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[Veritigo_X]

I'd agree, but I have 4 streaming boxes (of the 7+ boxes and sticks I have) that do Limelight perfectly. I don't think there's a huge difference between the Shield streaming and Limelight, is there?

Just slap Limelight on any Android OS streaming box and you get Nvidia Shield streaming. You might have to use some tricks to avoid UAC fucking up Steam, but it works.

Does Limelight take advantage of the encoding chip on Nvidia's video cards? Is that chip a load of marketing BS? I've heard good results from Shield streaming and literally just hearing about Limelight now so I have no clue. I'm guessing that something that works out of the box with hardware dedicated to game streaming would be a better than installing a software solution that you "have to use some tricks" to get working.

I actually don't have a streaming box (Chromecast aside, but that doesn't count) now anyway, so an Nvidia box would be most welcome. Why do people buy so many streaming boxes? I figure one for each TV would be good enough.

 

[Rodney McKay]

Watch it be something terrible, like a Shield Phone.


I'd be happy with a new Shield Handheld though.

I'd welcome a new, well made Android phone being available from a new manufacturer (since I'm looking to upgrade soon-ish) as long as it's actually good and not stupid expensive.

More Android phone manufacturers seem to be going the route of non-removable batteries (like HTC and probably Samsung with the S6) and stupid high resolution screens at the expense of battery and performance (like LG). So making something modestly sized (~5 inches), feature rich, good performance, and bundled with their streaming tech (even though Limelight is just as good) wouldn't be an unattractive proposition.

That said I kinda doubt they'd go for a phone. It seems pretty difficult if not impossible to break through to customers these days who either go with what they know or what is the shiniest available. Some phone from Nvidia that I doubt will be in many stores (if any) wouldn't likely do well unless it was super cheap or something.

Does Limelight take advantage of the encoding chip on Nvidia's video cards?

I think so. Their site says they reverse engineered Nvidia's Gamestream protocol:

"Limelight is an open source implementation of NVIDIA's GameStream protocol. We reverse-engineered the protocol used by the NVIDIA Shield and implemented a set of 3rd party clients.
What does this mean for you? Limelight allows you to stream your full collection of Steam games from your GFE compatible PC to any of your supported devices and play them. Right now, you can stream to your Android device or even another PC."

I've downloaded it, but I prefer using my Nvidia Shield's native gamestream since I haven't been able to get Limelight to remotely turn on my PC correctly.

 

[EVIL]

Give me high end gpu for mid end prices. That would be something for pc gaming.

 

[Sulik2]

Have they been working on a process shrink? That is the only thing I can think of that would take 5 years from Nvida.

 

[WarpathDC]

Give me high end gpu for mid end prices. That would be something for pc gaming.

High end cards are under the "neat" category for me. I'd love to have one but it really would be a waste on me as the only displays capable of resolutions higher than 1080p in my house are my phones and tablets.

 

[teiresias]

This had better be something amazing. Nvidia is really in the dog house after the past few weeks - and I say this as someone really happy with my 980 (well, aside from the fact that any driver after 344.75 breaks DSR being used over an HDMI connection passing through an AV Receiver).

 

[Durante]

High end cards are under the "neat" category for me. I'd love to have one but it really would be a waste on me as the only displays capable of resolutions higher than 1080p in my house are my phones and tablets.

What a sad state of affairs

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

It is indeed in the same price bracket. The $500-$650 is Nvidia's historical high-end price bracket since at least 2005. Before the GTX 680, nothing but fully-enabled or nearly fully-enabled top-end chips breached that area. The 780 also launched at $650, it means nothing. Those were high-end chips with high-end performance increases and manufacturing costs. The 980 is not, it is a business repeat of the GTX 680 (except big-die Maxwell and 28nm are just about ready this time, no unexpected yield issues) technically.

780 - 650
780ti - 700
980 - 550

Same price bracket? It's 150 dollars cheaper. It doesn't use the same naming scheme. There is no successor to the 780Ti in this lineup which is disappointing, I just don't think it's correct to say that the 980 is the successor to the 780ti rather than the 780 in the 900 series. This is probably a point you should let go because the 780 -> 980 gap isn't some unfathomable leap (well, in perf/watt it's pretty good but we're just talking performance here) it's more in line with 580 -> 680.

I didn't list it because the 480 -> 580 is not a new architectural debut. ...
The 9800GTX is similarly not a new architectural debut, it was just a die shrink of the existing 8800GTS and in sharp contrast to the 980, it was dirt-cheap at launch ($200). It was an oddball, but there was no pretense about it being high-end like the 980, just a die shrink of old stuff and accordingly cheap.

Regardless, we can say for certain AMD aren't going to release a microscopic improvement over the 290X like Nvidia did with the 780Ti -> 980. They're going straight for the rumored big-die Fiji.

Yes, but if the old scheme was "new architecture every 18 months" and the new scheme is "new architecture every 28-36 months", does it matter substantially if a new range is underwhelming on account of being the same range, versus being underwhelming on account of holding the big chip off till next year? Or to put it another way, imagine a hypothetical where we got big Kepler in the 600 series, and big Maxwell in the 900 series. We get them 12 months sooner (which would be cool!), but instead of the 600 and 900 series failing to be a large jump, the 700 and 1000 series fail to be a big jump (just as the 9000 and 500 series were historically; but those actually had the added benefit of being on a new process node which these ones don't).

The reason I consider the AMD comparison (which I hope somebody finds the time to do; I'm in between breakfast and going to work right now) so important is because over that time period, AMD hasn't to my knowledge been consistently blowing Nvidia out of the water. They offer better price/perf most of the time, which often causes Nvidia to drop prices in response, but have not been consistently delivering the same kind of leaps that we used to get any more than Nvidia has - if they had, they would currently be far beyond the performance of Nvidia, and not just on account of a once-in-a-generation transition to a new kind of memory. I don't believe the days of 70-80% increases every 2 years are even possible without going on an exponential power usage curve, and that the quirks of the 600 / 900 range are symptoms of how Nvidia has chosen to handle this, not the root cause of it.

AMD has what seems to be a golden opportunity to take the performance throne with the 300 series. And I hope they price it aggressively. Yet they won't have this opportunity consistently over time.

 

[dex3108]

Whatever it is i hope that it will be profitable for them because they are killing it recently. New financial results are again really good for them

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-announces-financial-results-fourth-212000738.html

 

[Netherscourge]

Introducing the GTX 960. With 4GB of VRAM.

/s

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

 

[Sanctuary]

There's a pun in here but I'm not good enough to find it.

It will have a 1.92 ghz clock, and they will be pushing for at least 30fps@4k.

 

[dgrdsv]

780 - 650
780ti - 700
980 - 550

Same price bracket? It's 150 dollars cheaper. It doesn't use the same naming scheme. There is no successor to the 780Ti in this lineup which is disappointing, I just don't think it's correct to say that the 980 is the successor to the 780ti rather than the 780 in the 900 series. This is probably a point you should let go because the 780 -> 980 gap isn't some unfathomable leap (well, in perf/watt it's pretty good but we're just talking performance here) it's more in line with 580 -> 680.

There will be a successor to 780Ti soon. 980 is really a card based on a "mid range" GPU which turned out not to be so-mid-range because of the fuckup with 20HP @ TSMC. Thus it is probably true that 980 is actually somewhat reminiscent of 680 and not 780Ti. GM200 will be the real 780Ti substitute. Expect it to cost in the same ballpark however.

 

[Crisium]

Do you think they will publicly apologize even a tiny bit before the new product announcement? I wonder.

 

[The Bookerman]

Didn't know that a 600$ card was mid range... ridiculous.

 

[Timurse]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

Also there are gonna be some big game announcements about new remasters like HL2. They didn't say anything about which games in particular gonna be remastered but that "you're gonna be really pleased". I assume that would make sense to port some big games to Android as they would have a new TV/console platform for that.

 

[Raticus79]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

Also there are gonna be some big game announcements about new remasters like HL2. They didn't say anything about which games in particular gonna be remastered but that "you're gonna be really pleased". I assume that would make sense to port some big games to Android as they would have a new TV/console platform for that.

Well, that would certainly fit the description.

 

[neogaffer1]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

Also there are gonna be some big game announcements about new remasters like HL2. They didn't say anything about which games in particular gonna be remastered but that "you're gonna be really pleased". I assume that would make sense to port some big games to Android as they would have a new TV/console platform for that.

Added to the OP.

 

[HooYaH]

nvidia Steambox?

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

Also there are gonna be some big game announcements about new remasters like HL2. They didn't say anything about which games in particular gonna be remastered but that "you're gonna be really pleased". I assume that would make sense to port some big games to Android as they would have a new TV/console platform for that.

Who are you exactly? Media or something?

 

[exmachina64]

Didn't know that a 600$ card was mid range... ridiculous.

With that mindset, you'll be saying it about Nvidia's xx80 equivalent every other year.

 

[TC McQueen]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

Also there are gonna be some big game announcements about new remasters like HL2. They didn't say anything about which games in particular gonna be remastered but that "you're gonna be really pleased". I assume that would make sense to port some big games to Android as they would have a new TV/console platform for that.

If this is true, then I might be in the market for one of these TVs, since my Sceptre set's main board died and I might not be able to get a replacement. If it supported G-Sync, I'd definitely be all over it.

 

[The Omega Man]

970 512GB ram expansion pack

 

[thetrin]

I got an invite to this event in my mail yesterday. Sad I won't be in San Fran in March to attend.

 

[cheezcake]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

Also there are gonna be some big game announcements about new remasters like HL2. They didn't say anything about which games in particular gonna be remastered but that "you're gonna be really pleased". I assume that would make sense to port some big games to Android as they would have a new TV/console platform for that.

Makes sense, also game streaming from my PC to TV would be a great feature.

 

[Three]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

Also there are gonna be some big game announcements about new remasters like HL2. They didn't say anything about which games in particular gonna be remastered but that "you're gonna be really pleased". I assume that would make sense to port some big games to Android as they would have a new TV/console platform for that.

I could see that happening and it's what I expected. I imagine a large portion of it would be about NVidia GRID though and how that streaming service spans all android devices with tegra rather than most of it being about the TV integration alone.

 

[Renekton]

Can Nvidia break into Android TVs with premium Tegra?

I'm thinking TV manufacturers might prefer generic embedded ARMs like Marvell.

 

[neogaffer1]

Can Nvidia break into Android TVs with premium Tegra?

I'm thinking TV manufacturers might prefer generic embedded ARMs like Marvell.

For Android TV? Doubtful, seems like something that requires some oomph to work and Tegra already works well with the Android platform.

 

[Compsiox]

Who are you exactly? Media or something?

Is it official yet or is this guy crazy?

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Is it official yet or is this guy crazy?

No idea

 

[ShowDog]

Tegra integrated into TVs won't mean shit if they aren't bundling the $50 controllers in alongside. If they try to bundle in some cheap POS, well... That won't help either.

 

[Apt101]

In Tegra-integrated televisions are a thing, I hope the controller is compatible with them. I already have one for my tablet.

 

[Objectively Bad Opinion]

Seems neat, but I wouldn't buy a TV for its non-upgradable gaming capabilities.

So this isn't really attractive unless it's purely for streaming purposes.

 

[Dr. Kaos]

the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

I could see this being the case. Nvidia seeing dollar signs I bet

SmartTVs are essentially useless to most Gafers. I have 4 boxes hooked to my TV, including an Apple TV/PS4/X1/PS3, which all have more smarts than my TV could ever dream of having.

And I don't give a damn about Shield. It's a niche accessory at best.

What Nvidia needs to do is make sure TVs have freesync/Gsync by the start of the next gen.

 

[sja_626]

Attended a talk today by the president of Khronos Group and he teased an announcement in San Fran next month. Of course could be anything Khronos/GDC related and not necessarily anything to do with this event.

However he also happens to be something like Vice President of mobile at NVIDIA and had just finished giving Tegra a bit of a plug so it makes me wonder if it is related.

 

[SneakyStephan]

It is indeed in the same price bracket. The $500-$650 is Nvidia's historical high-end price bracket since at least 2005. Before the GTX 680, nothing but fully-enabled or nearly fully-enabled top-end chips breached that area. The 780 also launched at $650, it means nothing. Those were high-end chips with high-end performance increases and manufacturing costs. The 980 is not, it is a business repeat of the GTX 680 (except big-die Maxwell and 28nm are just about ready this time, no unexpected yield issues) technically.

By far, it is the most pathetic product of a new architecture to take the x80/x800 spot and $500+ price in pretty much forever and there's no real reason for it other than Nvidia's desire to stretch things out and milk them for as much as they're worth. GM200 is ready. In reality, the 980's existence EoLs the 780Ti and replaces it at the top of the stack. It does a miserable job of doing that because it is, in fact, the mid-range chip. Therefore to address your point of whether we're losing anything from this new configuration, yes we are. The pricing on the 980 is ridiculous considering the chip powering it. It's tiny, cheap to manufacture, and weak for the supposed harbinger of the awesome Maxwell architecture, but it's being priced to oblivion as if it were the second coming of the 8800GTX or something (simply considering what it is and what process it's on).

R&D costs are perhaps another consideration, however.

Thank you

 

[bjaelke]

Watch it be something terrible, like a Shield Phone.

If that was the case then I'd expect the announcement to take place in Barcelona.

 

[gofreak]

I can think of a couple of cloud related possibilities, beyond the existing GRID service (or as extensions to it). Or maybe their own VR entry.

 

[ekim]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

Also there are gonna be some big game announcements about new remasters like HL2. They didn't say anything about which games in particular gonna be remastered but that "you're gonna be really pleased". I assume that would make sense to port some big games to Android as they would have a new TV/console platform for that.

If this happens to come with streaming from PC to TV it could be a huge deal. Problem is, that most people already have a good TV and probably won't buy a new one just to play some Android games. Why not have a console that does this things?

 

[BNGames]

Go away Nvidia, I just bought two 980s.

 

[Timurse]

Who are you exactly? Media or something?

Yes, there was a media meeting yesterday, like a small discussion club between reps of Google, Nvidia and Wargaming in Nvidia Russia office in Moscow. The meeting was actually about the future of mobile gaming. Some Nvidia employees were just too lousy. And then I confronted some senior guys from Nvidia and they were afraid Asked me not to push it in media (we didn't make any news material on our website, fair enough) but I think you deserve to know, guys.

 

[-SD-]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/06/25/android-tv-nvidia-tegra/

 

[Rabid Wolverine]

I just talked with Nvidia Russia reps. And they unintentionally let it slip. Guys, the event mostly will be about Tegra being integrated into Android TVs. It's a huge deal for NV as they enter console market in a way no one really expected - they're gonna make almost every Smart TV of their partners a Shield console basically.

Might buy a new TV this year so ill look out for that.

But will they release their own type of Amazon Fire TV style box? X1 with Hevc decoding and features would be sweet.

 

[Boombox On]

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/06/25/android-tv-nvidia-tegra/

That blog post has one of the dumbest ways to introduce a product I've seen in quite some time.

 

[mephixto]

I found something interesting on Nvidia Q4 2015 Conference Call Transcript:

Matt Ramsay (Analyst - Canaccord Genuity):

I think the first one, Jen-Hsun, you made some interesting comments earlier about the need for, I guess, a fully virtualized mobile gaming experience. I assume your meaning across desktop, tablets, smartphone, cloud, etc.

One of the things that strikes me is obviously there is the suit going on between yourselves and Qualcomm , Samsung, etc., and your market share within the mobile graphics business, when you think about smartphones, is fairly small from a hardware perspective. So do you see that changing dramatically going forward? And if not, do you see the gaming mobile device market bifurcating from the traditional smartphone market going forward?

Jen-Hsun Huang (Co-Founder, President, CEO):

First of all, mobile is much more than phones. Mobile is a fundamentally new way of designing computers. And I believe that mobile will impact almost every segment of computing as we know it.

It'll impact refrigerators, that is not a phone. It will impact drones, that's not a phone. It will impact earrings, that's not a phone.

It will impact watches, that's not a phone. It will impact game consoles, that's not a phone. It will impact cars, and that's not a phone.

I think mobile is going to be important in all kinds of computing devices. When I say mobile, that's what I mean. I don't mean mobile as in a mobile phone, mobile technology is really important.

I also believe that mobile cloud in combination is one of the most powerful computing forces that the computer industry has ever known. Because of mobile cloud we've been able to extend the capabilities and the benefits of computing to billions of people, whereas in the PC era we were able to benefit hundreds of millions of people.

And yet, no one has yet created a game platform around mobile cloud, the technology of mobile cloud, the power of mobile cloud, the architecture of mobile cloud. So that we can extend gaming not to tens of millions of game console users, but billions of users. I think that that's the great opportunity.

And I don't have anything to announce today, but that's what we are trying to endeavor. So I appreciate you asking that question. I think it's going to be a really big opportunity for us.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/1304...eport-q4-2015-conference-call-transcript.html

 

[LordOfChaos]

It's Shield 2 that will rival or exceed PS4 in computing power... or Xbox One, at the very least.

Why else they'd sent that invitation to an Android site?

New GPU announcement will be made at the GPU Tech Conference in March 17th. It won't happen at GDC.

How? They're not even well past 500Gflops (and don't believe that 1Tflop x1 number - that's for double speed fp16, aka half precision, not comparable to the specs for the consoles at fp32).

 

[ZOONAMI]

Didn't know that a 600$ card was mid range... ridiculous.

It is midrange in the sense that all it can really do is match a 290x at high resolutions, which is now a $300 card.

 

[AmyS]

It's Shield 2 that will rival or exceed PS4 in computing power... or Xbox One, at the very least.

Huh?

PS4 GPU: 1840 Gflops (1.84 TF)
Xbox One GPU: 1310 Gflops (1.31 TF)
Tegra X1: 500 Gflops (0.5 TF) (standard 32-bit floating point)
Xbox 360 'Xenos' GPU: 240 Gflops
PS3 'RSX' GPU: 192 Gflops
Wii U 'Latte' GPU: 176 Gflops

Tegra X1 is more powerful than the GPUs in 360, PS3 and Wii U, but not even close to Xbox One, let alone PS4.

Only way to get even in the same ballpark as Xbox One would be if there's a Shield 2 tablet with two Tegra X1's. Nvidia uses dual X1's in their DRIVE PX thing for cars.

 

[AmyS]

Could Nvidia Win Big With A GRID Game Streaming Box?

Nvidia has a streaming game service called GRID, which it debuted last year via its Shield dedicated Android gaming devices. The maker of PC and mobile gaming graphics hardware is dabbling in becoming more of a service provider with GRID, especially since it actually has the potential to cannibalize the sale of powerful graphics cards for local gaming rigs. Nvidia is set to make a big announcement that has been “five years” in the making during GDC this year, and we recently theorized on the weekly Droidcast that it could be a dedicated GRID streaming device, like a lightweight, inexpensive set-top box designed specifically to bring game streaming affordably to the living room. Here’s why, despite cannibalization, that might be long-term sense for Nvidia.

Nvidia’s past business may have relied heavily on both its own graphics card sales, as well as licensing of said tech, but more and more, it will see bigger benefits from providing the power behind the remote servers that will undergird a distributed computing future. With gaming, the potential for streamed services is perhaps even more immediately apparent than for other uses of said tech, so it’s only natural that Nvidia would try to lead in this area. Whereas just a few years ago it was still impractical to make this real (OnLive’s inability to build a truly successful business on a streaming games service is evidence of this), Nvidia has waited, developed its own service and paid attention to when conditions were right.

This meant making sure that general network reliability and speeds were sufficient, but also helping usher in a future where the processors and graphics capabilities available to receptor devices (smartphones, or, set-top boxes) could handle the remaining work of rendering received feeds on high-resolution displays without any issues. A lengthy testing period, with a cadre of devices optimized for use of the service (Shield tablet and portable) has also helped more perfectly set the stage for what comes next.

GRID Box Benefits

A GRID box gives Nvidia a way to deliver a streaming games service with parameters it controls, at least at first, meaning it can continue to do as much as possible to maximize the conditions for successful streamed gaming. It also offers a way for Nvidia to embrace a cartridge razor model of revenue, with low initial buy-in but sustained higher revenue from subscription service.

Evolve Or Die

Whatever Nvidia is preparing to unveil at GDC, you can be pretty sure it’ll go beyond a simple upgrade to the GTX line of graphics cards (though if it is just this, I’ll feel pretty stupid). I’m anticipating a GRID device aimed at the living room in this article, but a general launch of GRID services with support beyond the Shield line of hardware, to PCs and perhaps even other mobile devices would make as much sense.

The point is that Nvidia is keenly aware of the general trend the industry is facing, and appears to be making the right move for long-term success in a shifting market. In part, a GRID box is an intermediary step, prefacing a time when consoles disappear and the screens and projectors we use to display our media also provide all the interactive gaming, and advanced computing, we could ever hope to need as consumers. The companies that do the best in terms of pacing out their product cycle to get us there along a timeframe that keeps up with advances in enabling technology are those that will succeed and thrive.

Full article: http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/15/could-nvidia-win-big-with-a-grid-game-streaming-box/

 

[icecold1983]

so its either some crappy GRID device or a vr headset. eitherway meh

 

[Dictator93]

It's VR. Calling it. 100% certain.

Spoiler

watch me be horribly horribly wrong