Looking to build a new gaming rig on a budget? Want to upgrade your older GeForce® 6 or 7 Series graphics card with something that can play cutting-edge DirectX 10 games at a price you can love…and can afford? It turns out you are in luck. We’ve just released the first GPU of the next-generation GeForce 9 Series, the GeForce 9600 GT.

The GeForce 9600 GT brings the biggest single-generation performance jump in NVIDIA’s history, increasing gaming performance up to 116% over the GeForce 8600 GT. Priced below $199, the 9600 GT will let you play graphics-intensive games like Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament 3 at 1900x1200 with high image quality enabled at excellent frame rates. If you put two GeForce 9600GT cards together in SLI, you will actually get faster gaming performance than you would from a GeForce 8800GTX.

The raw specs of the 65nm GPU include 64 stream processors each clocked at 1,625 MHz, with the 512 MB GDDR3 card built on a 256-bit memory interface running at 900MHz.

Want to see how the card performs in your favorite PC game? Check out some independent GeForce 9600 GT reviews at HardOCP, FiringSquad, and PC Perspective.

When I typically think of gaming on a mobile phone, I think of playing games like Tetris, Pong, and Bejeweled on a small, low-resolution screen. I think that we can all agree that while these games are a lot of fun to play, they just aren’t all that pretty to look at. Today’s gamers demand games that both look and play great, a combination of exceptional game play and immersive visuals that phones on the market today have not been able to deliver. But don’t worry, with NVIDIA’s new APX2500 applications processor, that’s soon all going to change.

Announced last week in Barcelona, the APX 2500 will power a new generation of Windows Mobile devices that will bring the power of visual computing to the palm of your hand. With a Smartphone based on an APX 2500, you’ll be able to navigate through intuitive 3D user interfaces, watch high-definition video content, and of course, play a new generation of 3D mobile games—all on the same device you call back home to Mom with. And by the way, these new games won’t just be a new 3D version of Pong. You’ll be able to play games like Quake 3, with all the eye candy turned on, for hours on end with only a single charge. Check out pictures of the APX 2500 playing Quake 3 here and watch the video of the 3D interface below.

About a week ago, many of you probably heard that NVIDIA had acquired AGEIA, the industry leader in gaming physics technology. A common question I’ve seen floating around various hardware and gaming forums is how this will impact you, the PC gamer, going into the future.

The short answer is that it’s great news for gamers. By purchasing AGEIA, NVIDIA will be able to support AGEIA’s very popular PhysX technology on future GeForce GPUs. By doing so, the install base of PhysX enabled hardware will exponentially increase and game developers will now have a larger number of customers that can make use of the PhysX engine. This translates into more games with advanced physics technologies being developed and gamers ultimately benefiting through more realistic and captivating gaming experiences. Stay tuned to the SLI Zone Blog for future PhysX updates.

Touchdown!  With slightly less grace than Plaxico the previous week, late Sunday night with Red Nectar and Hot Pocket in hand I finally finished Crysis.  Now I’m looking for my next FPS (help me decide by participating in the poll!), but I’ll give you a brief run-down of my Crysis experience.

First part of the game – loved it!   The one-on-one, person-to-person combat was great.  I even enjoyed The Core, and I found the graphics in this soupy world amazing. 

While challenging to get past the floating aliens (my shooting skills are still so immature I had to cloak invisible, wait till the aliens got close, and then pummel them with my fists.  Fun!), the graphics in here were impressive enough that I would often travel right up to walls to look at the details.

Not to be outdone by our resident SLI chick, I wanted to share with everyone my experiences with 3-way SLI®.

As you may know, we launched 3-way SLI in November of 2007 and it got some great reviews (FiringSquad, PC Perspective, Hot Hardware to name a few). This technology is definitely not for the faint of heart as it does require some investment of time, energy, and money to build your system. But as the product manager for it, I wanted to make sure that I experienced 3-way SLI just like any other enthusiast building a new PC would.

So how do you go about building one? Let me go through some of the important details on how to build your own 3-way SLI PC properly.

Just recently, I was looking at a bunch of screenshots I took while playing Diablo II on Battle.net about seven years ago. Not only did they remind me of the great times I had playing hardcore mode on US-East, but they reminded me that only a few years ago, I was playing PC games on my “huge” 19-inch CRT monitor at a measly 640x480 resolution. I say measly because the screenshot looked tiny on my 24-inch 1900x1200 LCD. It made me realize just how much more screen real estate today’s PC gamers have compared to those of only seven years ago. This year, new 30-inch XHD2 LCDs will hit the market with resolutions up to 3840x2160 (more than four times the resolution of 1080p) and will make the 1900x1200 Call of Duty 4 screenshots I'm currently taking seem meager at best.

What do you get with such high resolution? Amazing image clarity and vibrant color quality, that’s what. Playing Half-Life 2 at 3840x2160 is as close to being inside City 17 as anyone will ever be.

But how can I have played at that high of resolution if the monitors aren’t available yet? That’s one of the perks of working for NVIDIA. Inside our corporate demo room, we recently set up a new demo showing our Quadro® Plex Model IV Visual Computing System powering a Barco 56-inch LC-5621 3840x2160 display.

Although it’s intended for medical visualization, air traffic control, and port and waterways management, I was morally obligated to at least try to play a few games on this massive display. After a little tweaking to the HL2 desktop shortcuts, I was playing Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 at 3840x2160 on this massive 56-inch LCD. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Below you’ll find a picture of the Dell 3007WFP-HC below the Barco LC-5621.

Although this Barco 56-inch LCD is way bigger than anything you are likely to buy for your desk in the next few years, the 3840x2160 resolution will soon make it into high-end 30-inch LCDs and will allow you to experience your favorite games at a level of realism and clarity that has never been available to gamers before.

When buying a game, I follow a very simple “process:” I research the game on various sites like GameSpot.com and IGN.com, check out few screenshots and trailers, download the demo (when available), and finally I wait for previews and review scores to be released. However, there have been times were professional review scores were misleading. In fact, I’ve bought games that scored 7 or 8 out of 10 that I personally thought were 5s or 6s. So what’s the best source of information for you? Is it word of mouth? Review scores? Personally I believe the best way to learn everything about a game are demos…remember the awesome F.E.A.R. demo?

Widescreen gaming is very important to NVIDIA and we have been on the forefront of helping panels vendors get new displays that can run at 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200, and 2560x1600. Because of a lot of hard work by our developer relations team and by great widesceen gaming evangelists sites like the Widescreen Gaming Forum, most games now support “computer” HD widescreen resolution (listed above) and what I will call “consumer electronic” widescreen HD modes found on HDTVs, like 720p and 1080p.

I continue to see more and more NVIDIA users using HDTVs as primary displays. In fact, the number seems to be growing each year. Last year we ran a survey and found that 20% of users who spent $199 or more on their GPU use an HDTV as their primary display.  Just recently, we ran two additional surveys and that number has grown to 35%.

Using an HDTV with your NVIDIA GPU is a great option. NVIDIA PureVideo technology allows you to watch Blu-Ray or HD DVD movies in 1080p and you can also play all of your games at 1080p in widescreen mode.

But some users have expressed concerns using HDTVs for widescreen gaming since most overscan the HDTV signal and can cut off portions of games, including the HUD. The overscan amount can change for each display and it is frustrating that some HDTVs do it more than others. NVIDIA does have a feature for that called “Resize HDTV desktop” and our forum champion ChrisRay has a nice write-up on how to use it. We will continue to work on modifying this feature and make it better for users.

So my question is, how important is it that your SLI PC be integrated into your entertainment center, alongside your PS3 and Xbox 360? Would you rather use a PC widescreen display or an HDTV in your living room?

Please free to comment on this thread, or stop by and visit the SLIZone Widescreen Gaming forum.