As part of its India launch roadshow for its new gaming GPU, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti,
Nvidia organised an event at Xtreme Gaming eSports Stadium in New Delhi on Friday. Also present was GeForce Business Head at Nvidia South Asia, Nikhil Kohli, who we had a chance to speak with.
Speaking about the PC gaming scene in India, Kohli said the rate of growth of the Indian PC gaming in the past two years has been exponential. The Indian gaming scene is fast becoming more social than before, boosted by online gaming and multiplayer games, apart from gaming parlours. Gaming communities are also being built. According to Kohli, the Indian PC gaming market is currently made up of roughly 14 million gamers.
When asked about Nvidia's definite absence from the console gaming segment (with both next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony featuring AMD graphics), Kohli said Nvidia is currently focussing on the PC gaming market, which is still growing rapidly globally.
We also asked Kohli about the foray of the PC into the living room, with
SteamOS and Steam box clients, and Nvidia's plans for the platform. He said he's personally very excited about the development, and that Nvidia is working closely with Valve, and certainly aims to get in on the market, though right now, it was too early to comment on the future form of the partner hardware, with the platform still in early stages of development.
Nikhil Kohli, GeForce Business Head, Nvidia South Asia
Asked about the essential difference to consumers between Nvidia and AMD cards, Kohli said if gamers want to play a game the way it was envisioned to be played by the game's developers, they have to choose Nvidia, as the company has several proprietary graphics technologies (such as PhysX, TXAA, HBAO+) widely used for game development, and that the company in many cases worked closely with the game developers. He added that Nvidia also is more focussed on interacting with the PC gaming communities across the world, and that it had close relationships with its channel and manufacturing partners.
Coming to the exciting new convergence device, the Nvidia Shield, and tentative dates for its India availability (it is currently only available in Hong Kong and the US), Kohli said the company was very happy with the feedback it has been getting about the Shield, but that for right now, no India launch timelines could be disclosed.
At the event, the 4K display capabilities and overclocking potential of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti was showcased to media, with a separate event to introduce the new GPU to gamers.
An overclocked GeForce GTX 780 Ti running in a liquid nitrogen cooling setup.
Nvidia calls the GeForce GTX 780 Ti the new fastest single GPU card in the world, supposedly featuring an 'advanced, low-thermal-density design,' and 25 percent more cores than the GTX 780. This, coupled with the faster 7Gpbs memory clock, makes the GTX 780 Ti 21 percent faster on average than the GTX780.
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti GPU is available in stores and will be available online, from partners ASUS, Zotac, Galaxy, and MSI, with pricing for the variants to start at Rs. 59,000. A limited time launch offer includes a free copy of Batman: Arkham Origins, or Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag or Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist.
We spoke to Kohli about the apparent current limited availability of the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, and he said that most of the initial units had been pre-booked, but that the card should be widely available soon, with new units being shipped in.
The company also announced updates to its GeForce Experience 1.8 software, with the new Optimal Playable Setting functionality, and a number of ShadowPlay updates that make it easier to record gameplay, apart from the new multi-source audio recording feature. Describing the automatic Optimal Playable Setting feature, Nvidia said it is capable of 'delivering the power of a PC with the simplicity of a console.'