Sunday 24 February 2013

Nvidia release GTX Titan Graphics card

Nvidia GTX Titan
Nvidia have announced the launch of a new high end graphics card for gamers, The GTX Titan.

I features a single Kepler class GPU with 6GB of DDR5 RAM and 2,688 CUDA cores (!!!)

Pricing is expected to be around 800 pounds so it's not cheap but it only draws 250W of power so it could possibly be used in a Mac Pro (maybe in the the new Mac Pro? Hmmmmm)


Using the power of the CUDA cores with software that can take advantage of them should give excellent performance. Adobe CS6 uses CUDA for it's Mercury playback engine so this would be an great card for use in an Adobe system and Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve would also make good use of the power of this card.

If one card is not powerful enough for you the GTX Titan can even be installed in 2 or 3 way SLI, multiplying the performance even further.

This truly is a groundbreaking card and for the moment holds the crown of the worlds most powerful GPU.

Although the price may seem high for a consumer grade card it is a lot cheaper than most workstation class cards with performance that would run rings around most of them.


I don't have the money to get one and test it but there are various sites benchmarking it in PC's.

More info from Nvidia here

Friday 22 February 2013

How to change the primary display in OSX

System preferences - Display - Arrangement
I only recently found out about this and it's driven me crazy in the past so I thought I would share it.
I know a lot of you will be saying "Well, Duh!" but if you don't know, you don't know :-)
Hopefully this will help someone else.

If you connect a second or third monitor to your Mac occasionally the "Primary" monitor (ie the one with the toolbar and the dock) isn't on the display that you wanted. I have usually fixed this in the past by plugging and unplugging monitors until I got what I wanted :-)

However, the right way to do it is this:

Go to System Preferences,
Open "Displays"
Select the "Arrangement" tab (this won't be there unless you have at least two monitors connected)
If you look at the image above you can see the arrangement menu.
You can drag the blue boxes to match the physical position of your monitors, but you can also drag the white line that you see at the top of the box to the monitor that you would like to be the "primary" monitor.

Simple isn't it?

I've been using Macs for years and I never knew. Doh!! :-)

Monday 4 February 2013

PowerPoint book published for Kindle


I have finally got around to publishing "The PowerPoint Declaration" which I co-wrote with David McFetridge last year.

It is available as a downloadable book for Kindle on the Amazon store here

It's not a book about about how to use PowerPoint but about how you can make better use of any presentation software to deliver your message in an interesting and effective way.

It's written in an easy to read and entertaining style and is set out as a series of articles so you can dip in and out of it as you wish.

If you ever have to give presentations you should take a look, there are some very useful tips to make your life easier and your presentations more effective.

I'd love to know what you think, let me know in the comments.