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Nvidia Posts Photo of Working Fermi Card

Paul Lilly — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:50:40 -0600

Perhaps looking to steal a bit of thunder from AMD's awesome HD 5970 videocard, Nvidia PR guy Brian Burke today posted a picture of the green team's upcoming Fermi-based graphics card. Isn't marketing fun?

On his Twitter account, Burke referred to the Fermi card as a GeForce 100, which he said is the first GeForce GPU based on the new architecture. A screenshot in the background shows the videocard running the Unigine Heaven DirectX 11 benchmark.

That's all that was said (and shown), but the bigger message is the unspoken one that says, "Hey, we're still here, and we're poised to kick AMD's tail." No one from Nvidia actually said that, mind you, but they might as well have if they're going to post a pic of their upcoming graphics card when the talk of the town is centered around AMD's flagship GPU.

Image Credit: Brian Burke, Nvidia

Fermi Delay Unlikely to Impact Nvidia's Short-Term Sales

Paul Lilly — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:25:05 -0600

Like everyone else, we're chomping at the bit to see what Nvidia's next-gen Fermi graphics chipset (GT300) brings to the table, so we're a little bummed it's been pushed back until Q1 2010. The delayed launch, however, isn't expected to negatively impact Nvidia's sales for the remainder of 2009, DigiTimes reports.

When Fermi does ship, Nvidia will position the GPU into three different product lines, including the GeForce brand, Quadro, and Tesla, according to company CEO Jen-Husn Huang.

While the delay is unlikely to hurt Nvidia's bottom line, that could change if Fermi gets pushed back a second time, some analysts warn. They say Nvidia could start to lose some of its market share should Fermi arrive in April 2010, as AMD will in all likelihood have already started shipping its entry-level Radeon HD 5600 and 5300 GPUs.

Image Credit: Nvidia

AMD GPU Shortage Causing Product Delays amongst PC Vendors

Pulkit Chandna — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:16:49 -0600

An ongoing shortage of AMD GPUs has forced PC vendors to delay their shipments by about two months to the first quarter of 2010, claimed a Digitimes report, citing unnamed sources at PC vendors. Both the 40nm ATI Radeon HD 5000 series and 55nm ATI Radeon HD 4000 series GPUs are said to be in short supply.

The shortage of the 40nm ATI Radeon HD 5000 series is being blamed on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's inability to keep pace with the demand due to low yields. On the other hand, the dearth of 55nm GPUs is due to the fact that they no longer figure prominently in AMD’s plans.

The report further claims that AMD has delayed the shipment of “its ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series (Manhattan) GPUs for notebooks to the first quarter of 2010 from the originally planned fourth quarter of 2009.”

Image Credit: Blogys

Intel Quietly Promoting Larrabee in China

Paul Lilly — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:00:44 -0600

Intel hopes to eventually make a thunderous entrance in the discrete graphics market with its upcoming GPGPU chip codenamed Larrabee, and to do that, the company needs to line up some chip partners willing to jump on board. Intel CEO Paul Otellini set out to do that recently, talking privately to several China-based videocard makers.

According to what un-named sources have been whispering in DigiTimes' ear, Intel plans to offer preferential pricing for just the GPU by itself, as well as when bundled with other Intel products. This is a similar strategy to what Intel has been doing with its Atom platform, and it remains to be seen how many graphics partners will warm to Larrabee in this manner.

As it stands, some first-tier graphics card vendors are a bit leary about Larrabee on fears that the first release may end up buggy. But within the next couple of years, vendors expect Larrabee will be able to hold its own against what AMD and Nvidia have to offer.

Image Credit: Intel via Engadget

Leaked Photos of the Radeon HD 5970 Dual-GPU Card Emerge

Justin Kerr — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:24:58 -0600

Last month we posted a link to some early spy shots of the Radeon HD 5850 X2 & 5870 X2, but aside from the pictures, the post was a bit short on details. The card which still hasn’t been officially unveiled by AMD is still somewhat of a mystery, but the gang over at Alienbabeltech.com got a hold of some new photos and information that answers some, but not all of the questions we have about the new design.

Based on the reference card shown in the pictures, it appears as though this monster will require two power connections, one 8-pin and one 6-pin which are located just above the fan. Even if the power requirements of this beast don't shock you, the overall length of the card just may. Measuring in at a whopping 13.5 inches long, most enthusiasts without a full tower case will have a hard time fitting this into their machines. AMD responded quickly by stating that the photos were of an engineering sample, leading us to wonder if the card won’t shrink an inch or two prior to release.

The other big change since our last update is the new naming conventions. It now appears as though AMD will be dropping the “X2” designation and the cards will be known as the Radeon HD 5950 (Dual 5850’s), and the Radeon HD 5970 (Dual 5870’s). Questions remain, but hey, its better then nothing right?

Leaked Pics of Fermi-Rendered Images Look Awesome Update

Paul Lilly — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:00:27 -0500

We're hoping for great things out of Nvidia's upcoming "Fermi" graphics chips, and we can only hope the leaked pics showcasing what the GPU can do turn out to be legit.

The pics come courtesy of Chinese website PCZilla and show a pair of human face renderings like nothing we've ever seen before, at least not on the desktop. There's so much detail the images could pass as real photos, but let's hope they're not.

There's also an image of a ray-traced demo that may not look as impressive at first glance, at least until taking in the various lighting sources and reflections, which requires a second and third look to fully appreciate.Take a peek at all three here.

Update: These scenes are actually taken from a promotional video for Playground Festival -- an AudioArts/Motion Graphics event in the Netherlands. We're not sure if Fermi is actually rendering these scenes in real-time (and even so, it's still texture mapping, and not ray-tracing), or if Nvidia was just using screenshots from the source video to demonstrate the promise of Fermi. (Thanks, Andy!)

Image Credit: pczilla.net

Nvidia's DirectX 10 Hack Suggests That Features Really do Exist in Ion LE Chip

Paul Lilly — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:10:32 -0500

It's pretty common for hardware vendors to artificially gimp their budget or lower cost parts. Take AMD's tri-core chip, for example, which comes with a core disabled that isn't necessarily bad. And who still remembers Nvidia's vanilla 6800 graphics card that came with 4 software-unlockable pipelines to transform it into a 6800GT? As it turns out, Nvidia may have taken the same software-based approach to its Ion LE platform.

Nvida's Ion LE sports the same 1080p HD playback capabilities as its pricier sibling, but in order to cut costs, LE kicks DirectX 10 support to the curb. But as MyHPMini forum member runawayprisoner discovered, his may be entirely software-based, and a quick driver hack is all it takes to get the regular Ion drivers to install.

All runawayprisoner did was is add Ion LE's device driver ID to the Ion drivers, and once he did that, they installed like a charm, DirectX 10 support and all.

Whether or not that means full DX10 support remains to be seen, but according to runawayprisoner, if nothing else DX9 gaming stands to receive a sizeable boost in performance up to 50 percent.

Image Credit: imageshack.us runawayprisoner

GPU Market Skyrockets 21 Percent in Third Quarter

Paul Lilly — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:10:05 -0500

According to Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the graphics market performed extraordinarily well in the third quarter, which bodes well for the upcoming holiday shopping season. How well? Graphics processors spiked 21.2 percent over the second quarter,, which JPR says was already strong to begin with.

"A total of 119.45 million units were shipped in the third quarter, exceeding the record 111 million units that shipped in third-quarter 2008," said Jon Peddie, president of JPR. "So the market has caught up with, and exceeded, last year's highs. The crash of fall 2008 is now behind us."

AMD fared particularly well with on-quarter growth at 30 percent. Intel wasn't far behind, noting on-quarter growth of 25.2 percent on shipments of 63 million units, or twice as many as Nvidia, its nearest competitor.

And these weren't all integrated graphics, either. According to JPR, "integrated graphics in notebooks, including netbooks, increased 27 percent over the second quarter -- a great gain, but less than discrete."

Image Credit: AMD