New Hardware toy!
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So I got my hands on an Nvidia Shield just this morning. An amazing device so far, and has way more power than any Android device I've seen yet. Valve even fully ported Half Life 2 and Portal to run on it. I'll probably post a full review of the device when I've got some hours on it, but for now, I'm in love.
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How's the streaming from a compatible nVidia graphics card?
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I would have gotten it for the streaming, but you can't run anything else on the computer at the same time, which defeats the purpose.
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Awesome. I am really interested to hear how you like it.
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What games do you have on it?
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Well I've already spent some time playing with and testing it. The streaming feature is absolutely mind blowing, so long as you have a dual band router. I've had the chance to use one before, and it was great, but without that 5 Ghz connection, it drops connection and has screen artifacting, even two feet away from the router. I'm only running a GTX 660 SC, but for the 720P streaming I can get a smooth 90 FPS on ultra settings, so it works quite well. As far as the Android end, it works beautifully. Very fast, very smooth. I'll post more updates
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I've been tempted to get one. Just looks like fun.
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Absolutely worth it, if you have money to spare. I wouldn't recommend buying one as an Android device. It's a PC peripheral, basically, a really expensive one that a few other things. Works extremely well as a media device, as you can grab an HDMI to HDMI Mini cable, and hook it up to your TV, and it currently only outputs in 1080P, but it's been promised we'll get all the way up to 4K for media playback soon. It also (again, dual band router needed) effectively replaces any game console you could want via the PC streaming. You can hook it up to the TV, grab a Bluetooth Controller or a mouse and keyboard, and play your PC in all of their hyper detailed glory, making any console game look like a sad mobile version. The only drawback is that they're going to release a SHIELD 2 at some point in the next while, so it almost defeats the purpose of this. The next one is supposed to have a 1080P screen, a better controller, 4GB of RAM, and a Tegra K1 Processor (The one based off of the TITAN SuperComputer), which is supposed to be faster than most last Gen desktop CPU's under the $500 mark. Absolutely crazy power for a handheld, but the current SHIELD is still the most powerful mobile device.
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@StrongBad Nothing really so far, just what my PC can stream, and Dead Trigger 2 (Very impressive title). I'm planning on picking up Portal, Half Life 2, and Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, 3, Vice City, and San Andreas for it soon.
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Tegra K1 isn't even as fast as some of the $100 hobby boards. It's a nice proc but it is one generation old in ARM terms and only half the core count of their higher end processors and still part of their 32bit platform. It's the A15 already surpassed by the A17. The A5x family is the much more powerful 64bit AArch64 platform.
It's nice but nowhere close to a mid end desktop processor.
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When they talk about the Titan, they are saying that this has a Kepler-based GPU. This is an APU with CPU and GPU merged like low end AMD desktop models.
All the are saying is that it is a low power CPU with a nice GPU sharing the silicon.
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My bad, I didn't mention that it's a special K1 with a separate GPU on it's own chip for the Shield 2. Probably should have specified
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@Mike-Ralston said:
My bad, I didn't mention that it's a special K1 with a separate GPU on it's own chip for the Shield 2. Probably should have specified
My point was that it's not a very fast processor. Nothing compared to an Intel i3 for example. The GPU is impressive but a standard graphics card would spank it too. It's amazing for a handheld. But would be a very low end desktop.
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Have you seen the specifications on it? On paper, it's faster than an i5 2540M.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
Have you seen the specifications on it? On paper, it's faster than an i5 2540M.
On paper it is faster in what way than an i5? It's a fraction of the CPU power.
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Talk of K1 in servers. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2153560/nvidias-tegra-k1-chip-might-wind-up-in-servers.html
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@Nic said:
I would have gotten it for the streaming, but you can't run anything else on the computer at the same time, which defeats the purpose.
Now you can stream games from outside your home network, with relatively little lag, and there's only room for improvement.
@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston said:
Have you seen the specifications on it? On paper, it's faster than an i5 2540M.
On paper it is faster in what way than an i5? It's a fraction of the CPU power.
The SHIELD 2 will be running an overclocked, unlocked version of the K1 chip. The K1 they're using is not even a stock K1, or even a boosted K1. It's one developed specially for this platform that will be able to run a lot of PC titles natively, as well as mobile emulation of possibly last gen Game Consoles like the Xbox 360. The stock K1 can preform all the necessary operations that are required to drive a car, all by itself, and it does it better than Google's several hundred pounds of hardware they've been using. This is the single beefiest mobile processor in existence, and it's just gonna get better.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
@Nic said:
I would have gotten it for the streaming, but you can't run anything else on the computer at the same time, which defeats the purpose.
Now you can stream games from outside your home network, with relatively little lag, and there's only room for improvement.
@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston said:
Have you seen the specifications on it? On paper, it's faster than an i5 2540M.
On paper it is faster in what way than an i5? It's a fraction of the CPU power.
The SHIELD 2 will be running an overclocked, unlocked version of the K1 chip. The K1 they're using is not even a stock K1, or even a boosted K1. It's one developed specially for this platform that will be able to run a lot of PC titles natively, as well as mobile emulation of possibly last gen Game Consoles like the Xbox 360. The stock K1 can preform all the necessary operations that are required to drive a car, all by itself, and it does it better than Google's several hundred pounds of hardware they've been using. This is the single beefiest mobile processor in existence, and it's just gonna get better.
PC titles natively? How can that be. It's not PC architecture. Do you have a link? Something is fishy with this info. The K1 isn't even built on the top platform from ARM. It's fourth down on the list.
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Well, I'm currently sitting here playing Half Life 2 Natively. It looks better than it if were on highest setting on a PC, full particle effects and such. No other mobile device can do that.
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Even within the 32bit ARM world, the K1 is not up to spec with the Mediatek MT6595 which uses eight A17 cores rather than four A15 cores. Not quite the clock speed if the K1 but higher per thread performance and double the thread count. Likely 50%-80% greater performance.