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.

As I hope everyone else is doing, I have been trying out the Call of Duty 4 Variety Map pack the past few days.  The new maps have helped bring new life to COD4 for me and I have really enjoyed learning new levels.

My favorite one is Chinatown, but not for the reasons you may think.  As a level, its ok.  It has lots of eye candy, but I find that it has too many corners to hide in, so any assault you try to launch just ends in a back of the head shot you didn't see coming.  However, Chinatown sticks out in my mind as the most memorable level since it reminds me of San Francisco, my home away from home. 

As a recent transplant to Austin, TX with a young baby, I have not had any opportunity to travel back with my family to the Bay Area.  This level captures the essence and imagery of San Francisco's famed Chinatown quite well, with the neon lights, small dimly lit buildings, and twist and turns of the streets.   I didn't think COD4 would make me homesick, but kudos to you Infinity Ward.

And to help you design your own levels to make you homesick, Infinity Ward launched their official Mod Tools for the PC and they are holding a Community Mapping Contest which allows you, the community, to take map making into your own hands and create custom multiplayer maps.  Download the tools, start creating your dream multiplayer map, and they will choosing their favorites at the end of March. 

Two days ago, Club SLI members got first crack at the new Call of Duty 4 Variety Map Pack.

Well yesterday, everyone got access to them and I just wanted to make sure everyone knows the map pack is available to download for everyone on NVIDIA nZone. 

So go get it, and look for me on-line, my username is "H4nds0m3."

**Updated at 9:40 AM PDT.  Our servers were having some download issues this morning and have been updated.**

Yesterday I posted that everyone can get the new Call of Duty 4 map packs from nZone.com on June 5.

Online action takes players to "Creek," a wide-open village ravaged by combat where concealment is the difference between life and death; "Broadcast," fight throughout an enemy communications building with confined corridors and wide-open parking lots; "Chinatown," a foggy downtown district, lit only by a full moon and the neon glow of the city; and "Killhouse," featuring a desolate training warehouse filled with a variety of building mock-ups and soft and hard cover points.

Breaking news for Club SLI members, you will have a 24 hour preview EXCLUSIVE, which gives you a 24 hour "leg-up" on the competition just for being a Club SLI member!  Beginning June 4th at 12:01 AM Pacific Time you can download the maps.

Check your inbox for an email from News@nvidia.com for the location of the download.

NVIDIA has teamed with Activision to give PC gamers a little something new. 

On June 5th PC gamers can download the Modern Warfare Variety Pack for free from nZone. The map pack has four all new multiplayer levels for Call of Duty4: Modern Warfare including: Broadcast, Chinatown, Killhouse, and Creek.

You will also want to grab the 1.6 patch for the PC version of the game to ensure you are working properly.

(P.S. sorry Xbox 360 owners, you have to pay for the same maps. :(  )

Today we launched a a really new tool on nZone.com called the NVIDIA Game Browser.  This tool allows you to browse computer games in a new innovative way. Check it out.

The NVIDIA Game Browser was developed in house by our the web team to help users choose the right games for them based upon a number of criteria.  Over the next few weeks, the entire catalog of The Way It’s Meant to be Played titles will be available in the browser. Eventually, the plan is to allow advanced searches on game detail like development team information, games that will run on your system config and more.

Please add a comment or two and tell us what you think.

Ok so its not SLI or NVIDIA related, but GTA IV is being released today!  I can't speak for everyone, but I know I am looking forward to playing it.  I have played all previous versions since Grant Theft Auto 3 first came out and enjoyed them all. 

This one has got me pretty excited to fire it up on PS3 connected to my big screen HDTV.

I probably won't be in line at 12am tonight, but I'll swing by on my way to work in the morning :)

If you have suscribed to the NVIDIA Club SLI Newsletter you would know by now that Assassin's Creed is available now.  If you didn't get the newsletter, go and sign-up now to become a member of Club SLI.

For those of you like me, you have been waiting for this game to hit the PC market.  I played it a little on the PS3 but specifically waited until now to get it for the PC since I wanted higher resoluitions and better frame rates.  Finally my wait it finally over, can't wait to test it out tonight.

PC Perspective posted a new interview with Cevat Yerli of Crytek (you may have heard of them, they were the developer of Crysis and Far Cry) on ray tracing and the future of 3D graphics.  There was some interesting comments from Cevat on this subject:

Yerli: So far I haven’t seen a compelling example for using pure classical ray tracing. 

Yerli: I don’t see classical ray tracing in its current form becoming the dominant rasterization solution. In 1-3 years we will still see rasterization as clear way to go. We may find it being present in a more significant portion in overall real-time 3D graphics solutions though in 3-5 years from now.

Yerli: Current GPU hardware can handle ray tracing, but it’s not well designed for this problem. The trend is towards more generic programmable massively parallel solutions, so I don’t think we’ll require dedicated ray tracing hardware.

Yerli: I don’t think we’ll see an OpenGL / DX like API for ray tracing. Instead we’ll see the APIs for general purpose computations on GPU like hardware which can be used for ray tracing.

The entire article is pretty interesting and worth reading if you are interested in the future of 3D graphics.

Ask anyone who has been using 3D stereo for gaming and they will tell you that while it may be one of the least known gaming technologies, its the coolest out there.  I would have to agree with them! If you dont know what 3D Stereo (or stereoscopy) is, start off by reading the wiki page on it.

NVIDIA has been active with 3D stereo gaming for about eight years, working on software for our GPUs and with game developers to ensure games have stereo capable effects built in. 

Recently, we've been working on support for new displays coming out and you may have seen information on our demonstrations on the Wired Blog or BBC Tech blog. 

Zalman also recently announced two new monitors, called TriMon, which are availalble as a 19" 1280x1025 and 22" 1680x1050.  Both of these monitors are available now and work with NVIDIA GeForce 7 series of higher GPUs to enable 3D stereo on some of the latest games, such as Call of Duty 4, Crysis, and Age of Empires 3. 

If you want to get a 3D stereo gaming setup for yourserlf, read more about NVIDIA 3D Stereo support for gamers.  Or if you are a developer, download 3D stereo game development guidelines to ensure your game works great with 3D stereo.