 4.0. It also has 1GB GDDR5 memory.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 11:59 p.m. ET, Sunday, Jan. 2, 2011. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You can only enter once. Make sure your email address is up to date, because that's how we'll get hold of you. We will pick one winner randomly. Official rules here.

Don't forget to check back every day through Jan. 2, 2011, for new contests celebrating the 12 Days of Winter Veil!

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks and good luck to all who entered!

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12 Days of Winter Veil is under way here at WoW Insider. That means 12 days of giveaways, from loot codes to literature and gaming mice to graphics cards. Even if you've been a good goblin or a naughty night elf, there's a chance that WoW Insider has a holiday gift for you this season.

New Year's Eve is approaching and what better way to admire the in-game celebrations in [insert faction capital here] than with a great graphics card courtesy of NVIDIA. The MSI GTX 460 Hawk is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 GPU, supports PCI Express 2.0, Microsoft DirectX11 and Open GL 4.0. It also has 1GB GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit memory interface.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 11:59 p.m. ET, Saturday, Jan. 1, 2011. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You can only enter once. Make sure your email address is up to date, because that's how we'll get hold of you. We will pick one winner randomly. Official rules here.

Don't forget to check back every day through Jan. 2, 2011, for new contests celebrating the 12 Days of Winter Veil!

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks and good luck to all who entered!

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12 Days of Winter Veil is under way here at WoW Insider. That means 12 days of giveaways, from loot codes to literature and gaming mice to graphics cards. Even if you've been a good goblin or a naughty night elf, there's a chance that WoW Insider has a holiday gift for you this season.

We've been giving away graphics cards, MMO mice and custom keyboards this holiday season. And now it's time for some sweet, sweet memory. NVIDIA has provided us with a XLR 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3-12800) CAS 8 Triple Channel Memory Kit. Whew, say that three times in a row. Or just get to entering below!

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 11:59 p.m. ET, Thursday, Dec. 30, 2010. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You can only enter once. Make sure your email address is up to date, because that's how we'll get hold of you. We will pick one winners randomly. Official rules here.

Don't forget to check back every day through Jan. 2, 2011, for new contests celebrating the 12 Days of Winter Veil!

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks and good luck to all who entered!

12 Days of Winter Veil is under way here at WoW Insider. That means 12 days of giveaways, from loot codes to literature and gaming mice to graphics cards. Even if you've been a good goblin or a naughty night elf, there's a chance that WoW Insider has a holiday gift for you this season.

The countdown to the new year is on, and we have another great graphics card to give away courtesy of NVIDIA. The Palit GeForce GTS 450 card is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 GPU, supports PCI Express 2.0, Microsoft DirectX11 and Open GL 4.0. It also has 1GB GDDR5 memory and a 128-bit memory interface.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 11:59 p.m. ET, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2010. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You can only enter once. Make sure your email address is up to date, because that's how we'll get hold of you. We will pick one winner randomly. Official rules here.

Don't forget to check back every day through Jan. 2, 2011, for new contests celebrating the 12 Days of Winter Veil!

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks and good luck to all who entered!

12 Days of Winter Veil is under way here at WoW Insider. That means 12 days of giveaways, from loot codes to literature and gaming mice to graphics cards. Even if you've been a good goblin or a naughty night elf, there's a chance that WoW Insider has a holiday gift for you this season.

Here's a little something to stuff your stocking with on Christmas day, courtesy of NVIDIA. The Zotac GTX 480 graphics card is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 GPU, supports PCI Express 2.0, Microsoft DirectX11 and Open GL 4.0. It also has 1.5 GB DDR3 memory and a 384 -bit memory interface.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 11:59 p.m. ET, Sunday, Dec. 26, 2010. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You can only enter once. Make sure your email address is up to date, because that's how we'll get hold of you. We will pick one winner randomly. Official rules here.

Don't forget to check back every day through Jan. 2, 2011 for new contests celebrating the 12 Days of Winter Veil!

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks and good luck to all who entered!

12 Days of Winter Veil is underway here at WoW Insider. That means 12 days of giveaways, from loot codes to literature and gaming mice to graphics cards. Even if you've been a good goblin or a naughty night elf, there's a chance that WoW Insider has a holiday gift for you this season.

We couldn't let today go by without giving away a graphics card, courtesy of NVIDIA. Up for grabs today is the PNY GeForce GTX 460. It's powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 GPU, supports PCI Express 2.0, Microsoft DirectX11 and Open GL 4.0. It also has 1 GB GDDR5 memory and 256-bit memory interface.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 11:59 p.m. ET, Saturday, Dec. 25, 2010. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You can only enter once. Make sure your email address is up to date, because that's how we'll get hold of you. We will pick two winners randomly. Official rules here.

Don't forget to check back every day through Jan. 2, 2011, for new contests celebrating the 12 Days of Winter Veil!

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks and good luck to all who entered!

12 Days of Winter Veil is underway here at WoW Insider. That means 12 days of giveaways, from loot codes to literature and gaming mice to graphics cards. Even if you've been a good goblin or a naughty night elf, there's a chance that WoW Insider has a holiday gift for you this season.

It's the second day of our 12 Days of Winter Veil giveaway, and we've got another graphics card for you. The Zotac GT 430 from NVIDIA is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 GPU, supports PCI Express 2.0, Microsoft DirectX11 and Open GL 4.0. It also has 1GB DDR3 memory and 128-bit memory interface.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 11:59 p.m. ET, Friday, Dec. 24, 2010. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You can only enter once. Make sure your email address is up to date, because that's how we'll get hold of you. We will pick one winner randomly. Official rules here.

Don't forget to check back every day through Jan. 2, 2011 for new contests celebrating the 12 Days of Winter Veil!

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks and good luck to all who entered!

12 Days of Winter Veil is under way here at WoW Insider. That means 12 days of giveaways, from loot codes to literature and gaming mice to graphics cards. Even if you've been a good goblin or a naughty night elf, there's a chance that WoW Insider has a holiday gift for you this season.

We wanted to kick off our 12 Days of Winter Veil giveaways with a bang. First on the list is the Gigabyte GTX 460 graphics card from NVIDIA. It's powered by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 GPU, supports PCI Express 2.0, Microsoft DirectX11 and Open GL 4.0. It also has 1 GB GDDR5 memory and 256-bit memory interface.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 11:59 p.m. ET, Thursday, Dec. 23, 2010. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You can only enter once. Make sure your email address is up to date, because that's how we'll get hold of you. We will pick one winner randomly. Official rules here.

Don't forget to check back every day through Jan. 2, 2011, for new contests celebrating the 12 Days of Winter Veil!

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks and good luck to all who entered!

Yesterday, we looked at the difference in graphical performance in WoW using different graphics cards from NVIDIA. Today, we are giving away those cards we used for testing to you, faithful reader. First up today is the GeForce GTS 450. With 1 GB internal RAM and rendering in DirectX 11, this card will have you humming along through Cataclysm.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 11:59 a.m.. ET, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2010. You must be 18 years of age or older and a legal resident of the United States or Canada (excluding Quebec). You can only enter once. Make sure your email address is up to date, because that's how we'll get hold of you. We will pick 1 winner. Official rules here. Keep your eye on WoW Insider as we continue with giveaway contests all day today including more NVIDIA cards!

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks and good luck to all who entered!

Whenever you are building or upgrading a gaming computer, one of the first things you think about is the graphics card that is going to be the driving force behind your sweet new rig. As games push the boundaries of graphics, the need for better, bigger, and faster graphics cards has increased. This is based on the idea that the better your graphics are, the better your performance as a gamer will be. Being able to see your opponents before they see you can mark victory over defeat.

Competitive World of Warcraft players are always looking for an edge, whether it is being able to get the drop on your opponents in battleground and arenas, or being able to see that boss ability or spell effect clearly in order to topple that encounter. With each expansion of WoW, the graphics of the game have gotten more robust, more complex and more stunning. Cataclysm brings a brand new graphic engine from the developers at Blizzard that has the ability to produce some truly amazing visuals. The brand new water and light effect that's adding so much depth to the world and all the new models and spell effects being added into the game make for quite the visual feast. Those views come at a cost, though, and many players have started replacing older graphics cards for newer updated models.

Is it really worth it to make sure you have a good graphics card? Does it really make that much of a difference? That's what we're going to talk about today. NVIDIA has been gracious enough to supply us with not one but four graphics cards to compare for you here today, and we would like to take a moment to thank them. We will be looking at the NVIDIA Geforce GTS 450, the Geforce GTX 460, the Geforce GTX 470, and the Geforce GTX 580. These cards were produced by Gigabyte, MSI, Palit, and PNY.

If you're using an Nvidia graphics card you should check your drivers, as there is a chance the newest drivers could cause your card to overheat during World of Warcraft, the Starcraft II Beta, or even Warcraft III. Blizzplanet reports the issue complete with links to two threads on the Nvidia forums discussing the issue, including one that states that Nvidia will be updating the driver in the near future.

Please check your drivers to make sure you're not using the versions that cause this problem and roll back if you can.

Datth - Low FPS with Nvidia 196.75 drivers

We're getting reports where users are getting intermittent low FPS after installing these drivers. It seems that it is related to the fan control included in these drivers not working correctly and is causing the video card to overheat on 3D applications. This will affect Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 Beta. Please uninstall the drivers and revert back to the older ones.

Windows XP: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_196.21_whql.html
Windows XP 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_196.21_whql.html
Windows Vista/7 32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_196.21_whql.html
Windows Vista/7 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_196.21_whql.html

More information can be found on threads such as these:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161525
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161503

source

Reader Catsby sent along news of an issue that's apparently plaguing Mac users. Blizzard has confirmed that people using Macs with Nvidia 7300GT and 7600GT graphics cards in them (you can see what you've got by going to the Apple, "About this Mac," and then hitting more info) are having issues with framerates, especially around water and during boss fights (which is exactly when you want the graphics to mess up, right?)

Unfortunately, there's no fix yet -- Blizzard says the issue is known and reproducible, and they're working to put a fix in "the next patch" (originally they say it'll be in a PTR patch 3.2.2 build, but a hint at the end of the thread suggests we may see it even sooner than that). So if your Mac has one of those graphics cards installed and you're having this issue, just sit tight -- Blizzard is working as fast as they can to get a fix out to you.

A pair of contests popped up on the World of Warcraft official site in the past few days, reminding everyone of a small and closing window to try and get to BlizzCon. One contest, sponsored by Alienware, requires absolutely nothing more than signing up for the DELL newsletter through their Back to School 2009 promo page. That's it. No, seriously, that's it. Of course, it comes with the usual caveat that only allows entries from the United States, but it's a shot at winning BlizzCon tickets without so much as getting up from your comfortable chair. Read the official rules carefully, though, because it doesn't seem like the tickets come with airfare or accommodations (go figure!).

The second contest is run by Nvidia, and it sounds like a sweeter deal because unlike most contests, this one is open to the residents of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, and India (except those guys from Tamil Nadu). Sounds great, right? Well, you also need to purchase one of the following qualifying graphics cards to enter - an NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT, NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+, or NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250. Considering this contest gives an all-expense paid trip to Anaheim and the fact that you need some mighty graphics to run WoW well anyway, it's not such a bad idea. Otherwise, you can go write that letter. Both contests end on July 31, so you've all got little time to spare. See you at BlizzCon!

The chances to head off to BlizzCon are coming fast nowadays -- Nvidia is the latest company in on the race, as they're offering up an all expenses paid trip to Anaheim in August for the winner and a guest to experience Blizzard's big show. To enter, they say you have to buy a qualifying Nvidia card, and then use the promo code inside the package to enter. Which might make you think, as we did, that it's a pretty lousy deal -- you have to buy a new graphics card just for a chance to win? But their official rules say "no purchase necessary," So we did the work for you: if you want to enter without buying a card, you have to send a letter or postcard to "NVIDIA "BlizzCon 2009" Sweepstakes – Entries by Mail (USA & Canada), NVIDIA Corporation, 2701 San Tomas Expressway, Santa Clara, CA 95050, U.S.A," and include your full name, your email address, mailing addresses, your telephone number, and "a short paragraph (100 to 250 words), written or typed in English, stating why you like or have an interest in the 'World of Warcraft' game or Nvidia or its products."

Not exactly a lot of fun, but then again, it's cheaper than buying a new graphics card, and their rules say that mail-in entries have the same chance at winning that the coupon codes do. We're behind you, readers -- we hope you win.

And if you do make it to BlizzCon, keep an eye out for WoW.com -- we're gonna have a nice big shindig on Thursday night (location still TBA, but soon!), and we'd love for you to be there.

Later this year Microsoft will release its next major desktop operating system, Windows 7. After deciding now was the time to expand my hard drives (because I really need 3TBs of space), I took the opportunity to install the "release candidate." The release candidate of Windows 7 is just that -- it's a version of the operating system that while still in development, has all the bells and whistles, and is essentially the exact same thing that'll be sold on the shelves.

The installation and configuration of Windows 7 went very smoothly. For the technically inclined, my computer has four gigs of RAM and operates off of two dual-core Intel Core2 processors. I have an nVidia GTX 260 graphics card, which is the latest generation. There's a bunch of other bells and whistles that I have as well, but those are the big things relevant to what I do every day here at WoW.com and how I play WoW.

Prior to installing Windows 7, I used Windows Vista updated to the latest patches. I got about 60 FPS on average, with a maximum of around 100 while idling in some far off place with not a lot of traffic; and a minimum of about 50 while in some of the more graphic intensive raids / battlegrounds. After installing Windows 7 I was running at about 75 FPS average, with a maximum still of around 100. However more importantly my FPS during raids / Wintergrasp shot up to 70.