Santa Monica, CA – September 19, 2014 – NVIDIA® announced that the Red Bull Battle Grounds Grand Finals taking place this weekend in Washington, D.C., will be powered by NVIDIA’s groundbreaking gaming technology. The final stop in the five-month, six-tournament series featuring Blizzard Entertainment’s award winning real-time strategy game StarCraft® II, the eight elite competing professional players, will battle on high-end GPUs based on the Maxwell chip architecture, delivering unmatched performance, major new graphics capabilities, and twice the energy efficiency of the previous generation.
The Red Bull Battle Grounds Grand Finals will be the first tournament utilizing NVIDIA’s groundbreaking Maxwell architecture. Maxwell gives eSports players the competitive edge through clearer, sharper graphics capabilities and unparalleled speed. Maxwell architecture utilizes Voxel Global Illumination (VXGI), an NVIDIA invention making it possible to model light sources, creating a near-real gaming environment. It also introduces new anti-aliasing and super-resolution technologies to deliver near-4K fidelity on 1080p displays. Maxwell’s energy-efficient design is unmatched to anything else on the market.
Global Illumination
Realistic lighting is one of the last frontiers in video games. Simulating both direct and indirect lighting (like reflections) has to date been too computationally demanding for GPUs beyond those available to professionals, forcing game developers to utilize lighting tricks that compromise scene realism.
Maxwell overcomes these limitations, combining the performance and programmability required to model both direct and indirect light sources. It does so by deploying a new NVIDIA technique called VXGI, a mathematical algorithm that uses a fast volumetric renderer to accurately depict specular and diffuse reflections. VXGI will be added to GameWorks, the world’s largest game graphics library, so developers can build future games with rich, natural lighting and breathtaking realism.
Multi-Frame Anti-Aliasing
Until now, most gamers have had to make compromises between performance and image quality. Increasing anti-aliasing makes games look more realistic, but the cost in performance can make the game unplayable.
Attendees at Red Bull Battle Grounds Grand Finals will also have the opportunity to interact with cutting edge G-SYNC™ technology, by visiting the NVIDIA booth on site at the Lincoln Theatre. Delivering smoother, faster gaming with virtually no tearing and faster response times, NVIDIA G-SYNC eliminates tearing and greatly reduces lag and stutter. Red Bull Battle Grounds attendees can experience this latest gaming innovation throughout the tournament weekend.
EVENT DETAILS
September 20th -21st, 2014
The Lincoln Theatre
1215 U Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20009
Doors open at 10AM EST both days
The entirety of Red Bull Battle Grounds Grand Finals will be livestreamed, giving fans from around the globe – and those at home intrigued by eSports – the ability to take part in this WCS sanctioned event. Visit http://battlegrounds.redbull.com to tune into the livestream broadcast from 11AM EST each day of the tournament.
Visit http://battlegrounds.redbull.com for additional details, and for many more exciting programs and announcements from Red Bull eSports. Follow @redbullESPORTS on Twitter, #battlegrounds
