Nvidia Announces 3D Vision 2 With New Hardware
Nvidia is refreshing its popular 3D entertainment platform, now with bigger monitors and brighter screens!
Today, Nvidia is taking the wraps off its 3D Vision refresh, dubbed 3D Vision 2. While the functionality remains identical to the original, the update includes hardware optimizations that address some concerns with the 2.5+ year-old standard. You can check out our full 3D Vision 2 review on Monday morning, complete with performance benchmarks vs. AMD's competing HD3D product. For now, here are the important points:
This latest version comes with new glasses, new hardware, and some new tech behind enjoying 3D games and Blu-ray movies. Nvidia sees its 3D products as a major success thus far, with half a million 3D Vision kits sold, over 70 compatible products (monitors, laptops, all-in-ones) and a 3D games library with over 550 titles, so a refresh after roughly two years is to be expected.
Because 3D Vision uses active shutter glasses for the 3D effect, a significant amount of light is lost before the picture hits your eyes. The original standard suffers from relatively dark monitor output in conjunction with difficulty seeing through the glasses to see peripherals such as the keyboard. This problem has been successfully addressed with Nvidia 3D LightBoost, a collection of display technologies that include an LED monitor backlight that pulses twice as brightly and increasing the amount of time that the shutter glasses remain open. Nvidia says LightBoost will make 3D Vision 2 roughly 30 percent brighter than its predecessor.
Another major improvement comes with the glasses redesign, with a 20 percent bigger lens aperture. Constructed with softer composite materials, the frame will fit to your face tighter (but not too tight), so less light should bleed in from around the lenses. Nvidia also promises less ghosting and "true 120 Hz" gaming when in 2D mode. The great news is that old and new glasses are cross-compatible, so all 3D Vision glasses will work with any 3D Vision display.
So what about the new products? Nvidia is launching 3D Vision 2 with a new 27-inch Asus monitor, the VG278H. This LED-backlit beast has DVI and HDMI 1.4, an integrated IR emitter, 1920x1080 resolution and comes bundled with the appropriate glasses. Speaking of glasses, the redesigned frames are all wireless (no wired version), and cost $99 (or $149 bundled with an external IR emitter). There's also a Toshiba laptop, the Qosmio X770/X775, that's compatible with the new 3D standard.
3D Vision 2 is being launched today during Nvidia's GeForce LAN 6 in Alameda, CA. If you happen to be in the Bay Area, you should come by the USS Hornet (yeah, it's on an aircraft carrier) and check out the new 3D goodness. I'll be there all weekend, playing Battlefield 3 until my fingers bleed. [Editor's Note: Follow Devin on Twitter @devinconnors, he'll try to post updates about the LAN.] And once again, don't forget to check out our full 3D Vision 2 review on Monday!




Ya, they do. I think they were just trying to point out that nothing is lost.
though i prefere amd over nvidia (even if i have an nvidia card because of Adobe and premiere pro ) i don`t really see the need of a new gpu whem my GTX 465 still holds good in Crysis with ultra detalis at full HD res. guess the GTX 5xx series is still good enough for what software is out there. Seems lately the software kinda lags behind the hardware since the bulldozer graphs clearly shows that software is not really multicore aware and even computer graphics are kinda behind the hardware. So i`m kinda ok with them researching other things about graphics like 3D which .... an industry that needs serious improvements.
its allot like the cpu. we will always be able to use more, just because consumers dont need it doesnt mean that there arent hundreds of thousands of applications for the hardware consumers dont get. and the good part is, when the pro hardware gets a bump, so does the consumer side.
right now with games, faster gpu means next to nothing.
look at battle field 3 or hacked crysis demo.
with crysis they hacked it and got the highest setting on dx9 and it looked exactly like dx10, next to no difference
and battlefield 3, what i played of the beta on my brothers computer, and keep in mind, i don't know if ANY of the graphics setting made a difference on the pc because i cant tell, but with what they were set at, i couldn't see a reason they couldn't have used dx9 and supported everyone with a pc who games.
the next real leap in graphics isnt going to be pushing more pollys, or higher res textures, because right now, if a game has 4 million pollys or 8 million, we cant really see a difference, and on the pc, unless you walk into a wall and are looking for poor textures, they don't exist any more. the next leap will be tessellation, and right now its still in its infancy. i mean look at the tech demos, once those go into real time game play, in a significant way, such as the the one nvidia demo were the sculpture is really only 20 pollies but gets expanded to 10000 or something insane with tessellation.
till that hits in a significant way (look at crysis 2, half the tessellation shots i had to be told what changed, because its so minimal) we will get little refreshes in hardware that make them more powerfull but not realy seeing a difference except frame rates.
3D rigs are not expensive today. $400-700 for monitor + glasses depending on the size of the monitor. 1155 mobo, 2500k OCed to 4.0+ ghz, 8Gb of ram, 2x 480s or 570s ($600 worth of GPU), case, PSU, hard drive. That's Full system with monitor and glasses for about $1500 (That's less then the average joe worker gets on a damn tax return lol). That's NOT an expensive system. If you had to buy a decent HDTV + PS3 or Xbox when it came out that was well over $1000 with controllers and accessories and TV and people bought those up like crazy.
Also, PC parts can be bought in parts and upgraded as you go. PC gaming in 3D is a very affordable option today. Don't dismiss it. (There is a reason why Nvidia is paying 3D so much attention, it's obviously profitable)
Single nvidia cards can push 3 screens. Problem is that just about any new game at max resolution + max settings x 3 is going to crush single card solutions. Grab up a single 480 or 580 GTX, you can run 3x L4D or COD MW2 screens no problem. Crysis2, Metro 2033, BF3... not a chance.
If you count 590 as a "single card" then yes that could do it just fine. Where have you been? lol.
SLI / Crossfire is pretty much required for decent high-res framerates.