120°

Nvidia poised to change gaming with cloud graphics chips

Nvidia announced today that it has created unique features in its Kepler-based graphics chips that could make cloud-based gaming much more practical. The company has also formed partnerships with companies such as Gaikai to make cloud games much cheaper and more appealing to gamers and maybe even eliminate the need to create a new generation of consoles.

Read Full Story >>
venturebeat.com
Saryk4357d ago

But what gets me is that it is technologically possible! But is it like slitting your own throat?

I did state over an year ago (here) that the console and standard PC gaming were going bye-bye!

But this would seriously kill hardware sales, anyone agree?

NYC_Gamer4357d ago

Hmmm...not really since people like me would rather own the hardware and build my own rig...

soundslike4357d ago

Thats true now

but what about in 10 years when you can choose to play on a mild home built rig...

...or a multi-million dollar super computer cluster pumping out graphics nobody could ever afford to build on their own? Not only that but one that upgrades itself and is consistently pushing boundries no hardware production line could ever keep up with?

Eventually there will be no competition whatsoever. That time is not now, however, but it is coming.

catfrog4357d ago

@soundslike

in the US (the largest market by far, graphics on cloud computing systems is limited by bandwidth, not hardware. sure, they could have a great setup, but you wont see any graphical gains because no company will try and push the boundaries with bandwidth like they will with consoles.

low res textures will be guaranteed if we're talking about cloud computing, it costs too much bandwidth to stream high res textures or things of this nature. many games read terabytes of data from one playthrough of a game already, we would have to substantially reduce that if we were to move to cloud computing model of business. graphic capability would decrease, not increase.

and lets think about the future. the gaming industry today pushes itself by expanding hardware. this is possible because hardware prices drop relatively quickly and can be profitable. cloud computing costs stay constant, if anything they rise as you get more customers, which means they wont be pushing the boundaries anymore, at least not in any conventional ways. we likely wont see significant upgrades to their servers for very long stretches, sure, the hardware might be cheaper, but the energy costs go through the roof and followed by that bandwidth prices increase. a company thats focused on profits will do everything they can to avoid operational cost increases.

the consumer is better off with their own hardware. not to mention what happens if your internet is turned off, you wont have access to the hardware anymore. someone crashes into a pole in your neighborhood and it could mean no more gaming for quite a while.

dcbronco4357d ago

Nvidia is a relatively small company that is struggling itself. Partnering with companies like Onlive will be hard when they are going up against companies like AMD, Intel and Microsoft. Good luck with that.

I do wish them luck though. Things happening in the industry are putting a ton of pressure on them to generate new income.

catfrog4357d ago

nvidia is roughly twice the size of AMD, intel is about 13 or 14 times as large as intel and microsoft is a little larger than twice the size of intel.

and microsoft isnt even a hardware business, im not sure why you mentioned them at all, theyre more partners than anything, hell microsoft is pretty much partners with all three of these companies, without them microsoft wouldnt be able to function. microsoft will fight to keep all of these companies alive, because if any one of them get a stranglehold on the hardware market microsoft stands to loose the most.

dcbronco4357d ago

Nvidia total revenue last year was just under 4 billion. AMD was just over 6 and a half billion. Intel was 54 billion. And Microsoft was just under 70 billion. I looked at the annual reports of each company. Not sure what you're using to judge "size".

Microsoft isn't a hardware company? Ever heard of the Xbox 360. Microsoft has several businesses that they don't mention much about. Remember Zune. There's Surface and then Kinect. The CPU in the 360 uses parts from partners. But MS played a major role in the final design of the CPU. They have over 200 CPU architecture engineers at Redmond.

The SoC in the 360 Slim was a MS design. And the Fusion line by AMD uses some design ideas from MS engineers. I've never come across anything that talks about MS doing graphics, but there is plenty that points to them moving away from depending on others for CPUs. Or at least as an equal partner.

GraveLord4357d ago

Cloud gaming will never take off.
Games will only keep getting bigger and bigger, while internet prices keep getting higher and higher with bandwidth caps.

deantak4357d ago

re killing hardware sales: you either do this yourself, or someone else will kill them for you

330°

Nvidia DLSS 3.7 drives a further nail in the coffin of native performance

Nvidia DLSS 3.7 is the latest update to the long-running AI upscaling technology, and it further shows native performance doesn't matter.

DustMan7d ago

I think hardware development is at a point where they need to figure out how to draw less power, These beefy high end cards eat wattage, and I'm curious if using DLSS & AI in general will lower the power draw. It would seem like the days of just adding more VRAM & horsepower is over. Law of diminishing returns. Pretty soon DLSS/FSR will be incorporated into everything, and eventually the tech will be good enough to hardly notice a difference if at all. AI is the future and it would be foolish to turn around and not incorporate it at all. Reliance on AI is only going to pick up more & more.

Tapani6d ago (Edited 6d ago )

DLSS certainly lowers power consumption. Also, the numbers such as the 4090 at 450W does not tell you everything, most of the time the GPU stays between 200-350W in gameplay, which is not too different from the highest end GPU of 10 years ago. Plus, today you can undervolt + OC GPUs by a good margin to keep stock performance while utilizing 80% of the power limit.

You can make the 4090 extremely power efficient and keep 90% of its performance at 320W.

However, in today's world the chip manufacturing is limited by physics and we will have power increases in the next 5-10 years at the very least to keep the technology moving forward at a pace that satisfies both businesses and consumers.

Maybe in 10 years we have new tech coming to the markets which we are yet to invent or perhaps we can solve existing technologies problems with manufacturing or cost of production.

On the other hand, if we were to solve the energy problem on earth by utilizing fusion and solar etc. it would not matter how much these chips require. That being said, in the next 30-40 years that is a pipedream.

MrBaskerville6d ago

I don't think fusion is the way forward. It will mosy likely be too late when it's finally ready, meaning it will probably never be ready. Something else might arrive before though and then it becomes viable.

Firebird3606d ago

We need to stop the smear campaign on nuclear energy.
We could power everything forever if we wanted too.

Tacoboto7d ago

PS4 Pro had dedicated hardware in it for supporting checkerboard rendering that was used significantly in PS4 first party titles, so you don't need to look to PC or even modern PC gaming. The first RTX cards released nearly 6 years ago, so how many nails does this coffin need?

InUrFoxHole7d ago

Well... its a coffin man. So atleast 4?

Tacoboto7d ago

PSSR in the fall can assume that role.

anast6d ago

and those nails need to be replaced annually

Einhander19727d ago

I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is, but PS4 Pro was before DLSS and FSR, and it still provides one of the highest performance uplifts while maintaining good image quality.

DLSS is it's own thing but checkerboarding om PS5 still is a rival to the likes of FSR2.

Tacoboto7d ago

Um. That is my point. That there have been so many nails in this "native performance" coffin and they've been getting hammered in for years, even on PS4 Pro before DLSS was even a thing.

RaidenBlack6d ago

Don't know what's OP's point is either but ... checkerboard rendering was good enough for its time but in terms of image quality its wayy behind what's DLSS 3 or FSR 3 is currently offering.
The main point of the article and what OP missed here is that DLSS 3.7 is soo good that its nearly undisguisable from native rendering and basically throws the "its still blurry and inferior to native rendering" debacle, (that's been going around in PC community since 2019), right out of the window.

Einhander19726d ago

RaidenBlack

DLSS is as i said a different thing from FSR and checkerboard.

But you're talking about FSR 3 which probably is better than checkerboard, but FSR 3 has only started to get games this year, so checkerboard which was the first hardware upscaling solution was and is still one of the best upscaling solutions.

Give credit where credit is due, PlayStation was first and they got it right from the get go, and PSSR will almost certainly be better than it will be given credit for, heck digital foundry is already spreading misinformation about the Pro.

Rhythmattic6d ago

Tacoboto
Yes... Its amazing how many talekd about KZ2 deferred rendering, pointing out the explosions were lower res than the frame itself..
And of course, Then the idea of checkerboard rendering, not being native....
For sure, maybe this tech makes it minimal while pixel counting, but alas, seems performance and close enough , and not native now matters.....
I want to see it run native without DLSS.. why not?

RonsonPL7d ago

Almost deaf person:
- lightweight portable 5$, speakers of 0,5cm diameter are the final nail in coffin of Hi-Fi audio!

Some people in 2010:
- smartphones are the final nain in the console gaming's coffin!

This is just the same.
AI upscalling is complete dogshit in terms of motion quality. The fact that someone is not aware of it (look at the deaf guy example) doesn't mean the flaws are not there. They are. And all it takes to see them, is to use a display that handles motion well, so either gets true 500fps at 500Hz LCD TN or OLED (or faster tech) or uses low persistence mode (check blurbusters.com if you don't know what it means) also known as Black Frame Insertion or backlight strobing.

Also, image ruined by any type of TAA is just as "native image" as chineese 0,5$ screwdriver is "high quality, heavy duty, for professional use". It's nowhere near it. But if you're an ignorant "journalist", you will publish crap like this article, just to flow with the current.

There's no coffin to native res quality and there never will be. Eventually, we'll have enough performance in rasterization to drive 500fps, which will be a game changer for motion quality while also adding other benefit - lower latency.
And at 500fps, the amount of time required for upscalling makes it completely useless.
This crap is only usable for cinematic stuff, like cutscenes and such. Not for gaming. Beware of ignorants on the internet. The TAA is not "native" and the shitty look of the modern games when you disable any TAA, is not "native" either as it's ruined by the developer's design choice - you can cheat by rendering every 4th pixel when you plan to put a smeary TAA pass on it later on. When you disable it, you will see a ruined image, horrible pixellation and other visual "glitches" but it is NOT what native would've looked like if you'd like to honestly compare the two.

Stay informed.

RaidenBlack6d ago

Main point of the article is how far DLSS has come with v3.7 since 2018. If this is what we're getting already, then imagine what we'll get within next ~3 years. Yes parity will obviously be there compared to the then native rendering tech but it'll slowly narrow down to the point it'll be indistinguishable.
Something similar is like the genAI Sora ... AI generative videos were turd back when they were introduced (the infamous Will Smith eating video) ... but now look at Sora, generating videos that just looks like real life.

6d ago
Yui_Suzumiya6d ago

How much VRAM is standard today? My laptop has a 1080p QLED display but only an Intel Iris Xe with 128MB of VRAM. I currently do all my gaming on it but certain titles do suffer because of it. I plan on getting a Steam Deck OLED soon to play the newer and more demanding titles.

purple1016d ago

Maybe better to get a budget gaming laptop and link a dualsense to it

= Portable console with far better graphics than a steam deck! + bigger screen and able to use it for work / etc

170°

Why I'm worried about the Nvidia RTX 50 series

Aleksha writes: "Nvidia has established itself as a dominant force in the world of AI, but I can't shake the worry of what this means for the RTX 50 series."

Tal16910d ago

Echo sentiment here - I think the way GPUs are going, gaming could be secondary to deep learning. Wonder if the 40 series was the last true generation of GPUs?

Number1TailzFan10d ago

No.. Jensen believes GPUs should stay expensive. Those wanting a top end GPU will have to splash out for it, or play at just 1080p and 60fps or something if you can only afford a low end option.

On the other hand if you don't care about RT or AI performance then there's always AMD that are doing ok at the mid range.

Christopher10d ago

***or play at just 1080p and 60fps or something***

My over 2-year-old laptop GPU still runs fine. I think this is more a reason why GPUs are going to other things in priority, because the market reach for new users is shrinking as more PC gamers focus less on replacing older and still working parts that run RT/AI fine enough as it is. Not to say there aren't people who still do it, but I think the market is shrinking for having the latest and greatest like it has been the past two decades. Problem is we aren't growing things at a rate as we were, we're reaching the the flattening of that exponential curve in regards to advancement. We need another major technological advancement to restart that curve.

D0nkeyBoi10d ago

The irremoval ad makes it impossible to read article

Tzuno9d ago (Edited 9d ago )

I hope Intel takes some lead and do a big dent to nvidia sales

Jingsing9d ago

You also need to consider that NVIDIA are heavily invested in cloud gaming. So they are likely going to make moves to push you into yet another life subscription service.

Kayser819d ago

NVIDIA will never change their price point until AMD or intel makes a GPU that is comparable and cheaper than them .
it happend before in the days of gtx280 which they changed the price from 650$ to 450$ in a matter of 2 weeks because of rx4870 which is being sold at 380$.

Show all comments (8)
230°

Nvidia AI Demo Unwittingly Proves that Human Voice Actors, Artists, and Writers are Irreplaceable

Nvidia presented Covert Protocol, a tech demo aiming to showcase the "power" of the Nvidia Ace technology applied to video game characters.

Read Full Story >>
techraptor.net
Eonjay30d ago (Edited 30d ago )

They look like they are in pain. Almost begging to be put down. It was uncomfortable to watch.

PRIMORDUS31d ago

The tech. is too early. Come back in 10+yrs and see what it can do then.

N3mzor30d ago

That presentation sounds like it was written by an AI using corporate buzzwords.

CS730d ago

I don’t know why people keep thinking of it as AI vs no AI.

A much more likely scenario is the use of AI alongside human work.

Eg. AI voices used during side quests or banter to boost the lines of dialog.

AI generating additional pre determined branches in dialog tree options for more freedom in conversations with NPCs

Smellsforfree30d ago

"AI generating additional pre determined branches in dialog tree options for more freedom in conversations with NPCs"

I'm wondering about that last one. Will that make a game more fun or more immersive? In the end, how can it possibly be more than filler content and then if it is filler content how much do I really want to engage with conversing with it if I know it will lead no where?

MrBaskerville30d ago

It's one of those things that sounds cool on paper. But will probably get old fast.

DivineHand12530d ago

The tech is now available, and it is up to creators to create something unique with it.

Profchaos30d ago (Edited 30d ago )

The biggest thing to talk about here is that every interaction requires communication to inworld servers so there's three big impacts here
1) games are always online no question about it
2) delays in processing on inworld servers, outages or unexpected load as a result of some astronomically popular game will cause real time game delays ever wait for a chat got response this will be similar as the context must be pulled via the llm.

Now as for the other impact the artistic one no I don't think writers can be replaced I've mentioned before often AI generated writing is word soup I still standby that it's also evident in the video to.
AI can not convery accurately human emotions and I don't think ever will.

I know publishers are looking to cut down on development costs but what happens when inworld decide to charge per interaction or update their pricing a year after your game goes live you have no choice but pay it or shutter it.

Ive felt for a while that we are heading towards this place of games being disposable entertainment and now it's feeling more and more accurate

Show all comments (23)