GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE — SAN FRANCISCO, CA — MARCH 7th, 2005 — NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors, today announced the immediate availability of the NVIDIA Developer Toolkit, a comprehensive suite of cutting-edge content creation, code integration, performance analysis, and educational resources for game developers. Designed to make it easier for game developers to take advantage of the latest advancements in graphics hardware technologies, the NVIDIA Developer Toolkit can be downloaded for free at http://developer.nvidia.com.
The Company also announced the arrival of ‘GPU Gems 2: Programming Techniques for High-Performance Graphics and General-Purpose Computation,’ the sequel to one of the definitive source books for programming tips and techniques. Published by Addison-Wesley and written by experts in real-time graphics programming, ‘GPU Gems 2’ provides programmers with tips and techniques for creating advanced visual effects, as well as valuable development strategies for managing complex scenes leveraging the power and feature set of today’s graphics processing units (GPUs). The hardcover, 880-page book carries a suggested retail price of £42.99 and is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Addison-Wesley Web sites.
“Providing game developers with the tools they need to push the limits on NVIDIA GPUs is a long-term commitment, and critical strategy for NVIDIA,” said Mark Daly, vice president of content development at NVIDIA. “With the NVIDIA Developer Toolkit, developers are empowered to take advantage of key new features in today’s GPUs, such as Shader Model 3.0, to further advance their craft.”
The NVIDIA Developer Toolkit combines updated versions of the Company’s award-winning tools for game developers, such as NVPerfHUD, an advanced performance analysis tool for Microsoft® DirectX® 9-based applications. According to Remy Saville, graphics programmer at Relic Entertainment, “NVPerfHUD has way more features than I expected… blew me away!”
Tools and resources featured in the NVIDIA Developer Toolkit include:
· NVIDIA SDK 9.0, a collection of hundreds of code samples, effects, plug-ins, and whitepapers for developers working with latest-generation NVIDIA GPUs;
· NVPerfHUD 3, an advanced performance analysis tool for Microsoft DirectX 9-based applications to provide developers with the ability to freeze applications and get detailed information about the graphics pipeline for each scene;
· NVShaderPerf, a performance analysis tool that delivers shader performance metrics for Microsoft DirectX and OpenGL® applications across NVIDIA GPUs;
· FX Composer 1.6, an integrated development environment for creating, debugging and tuning high performance shaders. Real-time preview and optimisation features make it easy for programmers and artists to create unique visual effects, such as those enabled by Shader Model 3.0.
