That firecracker CEO of Nvidia, Jen-Hsun Huang, has revealed that Nvidia will be putting out an “Ion 2″ platform using VIA Nano processors instead of Intel’s Atoms. The pairing isn’t surprising, considering that the Nano processors are supposed to be quite as capable as Atoms, and Nvidia’s relationship with Intel right now isn’t exactly all fun and games. → Read More
We may see Lenovo netbooks packing NVIDIA and VIA chips pretty soon here. Digitimes is reporting that “Lenovo plans to launch 11.6-inch and 12.1-inch netbooks combining Intel’s Atom processor and Nvidia’s Ion platform in the second quarter of this year.” → Read More
These jokers will never get along. They’re in court at the moment, arguing over whether an agreement made in 2004 applies today. Intel says that Nvidia is not licensed to create chipsets for Nehalem-based Intel products. Nvidia says that actually, they are licensed. And now it’s down to the lawyers to doubletalk it out. → Read More
Nvidia has announced that it plans to power $99 mobile internet devices with its Tegra 600 series chips, perhaps as early as this summer. What’s a mobile internet device (MID)? Well, it’s a gadget that fits somewhere in between a smartphone and a netbook. It’s compact and internet-enabled, but it can’t quite fit in your pocket or make phone calls. It’s primarily intended for web surfing and watching videos over a WiFi or 3G connection. According to VentureBeat, Nvidia is touting both the long battery life and the HD video capabilities of these Tegra-based devices. General Manager Michael Rayfield says they can go for days without a recharge and they support 1080p HD video playback, which is the high end of what you’ll find streaming online. Nvidia plans to use both Windows CE and Android to power its cheap MIDs (although it appears as though the Windows CE-based versions will come first, with Android-based devices a more distant prospect). The $99 Tegra-based device is just the low-end of a product line that includes a $299 device (that also runs on an Intel Atom processor) and a $599 device that has more of the functionality you’d find in a regular laptop. Part of me wonders whether Nvidia is trying to fill a niche that doesn’t really exist. If I want to surf the web, my smartphone does just fine – and I’m already paying a monthly data plan for it anyway (I certainly don’t need to pay for two). As for video, I’ll stick with my laptop since it can play DVDs, which are still the most reliable way to watch TV shows and movies. It also doesn’t help that Nvidia plans to run Windows CE (really…Windows CE?). Android sounds more promising, though, especially with its greater potential to power netbooks and an array of smartphones all at the same time. → Read More
While Intel is working on taking on the GPU sector (and may just have a deal with Sony to do it), its main rival, Nvidia, is looking to get into the x86 processor business. The video hardware giant is assembling a team from scratch to make a competitor to the Intel and AMD’s CPUs — but doesn’t seem to care that the technology is proprietary and must be licensed from the very companies they’re trying to overthrow. → Read More
In an interview with Laptop Magazine, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang talks about the current state of netbooks, his company’s new Ion platform, rumors about Intel’s supposed strong-arming of device manufacturers, and other netbook and MID platforms from AMD, VIA, along with the probability behind netbooks powered by NVIDIA’s own Tegra platform. → Read More
Interesting bit of speculation surrounding the Mac Mini. Tom’s Hardware, one of the oldest, bestest hardware-focused sites out there, says that the upcoming Mac Mini speed bump will feature Nvidia’s new Ion platform. Among other things, that can lead to an even smaller Mac Mini. → Read More
Everyone was expecting a Mini refresh at MacWorld, and although the 17-inch MBP is a sweet setup, the Mini has been one of Apple’s more neglected products and people thought it was time. Well, they were sort of right. The new Minis are going to be coming out a little later this year, and they’ll be sporting the NVIDIA Ion platform, which is a combination of the 9400M video solution with Intel’s dual-core low-power processor, the Atom 330, on a really tiny mobo — 12 square inches. → Read More
Man oh man! You show me a business that isn’t taking a hit in this economy, and I’ll show you (probably) a corporation guilty of price fixing and underhanded dealings. If AMD is feeling the hurt, laying off people left and right, at least they can be comforted by the fact that NVIDIA just announced that quarterly revenues will be down “40 to 50 percent” over the same quarter last year. → Read More
NVIDIA’s ice-cream sandwich-looking dual-GPU answer to AMD’s dual-GPU 4870 X2 doesn’t excel, but doesn’t disappoint, either. Although the GeForce GTX 280 has recently surpassed the 4870 in performance with its new drivers, the architecture of the GTX 295 limits the capabilities and makes it just barely eke ahead of AMD, and even then it’s with a price premium. At $500 it’s a bit more expensive than its competitor, but a little too close for comfort with its own brethren which it outperforms handily. The article linked is a limited preview, and next month there will likely be better drivers and more extensive testing, so this could all change drastically, but that’s not likely — still, although the 295 may not be a huge step forward, it may be a better card for certain games or setups, so wait until the full verdict is in before spending all your Hannukah money. → Read More
Last week the Inquirer asserted that NVIDIA had knowingly put faulty moble GPUs into the new MacBook Pros — a serious allegation. The 9600M the Inquirer’s well-informed friends examined had the same high-lead solder that failed in so many other laptops. NVIDIA hit back today, saying that although they had promised a “new materials set,” what they meant was that the solder would be better, if not a different compound. So the new solder bumps are high-lead but are just “more robust” and hopefully won’t fail quite so easily. Well, we will soon find out as MBPs begin to drop like flies… or not. → Read More
In what has become pretty much a standard move by graphics card makers, NVIDIA has revealed that its new fastest card will be… two of its old fastest cards glued together. It should be said that this is far from an ineffective approach: the 9800GX2 annihilated everything when it came out last year and the 4870X2 is the king of the hill right now on the price/performance bit. The GTX295 will probably cost… eh, I’m going to say $600 at the start, which is pretty reasonable for two 55nm GPUs, 480 stream processors, and nearly two gigs of high-speed DDR3 RAM. My only concern is that the GTX295 looks so much like an ice cream sandwich that someone might chip a tooth one of these days. Probably at CES in January, when we’ll see this thing. → Read More
AMD announced recently that they are releasing the next version of their Catalyst driver, 8.12. It’s currently available for download from their site. The new version of the driver includes speed increases for some of the most popular games, along with improved video transcoding and filters. On the other side of things, Nvidia’s new 180.84 beta drivers have been released in response to issues with GTA IV performance, and while some users are reporting up to an up to 10 FPS frame rate improvement, most are reporting no change at all. In some cases, users have been reporting that the frame rate has actually even dropped, or that the new drivers have decreased stability. Given the fact that the drivers are still very much in beta, it’s probably best to skip them for now. [via Tom's Hardware] → Read More
This is exactly what I feared might happen when I heard Apple was moving to a full NVIDIA solution, complete with the faulty parts that caused so many other mobile setups to croak. A very thorough article at the Inquirer, based on analysis of a new MacBook Pro teardown by parties who wish to remain anonymous, shows that the solder bumps used in at least their test MBP are in fact the infamous high-lead solder that overheated and cracked without fail. An NVIDIA spokesperson has stated that the 9600s in MBPs use the new eutectic solder, but the tests show otherwise. There are a number of explanations for the bad solder being in the new 9600s, but none of them are good for NVIDIA or Apple. There’s no way to tell if your MBP has the bad solder, but if it starts overheating and freaking out like crazy, be assured it isn’t your fault. → Read More
The Achilles heal of Intel Atom powered netbooks/nettops is that the graphic power sucks. Hopefully, that will change with an on-motherboard GeForce GPU 9400M. That graphics chip is the same found in Apple’s latest MacBooks and should help improve the lackluster Intel Atom’s graphic performance. → Read More
The video card business pendulum has had its swing into AMD territory, but bit by bit NVIDIA is making its comeback after an embarrassing early last generation. This time it’s not more frames per second, but favorable alliances which are gaining ground for the graphics giant: EA and 2K Games (creators of Bioshock) have both agreed to use NVIDIA’s PhysX technology to drive their physics engines in upcoming games. Okay, so some big companies licensed some technology. What does that mean for you and me, who are thinking how to get the most gaming performance out of our $150 or whatever? Well, combined with recent performance increases and AMD insolvency, it means buy GeForce. Physics simulation is becoming so standard a feature in games that developers will be relying on hybrid technology like PhysX to make sure their games are running as smoothly as possible. AMD may leapfrog them later, as they did with the 4870, but that’s speculation at this point and what we can say with near certainty is that Bioshock 2 and the next Crysis are going to run best on a GeForce-based system. → Read More
Ah, graphics. One of the present-day netbook’s Achilles’ heels. While NVIDIA struck a deal earlier this year with VIA to work on its netbook-friendly “Nano” processors, it appears that the graphics giant is employing a wait-and-see position towards the rest of the netbook market in general. NVIDIA CFO Marv Burkett said at a recent technology conference, "We’re not saying we’re not interested; it’s a matter of how the market will evolve." That statement strikes me as a bit odd, since NVIDIA’s increased participation in the netbook market would likely be a catalyst in actually helping the market evolve. → Read More
I’ve been trumpeting Radeon superiority in this video card generation for months, but it seems that the seesaw is tipping the other way now and NVIDIA is back on their game. Doubtless the cost-for-performance of the 48xx series early on caused NVIDIA to panic and drop prices, but now that the platforms have matured a little bit, drivers have been updated, and new games are being tested, it seems that GeForce is once again taking the lead. I’ve just read two head-to-head reviews of a GTX 260 and Radeon 4870, one at DriverHeaven and one at Bjorn3d, that suggest that at the enthusiast level (~$300), the GTX 260 has as much as 10-15% performance lead across the board. That’s huge, and what with PhysX and CUDA ascending, I think I know what my next card will be. [via Rage3D] → Read More
I think you have to be a real hardware geek to find this stuff funny, so it’s no surprise that it made me smile. Although it’s not exactly credited, it’s pretty clear that this is a low-key effort by AMD to discredit NVIDIA — the cartoon casts a bediapered dinosaur as NVIDIA’s troubled last generation of video cards and makes fun of their limited and faulty hardware. Whether it’s “official” or not is hard to say, but it’s fun no matter what. [via HardOCP] → Read More
Embedded and generally small systems are becoming a more serious market force every day, not just as mobile phones become more powerful, but media players, netbooks, and miscellaneous stuff like the Pandora. Intel’s Atom seems to be the star of the show right now due to their clout, but VIA has an extremely competitive product, other smaller companies do as well, and now NVIDIA is ready to jump into the game as a platform provider. It runs at 700MHz or 800MHz and has an integrated GeForce core and hardware video decoder, both of which would be very useful for a handheld media player. They demonstrated a prototype in an NVIDIA mobile a few months ago, but starting in mid-2009 the Tegra “system-on-a-chip” will probably start popping up all over the place. I’m guessing it was meant to launch earlier and with more hardware, but NVIDIA’s recent troubles may have delayed that. → Read More
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