Introduction

Yearning to escape the banalities of life is a common trait shared by everyone and computer games have played a large role in the last few years in satiating this need.  It is an industry that has generated revenue of over $19.6B in 2009 so it isn't surprising that investments are being made to make sure that video game technology is always moving forward.  Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world has done exactly that and dedicated plenty of money and resources to it's DirectX API.  Through constant tweaks and technological advancements over the years, DirectX overtook OpenGL as the most used gaming API, securing Microsoft's position not only in having developers make games for Windows but also to dictate the terms of where 3D gaming is headed.  With the latest iteration of DirectX version 11, graphics technology takes a large leap forward with the adoption of hardware tessellation and the introduction of GPGPU features through DirectCompute.

While Microsoft introduced GPGPU functionality in DirectX11 only recently, graphics card giant Nvidia has been pushing its CUDA parallel computing architecture for some time now. As they understood it, parallel computing via GPU is superior in doing a lot of tasks over the CPU's sequential task sorting. Microsoft's move to add GPGPU functionality validates Nvidia's belief.  It also helps that GPGPU computing through CUDA has had massive adoption rates in the field of biotechnology, physics, chemistry and other sciences as cheaper, efficient , faster, parallel computing can be had using Nvidia GPUs instead of supercomputers.  Nvidia has its roots in gaming however and like Microsoft knows that investments in increased gaming immersion is necessary.  Through CUDA, Nvidia has introduced PhysX as a physics engine middleware capable of complex and realistic implementation of dynamic content in games.  Even furthering the goal of immersion, Nvidia offers a 3D gaming solution called 3D Vision.

Using EVGA's GTX 465 Superclocked Edition, we will look at just how effective these immersive technologies are. The GTX 465 is based on the same GF100 architecture that the GTX 470 and GTX 480 uses and is fully DirectX11 capable.  While it may not be as powerful, having two memory controllers less and five SM processors disabled, the GTX 465's Fermi architecture should be enough to handle all our Tessellation, Physx and 3D vision tests.