After many rumours and much waiting, AMD finally released their first HD 6xxx series to the public. HD 6870 and HD 6850, codenamed Barts, are the first pair to break the 6000 line. Two more GPU architectures are also coming: Cayman and Antilles. In this article we’ll have a quick look at the Barts series, and analyse their value based on different factors.

I must say, AMD was very careful about this release. I can already buy the HD 6870 in Australia. Back when the HD 5970 came out, it took at least another month before it was available in Australia. Same thing happened to the NVIDIA GTX 480. The fact that this card is immediately available internationally shows AMD’s attention to details for retailers.

Specification First

Whenever I consider to buy a new graphics card, I always look at what they actually carry inside the shiny plastic cooling fan. Here they are, fresh from the press.

In terms of raw power, 2 TFLOPs put the Radeon HD 6870 roughly the same as the Radeon HD 5850. In fact, the HD 6870 is slower than the HD 5870. You read that correctly. At first, this may not seem exciting to many users who are looking for an upgrading option. For a good look at what AMD is up to, here is a progress chart they have proposed:

As you can see, AMD is going through a product name shift. If you already own a HD 5870 or a HD 5970, it’s not time to upgrade yet. But if you have a HD 5770 or a HD 5830, read on!

What the “Barts” Aims to Achieve

Priced at USD $240 and $180 for HD 6870 and HD 6850 respectively, AMD is trying to find the “sweet spot” for the current market. In brief, the HD 68xx series is an optimisation of the HD 58xx series: It costs less, uses less power, provides roughly the same graphics processing power, comes with the latest DirectX 11 support and Shader Model 5.0, and supports up to 4 monitors natively! All in all a sweet upgrade.

New Morphological Anti-Aliasing

Morphological anti-aliasing (AA) is an all-new option for the Radeon HD 6000-series cards. It presents a different approach to the aliasing problem in that it needs no insight into the makeup of the scene’s geometry. … After a frame is rendered, it is passed through the morphological AA shader that looks for high-contrast edges and patterns consistent with aliasing. It then blends the colors of adjacent pixels to approximate a smooth transition along a line instead of aliased steps.

Conceptually, this method promises results similar to super-sampling, but with performance comparable to edge-detect AA. AMD suggests that some applications will look better than others, and that the technique is not ideal for all scenes and games.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

In plain English, the new Morphological Anti-Aliasing algorithm is very, very fast. Much faster than 4x Multi-Sampling AA (4x MSAA), which more than 90% of the current-gen games support. This is because AMD’s Morphological AA (Let’s call it MAA, shall we?) performs on an edge-detection basis. It works on a per-frame basis, as opposed to MSAA which requires 4 frames. Or even worse, SSAA (Super Sampling AA), which renders the frame 4 times! Using simple filters, AMD is able to find where sharp edges are, and blend them together.

Anti-aliasing without performance sacrifice like 4xMSAA? We approve.

Better Anisotropic Filtering

It’s really interesting what AMD is doing here. They are not trying to beat NVIDIA’s flagship, GTX 480. Nor are they trying to beat their own, the HD 5970. But here’s the fact, on the table. Actual improvements on the graphics processing quality. This picture shows it all. (Click on it to enlarge; the small thumbnail is too small to give it justice.)

In games, this will have a impact on the mipmapping’s quality. Less artifact means more awesome graphics.

Less is More

What AMD might be really proud is perhaps this: the new HD 6870 sports only 1.7 billion transistors, but performs at the level of HD 5850, which sports 2.15 billion transistors. Lower cost, same performance. At the same time, it uses less power consumption naturally. This is looking good for AMD.

Where the HD 6870 is on the market

Out of all of these improvements, where does it stand? First, remember the HD 6870 is only the first one to line-up: there is also “Cayman” HD 6970, and the dual-GPU solution “Antilles”, or HD 6990. The HD 6870 is perhaps their first experiment into the market – testing the water. It is no doubt NVIDIA will have to come up with better solutions to face the HD 6990, when it comes out next year in January. What did NVIDIA do? Well, they’ve lowered the price on the GTX 460. In the end, more accessible for the consumers.

If you own a HD 5770 or a HD 5830, and are looking for an upgrade, the HD 6850 or HD 6870 may be one of your best options at the price range. You will see a major graphics boost, and at the same time supporting the latest DirectX 11 games.

If you already have a HD 5870 or the HD 5970, just wait! In a month, the Cayman will hopefully be announced. In January 2011, the HD 6990 will hopefully come out, too. It’s not time to upgrade yet, because the HD 6870 is not an upgrade for you.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced the next generation of PC gaming, the AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 series, designed to be “perfect graphics cards” for gamers by delivering unprecedented game performance starting at $179 SEP.² The new AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 series graphics cards provide more than 30 percent greater game performance than competing products, harnessing AMD’s second-generation Microsoft DirectX® 11-capable architecture, best-in-class energy efficiency, and an unmatched feature set, including AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology. The AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 series is available immediately from etailers worldwide.

Source: AMD Press Release

HTML was originally drafted in 1992. In 1993, HTML 2.0 came out. It was further standardised further as HTML 3.0 in 1995, and later 4.0 in December, 1997.

Guess when HTML 5 came out? January 2008.

That’s right, for around 10 years, the web markup language didn’t change all that much. For 10 years, developers have been working with the same specs, and web browser companies have been working with the same old draft. Finally, someone decided we need to advance. The web needs to grow. This motivation became HTML5.

Why HTML5?

The version reflects the needs of everyday web. The WHATWG saw that need, and started this movement in 2004. They have been working closely with W3C, who are basically the people that decide what goes into HTML (and many other) specifications. They see and hear about what people do for websites, and add these technology into the HTML standard, so that browsers can support these features natively, instead of relying on 3rd party applications and/or plugins.

What kind of features are in HTML5?

Mark Pilgrim’s web-book, “Dive Into HTML5″, does a fantastic job of answering this question. But instead of just redirecting you into a wall of well-formatted text, I will point out some highlights here. If you click on the picture at the beginning of this article, you will hopefully see a demo using HTML5 <canvas>, grabbing Twitter feeds, and does some interesting particle animations.

Corban Brook (http://weare.buildingsky.net) published a HTML5 Audio API demo on the blog, and uploaded the video into the web:

Mozilla also has some interesting HTML5 demos. Oh, and both Vimeo and Youtube have options to turn HTML5 players on now. No more Flash! If that doesn’t convince you, here’s one more reason – your Android, iPhone, iPad, will play HTML5 just fine. That’s cool, right? Very cool.

For a complete feature list, if you have a whole weekend of nothing else to do, here’s a HTML5 Standard Edition for Web Authors. (Big thanks to Ben Schwarz for the styling.)

What do I need to run HTML5?

If you have downloaded a new browser, or bought a new computer in the last year, you’re probably fine. But here’s a list of compatible browsers:

• Google Chrome  5.0+
• Mozilla Firefox 3.5+
• Apple Safari 4.0+
• Microsoft IE 8.0+
• Opera 10.0+
• Android 2.0+
• iOS 2.1+

But remember, not all HTML5 standards are currently supported 100%. That’s because it’s still a working draft. Hopefully, in the next 5 years, we will see it supported completely, along with CSS3. You can always go to HTML5Test to find out what functionalities are there on your browser already. If you’re still on an older browser, shame on you. You’re missing out.

Otherwise, enjoy a powerpoint-like slides implementation in pure HTML5/CSS3!

In July, NVIDIA announced the high-end professional graphics units such as the Quadro 6000, with a hefty price of  USD $4,999. Two months later, they scaled it down for entry- and mid-level users – the Quadro 2000 and the Quadro 600, priced at USD MSRP $599 and $199, respectively. Being actually affordable for non-professional use, let us see how they compete with the GeForce series.

Let’s look at the specs in a brief.

Quick Facts

Clearly, the Quadro Fermi series still have a heavier price tag. Being the professional line of products, however, the Quadro cards are known to have much less driver issues, and are optimised for professional use. This time, NVIDIA also pushed for lowering the power consumption. Same CUDA cores, running at just slightly below the core clock rate, but with a power consumption difference of 44 W! That alone should solve many heating issues that many builds have.

The reason I chose the GT 430 and the GTS 450 to compare is because they ship with the same number of CUDA cores. Therefore, in theory, they will be the best reference to test the power and speed. However, since the GeForce series run a much, much higher clock – 3608 MHz memory clock on the GTS 450 – without any benchmarks, it is clear that the GeForce will outperform the new Quadro series, most of the time.

But NVIDIA isn’t just going to stop there. Of course, they have optimised the Fermi cards for things such as Autodesk AutoCAD. According to NVIDIA, the Quardo 2000 performs at 1.5 the speed for geometry performance (rendering polygons) compared to the previous Quadro generation, and is optimised for AutoCAD and DCC applications.

Choices, choices

If you’re a gamer, you should probably stay on the GeForce series. Much more graphics performance, and also much more affordable for day-to-day gaming. Make sure you get a case with good air flow, though. These beasts, without regular care, may turn your tower into a furnace. Especially if you plan on getting a GTX 480, which has a maximum power consumption of 250 W!

For a CAD studio or a research company, though, I would say the Quadro can be a much better choice. You will find most of the Quadro users are more likely in your field, and you may encounter problems that they already have reported and solved previously. In addition, the Quadro series are optimised and catered for professional use. Many 3D applications are likely to be run at a stable framerate, less crashing, etc. And you will get support units that are familiar with your situation as well. All in all, go for Quadro if you belong to the professional community.

That’s all, folks!

In the mean time, enjoy a NVIDIA Graphics Technology Conference demo with their flagship, Quadro 6000!

The Quadro 2000 ($599 MSRP, USD) and Quadro 600 ($199 MSRP, USD) are available from leading global workstation manufacturers, including Dell,HP and Lenovo, as well as authorized distribution partners including: PNY Technologies in North America and Europe, ELSA in Japan, and Leadtekin Asia Pacific.

Source: NVIDIA

In a recent post I mentioned the Nokia N900 running a WebGL Demo rendering 3D models in real-time. Did you hear that the phone was running Firefox? Yes, after Opera moved to the mobile, Firefox also jumped into the mobile market.

Firefox is not just another new kid on the block. It has been around since November 2004. Before that, there was Netscape. The good old days. Last time, Mozilla released a Firefox Home for iPhone. This is their next move into the smartphone world.

Take a look at Firefox 4.0 Beta for mobile splash page.

Firefox Addons on the Mobile

Just about anyone I know use Firefox (and love Firefox) because of the add-ons that are available. Forecastfox, DownloadStatusBar, FireFTP, Firebug – just to name a few. Naturally, they already have over 100 mobile add-ons available! This is a must-look for anyone interested in running Firefox in their smartphones.

Smartphone Browsing

Following its preceding browsers, Firefox Mobile utilizes pinch-to-zoom and double-tapping to zoom in and out, just like any other browser on a smartphone. Anyone can quickly jump into it and learn it in seconds. It supports smart tabbing for window management, and a password manager. No more awkward typing on the small on-screen keyboard while trying to prevent others from reading your password! Of course, all of these can be synchronized, via Firefox Sync.

What phones are currently supported?

According to their platform support page, currently the stable platforms are:

Maemo:

• Nokia N900

Android:

• HTC Desire
• HTC EVO 4G
• HTC Google Nexus One
• Motorola Droid 2

We expect more android phones should catch up very soon. Why not download Firefox and have a go?

Take your Firefox anywhere. Firefox 4 Beta 1 for Android and Maemo is built on the same technology platform as Firefox 4 for desktop computers, just optimized for browsing on a mobile device. Check out the new and improved features, known issues and frequently asked questions. As always, you’re encouraged to provide suggestions to improve Firefox for mobile or file a bug in Bugzilla. If you need help, visit the Firefox Mobile Support Forum.

Source: Mozilla Blog.

In December 2009, the Khronos Group published a working draft called WebGL. It’s based on the features of OpenGL ES 2.0 – if you have a smartphone like an Android phone, or an iPhone, you are already running one – the embedded systems OpenGL standard. For the web, The WebGL is intended to provide a common design for developers – and users – to enjoy immersive virtual experiences, called Virtual Reality, or simply 3D. This article is here to give you a quick look at WebGL.

What is WebGL?

With WebGL and 3D CSS, developers can create modern games, impressive photo galleries, 3D data visualizations, virtual environments, and whatever else they can dream up. (Source: Chromium Blog)

Google said it best. WebGL is a open standard that anyone can adapt into modern browsers, or even embedded browsers. It also means you don’t have to install games anymore. Click on a link and open up the browser – the game loads itself! It shares the similar fashion like Adobe Flash, except you don’t have to worry about downloading any extensions or plugins.

The goal is simply to enable 3D applications on the web, without any friction: the less clicks, the better. Imagine if you are redirected to a portfolio, only to find out that you have to install yet another plugin before you can see it? WebGL’s open standard aims to reduce that issue.

Otherwise, you can think of it as a new enjoyable technological advancement. Heck, someone even made Quake 2 running on the browser. But wait! You need to have a WebGL-enabled browser first.

Didn’t you tell me that I didn’t need to download yet another plugin?

Yes, yes I did. But patience, young jedi. The WebGL standard is not mature. It’s not even one-year-old! So far, only the latest builds of modern browsers support it, and you will have to enable it manually first. But that’s only for now.

In the future, every major browser will support it.

Okay, so how do I enable WebGL on my browser?

There is a comprehensive guide at Learning WebGL, and I will just briefly touch on it below.

Windows / Linux: Download either Firefox 4.0 Beta, or the latest Google Chrome. Then:

Firefox: type in

about:config

in the address bar. Then, filter for

webgl.enabled_for_all_sites

and set it to True. That’s it!

Chrome:

Simply add a command-line argument in your shortcut, like:

.../chrome.exe --enable-webgl

And that’s all you have to do. For windows, that will be in the Shortcut Properties. For Linux, that will be your target options.

Mac: Just download the nightly build of WebKit!

I’ve done it. What do I get?

Fantastic. You get a map from XKCD, for a good overview of the internet (just teasing). Or, choose one (or more!) of the following as your reward:

• The Chromium Projects have several stunning implementations of some virtual worlds.
• Have look at World of WebGL, where the title image was captured from.
• Why not play a few games on Play WebGL Game? That’s the same place that has the Quake 2 playable demo.
• A game of mini-golf may satisfy your boredom. It has physics!

And that’s just some of the demos I came across and found interesting. There are many more you may discover yet.

Future of 3D on the Web

We’ve come this far to share with you what WebGL can potentially do, with lively fishes and bouncing golf balls. But what is this all really about? Why should you care?

Having 3D environments on the web is very exciting indeed. Imagine a ship sailing a full-speed in a thunder storm, drowned by heavy rain. Or a wild grassland with a never-ending horizon, and a rising sun. Or maybe your just wanted some cool gadgets for your Firefox for debugging your program. It can be anything. Whatever you can dream up.

We may see a full-fledged commercial game, even.

As time goes on, this technology will become common for the major browsers: IE (ugh), Firefox, Chrome, Sarafi, Opera, you name it; and anyone can develop on it, set up a website, and share the link to everyone else. The experience can be presenting, interactive, or even immersive. The possibilities is endless, and sky is the limit.

In the mean time, while it is still maturing, why not watch a WebGL Demo running on a Nokia N900. Mobile phones is also part of the web, after all.