Posted 11/06/09 at 06:06:14 PM by Ryan Whitwam

It’s no secret that Nvidia and Intel are having a dispute over chipset licenses. Now it seems like Nvidia is getting a little fed up with the whole situation. On a new Nvidia website called “Intel’s Insides”, you’ll find a series of editorial style cartoons with some sharp criticisms of chip maker Intel.

The cartoons take aim mostly at Intel’s legal woes, which have gotten that much more severe with new US federal action this week. The US case is related to the same scandal that ended with Intel receiving massive fines in the EU. Intel is accused of bribing OEMs to keep them from using rival AMD’s chips. It all makes for some good cartoon fodder.

Editorial cartoonist Steve Lait creates the cartoons for Nvidia. The site explains that the series “is intended to be a parody of events occurring within the semiconductor sector, with particular focus on its largest and most commented-upon competitor." In all honesty, the cartoons aren’t that funny. But really, how amusing can the nuances of the semiconductor world be?

Image from "Intel's insides"

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Posted 11/06/09 at 10:57:53 AM by Paul Lilly

Around this time last year, the topic of Nvidia included faulty GPUs, which ultimately ended up costing the firm millions of dollars, and stiff competition from a suddenly revitalized ATI. Now it's all about Nvidia's upcoming Fermi graphics and revenue gains.

Ending the third quarter on a positive note, Nvidia reported revenue of $903.2 million. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that marks an increase of 16 percent over the previous quarter, and is slightly up from this same time last year when the graphics chip maker posted revenue of $897.7 million.

"We continued to make progress in the third quarter with healthy market demand across the board," said Jen-Hsun. "Revenue was up from a year ago, with improvement in each of our PC, professional solutions, and consumer businesses. It's great to see us shipping orders with our Tegra mobile-computing solution, and growing enthusiasm for our Tesla platform for parallel computing in the server and cloud-computing markets."

 Nvidia CFO David White added that the company's GPU business was up almost 25 percent sequentially.

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Posted 11/06/09 at 08:48:45 AM by Paul Lilly

Gigabyte will soon start shipping its Booktop M1305 ultraportable that was first shown back in June, and peering over the spec sheet, there doesn't appear to be much to get excited about. Not until you look closer, anyway.

The M1305 will come equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Pentium, or Celeron ULV processor. Pushing pixels on the 1366x768 display is Intel's 4500MHD integrated graphics. It will also come with 4GB of DDR3 memory, 320GB or 500GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, a 1.3MP webcam, slim-type DVD burner, fingerprint reader, two USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA/USB combo port, HDMI, a 4-in-1 card reader, and Windows Home 7 Premium.

But where this ultraportable stands out from the crowd is with the included docking station. The docking station brings NVidia's GeForce GT220 graphics to the table, giving the M1305 a major boost over its integrated chipset, and includes a bunch of I/O ports. Sure, lugging around the docking station might defeat the purpose of an ultraportable, but leave the thing at home and unwind with a bit of gaming goodness after a busy day on the road.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Posted 11/04/09 at 08:38:08 AM by Paul Lilly

Graphics chip maker Nvidia appears to be interested in talent from Transmeta, and that could mean only one thing: they're moving into the x86 market, says AmTech analyst Doug Freedman.

Freedman's theory is at least plausible. During a Q&A session at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, Nvidia acknowledged it would eventually try its hand at the x86 business, saying it was a matter of "when," not "if."

If Nvidia's looking for the right time, now might be it. The chip maker continues to be at odds with Intel over continued licensing disputes, the latest of which has bumped Nvidia out of contention with Nehalem. And because AMD owns ATI, the chip maker finds itself between rock and a hard place.

That's not good, considering over 30 percent of Nvidia's revenue comes from chipsets. Backing out, even if temporary, puts a lot of pressure on the company's graphics business to hold the fort while licensing disputes are worked out.

It's worth noting that Nvidia probably wouldn't go after the high performance sector, where Intel's Core i7 pretty much stands alone. But the market is wide open in the low performance segment. An Atom alternative combined with the chip maker's Ion platform could conceivably shake things up and give Intel's Atom platform some serious competition.

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Posted 11/02/09 at 05:00:00 PM by Norman Chan

Need a new portable media player? We're giving away a Zune HD 16GB (Black), courtesy of Nvidia. This kick-ass video and music player is powered by Nvidia's Tegra APX 2600 system-on-a-chip, a sports a vibrant 3.3" OLED screen. This Zune also comes with a custom engraving on the back. But enough of the technical babble. We're going to make it super easy for you to enter the contest, so hit the jump to get the full scoop on getting your name in the random drawing. In fact, you may already be entered!

The contest ends in less than two weeks, so read on for the full rules!

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Posted 10/30/09 at 01:00:27 PM by Paul Lilly

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.

Update: Source video found! Find if after the jump. 

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Posted 10/30/09 at 09:10:32 AM by Paul Lilly

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.

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Posted 10/27/09 at 09:43:36 AM by Paul Lilly

MSI has so far been pretty quiet about its plans to enter the increasingly crowded e-book market, instead letting others steal the spotlight. Maybe not for long, based on what we just found out. According to MSI chairman Joseph Hsu, the company is developing an e-reader built around Nvidia's Tegra platform.

Sounds promising just on that tidbit alone, but unfortunately, we won't see anything from MSI in time of the holidays. There are still some kinks to be worked out, so MSI has decided to hold off until the first half of 2010 to divulge any more details. Bummer.

The timing might not be terrible for MSI. It's true that rival Asus also plans to release an e-book reader in the near future, but first run batches will be limited and aimed at charities. Consumer models aren't expected to ship until the first quarter of 2010. Plus, tapping into Tegra could potentially turn out to be a huge advantage for MSI, particularly when pitted against grayscale e-book readers like the one Asus is working on.

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