Nvidia releases new tech demo to show off Kepler-based GPUs

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Ten years ago Nvidia released Dawn , a GeForce FX tech demo featuring a fairy gymnast as seen through the tunnel vision of someone who's been eating unidentified fungi. It was impressive, but in the past ten years extreme use of bloom and depth of field has become less novel. Today, Nvidia released "A New Dawn," an updated demo (announced last month) which shows off the power of Kepler-based GPUs.

To deal with the challenge of anti-aliasing 40,000 strands, A New Dawn uses "a special hair smoothing shader that inspects each strand and blurs them in the combing direction." According to last month's post, "the final result looks soft and silky, as if she just jumped out of the shower after an extensive conditioner routine." That is seriously extensive conditioning.

The demonstration will run on a 2.5GHz dual-core processor with a GTX 670 or higher. The download link, a complete list of upgrades, and the full system specs can be found in Nvidia's post .

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Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.