ChrisRay, our hard working SLI Zone forum moderator, posted another review today of the GeForce 9800 GTX+.  Keep in mind Chris is just a hardware enthusiasts who posts what he thinks about ours products.  He is very honest with us and isn't afraid to gives us his opinion on new products.  Trust me, I have many emails from Chris calling a spade a spade ;)

One of the new things about this review from Chris is that he can now test and evaluate GPU accelerated NVIDIA PhysX on real games.  Chris measured Unreal Tournament 3 gameplay in his 9800 GTX+ review, and here was his conclusion:

Final Thoughts: All I can say is wow. This was just a single 9800 GTX. Not even with SLI and the performance improvement was substantial. And there no loss to actual rendering gameplay performance due to using the stream processors to process performance effects before the final rendering. If Nvidia can continue to deliver PhysX performance like this and change the way we perceive Physics..all I can say is "Sign me Up". It really is quite incredible. This is with a 200 Dollar CPU and a 200 dollar GPU.

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ is another solid edition to our product lineup.  Give Chris a hand and post your comments in the SLI Zone forum.

Everyday we keep announcing new parts of NVISION 2008 that get me more excited everyday.  The latest one, was really exciting to me as 3D stereoscopic is an exciting new technology in which NVIDIA is deeply involved.

At NVISION 2008, we are pleased to show the first computer-animated 3D feature film created, animated and edited for 3D stereoscopic: “Fly Me to The Moon.”  The movie, arriving in August, recreates the Apollo 11 moon landing, seen through the experiences of three astronaut flies who hitch a ride with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

The movie will show on the evening of Monday, August 25, at NVISION 2008, and will feature a live appearance by Buzz Aldrin, crew member of the historic Apollo 11 flight to the moon and the second man to walk on the moon. Mr. Aldrin will speak to the NVISION 08 audience at the start of the movie.  Also present speaking at the film viewing at NVISION 08 will be the film’s director, Ben Stassen, the director of the film, and the driver of this next-generation 3D film.

Open to all registrants of NVISION 2008, including the General Admission category, “Fly Me to the Moon” will be shown at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, August 25 at the Center for the Performing Arts in San Jose, California.

Still haven't signed up for NVISION?  Why not?  We are showing free movies, letting you meet celebrities, and giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes.  Go register before its too late!

Yesterday we released the initial NVIDIA PhysX software for the end users.  This software kit adds support for hardware accelerated PhysX on the following GPUs: GeForce 9800 GTX, GeForce GTX 280, and GeForce GTX 260.

SLI end users have the flexibility to select different configurations for running PhysX and find which one provides the best balance of 3D graphics and PhysX performance.  Users can configure their GPUs to

• Work together in SLI mode,
• Have 3D graphics on one GPU and PhysX on the other (note wo GPUs max in this mode)

Please provide your feedback as you try PhysX!

Several users notified us that the Medusa demo was not running for them and we discovered the problem.  Under Windows Vista 64-bit our installer package just not including the C++ 2005 SP1 runtime needed to run the demo.

Simply download it, install it, and then install Medusa.  Please let us know your results!

How many times in your life will you get to say that you made history and was a part of an official world record?  I think the only world record I can qualify for is continuously playing Battlefield Vietnam at a LAN (I still remember that Quakecon 2005).

This year, you have a chance to be a part the Guinness World Record-setting LAN party attempt at NVISION® 2008, August 25 in San Jose, California.

The aim of the event is to make history as the world's "Longest Non-Stop LAN Party. This means the Guinness World Record is a dedicated team of gamers to play video games continuously for 36 hours (10 minute breaks are allowed for every 60 minutes of continuous gaming). If the record is achieved, the participating team members will receive numerous prizes, including a commemorative medal, custom gear, gift cards, and of course, world recognition.

The attempt will take place in a special, reserved section of the NVISION 2008 GeForce® LAN Party.

Gamers who are serious about the attempt and have what it takes to handle a GeForce LAN Guinness World Record seat at NVISION 08 should go to http://www.amireg.com/nvision08/intro.html.

I will personally provide Red Bull to any team that wants to make a go of it, so please sign up.

Every week our NVISION team is always sending out internal updates on new events we have added to the NVISION calendar.  Sometimes items float by that are not in the general pop culture, but they are extremely cool! I just got one of those today.

One of my favorite things about PC gaming is that pretty much everyone can remember the games that manage to immerse you into it, and everything about it draws you in: characters, graphics, storyline, and music.  One of the games that is stuck in my head for almost 20 years is Ultima VI The False Prophet.  To this day, whenever I hear a harpsichord I immediately think if Iolo and typing Spam, Spam Spam, Humbug to him to unlock all of the cheats of that game.

That's why when I found out that at NVISION 2008 we will be hosting Video Games Live and what they were, I got really excited. If you have never heard of it, Video Gamer's Live is the most successful video game concert in the world.  Here's a YouTube video of them covering Civilization 4 and sounded just like playing the game.

So break out your old floppy discs and CD-Roms of those games that really get you excited.  I'm going to ask the NVISION team if we can submit requests for the band to play a cover of our favorite game.  I have a few on my list, namely the 7th Guest, Wing Commander, and Starcraft.  Maybe even Gorf!

For the record, I’ve become a complete hardware geek.

It started out last December when I built my first gaming rig and it culminated last week with overclocking and liquid nitrogen.

Think you need a quad-core CPU for an extreme gaming PC with impressive 3DMark Vantage numbers and gaming performance?  See for yourself by watching the video of how I overclocked and hyper-cooled an SLI® gaming rig using two of our latest and greatest GPUs—GeForce® GTX 280—an nForce® 790i Ultra SLI motherboard, and a sub-$200 CPU. Since I don’t have solid copper coldplates and liquid nitrogen underneath my kitchen sink—and I’m sure you don’t either!—I made an ultra-fun trip to the NVIDIA® labs for the hard-to-come-by but necessary ingredients and safety gear.

Since I’m sure you’ll ask what was in the system, here are the need-to-know specs:

• 2× NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 graphics cards running in SLI
• nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU
• 4 GB SLI-ready Corsair DDR3 memory
• PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 1200W power supply
• Windows Vista 32-bit operating system

The standard clocks on a GeForce GTX 280 are 601 MHz core and 1,296 MHz shader, but I pushed them to 727 MHz and 1,458 MHz, respectively.  I also managed to get the GPUs cooled to a chilly -102.5 °C!

My results may not be as high as the Kingpin’s world-records, but they’re not too shabby!  Given that I had a lot of extra help and equipment, I will leave the record-breaking to the FutureMark Hall of Fame professionals.

One thing I missed yesterday was to let everyone know that the new technology demo for the GeForce GTX 200, Medusa, is now available to download. Medusa a NVIDIA's interpretation of the legendary snake-headed woman who's venomous gaze turned her victims to stone.  Having seen this demo live, its pretty cool and very compelling.  I am excited to see games utilize the new GPU architecture we launched.

• Medusa demo download
• Medusa video

Yesterday we launched the GeForce GTX 280/260 GPUs, and today you can download the drivers for these new products from NVIDIA.com.  As the former software product manager at NVIDIA, I am really proud of our software team's ability to launch production quality, WHQL certified drivers, for eight different operating systems, the day the product is available.  Take a look at the versions available for you today:

• Windows Vista 32-bit v177.35 WHQL
• Windows Vista 64-bit v177.35 WHQL
• Windows XP 32-bit v177.35 WHQL
• Windows XP 64-bit v177.35 WHQL
• Linux 32-bit v177.13
• Linux 64-bit v177.13
• Solaris x86/x64 v177.13
• FreeBSD x86 v177.13

I want to call your attention to two new features of the Windows drivers, CUDA support on Windows Vista, and Folding@home support on Windows XP and Vista.  The number of CUDA applications keeps growing everyday.  If you follow that link to CUDA Zone you will find many new applications that take advantage of the GPU already in your PC and offer an incredible performance upgrade when the application is accelerated on the GPU.  Folding @home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals.

Download the drivers today!

As promised, our forum champ ChrisRay's review is online now.  Please give it a read and post your thoughts in the SLI Zone forums.