'A New Dawn' video reimagines Nvidia's old fairy on new hardware

Nvidia's "A New Dawn" a video was released today alongside a downloadable demo that allows users to download the fairy for themselves.

"A New Dawn," a video from Nvidia showcasing the chipmaker's graphics processing prowess, debuted today alongside a downloadable demo that allows users with sufficient graphical muscle to render Dawn on their PC.

"A New Dawn" is a sequel to a similar video simply called "Dawn" that Nvidia created in 2002. Both videos star the same titular fairy rendered in real time, and both are intended as tech demos of the company's latest technology. The contrast between the two shows a decade of remarkable progress.

In 2002, Dawn's head included 1,700 strands of static hair in an environment with 7,000 triangles at a resolution of 1024 x 768. A decade later, Dawn features 40,000 individual strands of tessellated, physically animated hair in an environment featuring 4 million triangles at a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

Potential renderers looking to run the demo, which allows users to manipulate the camera and tweak visual effects like the time of day, will need to meet the following minimum requirements.

• GPU: GTX 670 or 680 (GTX 670 SLI, GTX 680 SLI, or GTX 690 recommended for Ultra mode)
• CPU: 2.5GHz Dual-Core or higher
• System Memory: 4GB
• Disk Space: 2GB
• Operating System: Windows 7 or Windows Vista

You can watch "A New Dawn" in all her glowing nuance below.