GeForce GTX 690 and A New Dawn

Since moving on to buying all Apple hardware, I haven't been following the custom gaming PC market. However, today I came across the news of a new Nvidia tech demo, A New Dawn, which intrigued me.

A New Dawn.

To showcase Nvidia's latest flagship 3D graphics card, the GeForce GTX 690, they chose to update an earlier demo named Dawn, originally used for the GeForce FX product launch in 2003.

The original Dawn, created by 3D artist Steven Giesler of Final Fantasy fame, was a real-time 3D modeled fairy housed inside a 2D cubic environment map. It was and still is a great demo of realistic shading and life-like animation.

A New Dawn highlights improvements to her skin, hair and overall geometry of the scene through DirectX tessellation as well as additional post-processing effects like depth-of-field focus and light blooms.

The original Dawn.

The making of the GTX 690 is an interesting read. Nvidia seems to have held nothing back on the industrial design which includes two Kepler GPUs, multiple metal alloys for the frame and housing, laser-etched LED lighting and custom vapor heatsinks which use purified water in a self contained enclosure.

Unlike the GeForce FX which was infamous for its Hoover-like fan which ran annoyingly loud, the Kepler architecture was designed for increased power efficiency with the goal of reducing heat and noise without sacrificing 3D performance.

The GeForce FX (2003) vs the GeForce GTX 690 (2012)

As a side note, check out this rig with two 690's in SLI mode. Amazing. Currently, one GTX 690 will run you about $1,300 on Amazon.