- Tuesday, 17 November 2009
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Together we add up, divided we're just a fraction - Thomas Monk, Accelenation
Nvidia plans to give Intel the bumps
NVIDIA IS PLANNING to fight a battle with Intel over the future of the cut-price netbook, according to Cnet.
Currently netbooks are shipping without anything really useful for graphics. The GPUs under the bonnets of the latest generation of thightops are Intel's Media Accelerator 950, which is marginally above Etch-a-sketch level.
Now Nvidia thinks, if it can stop its chips from over-heating for five minutes, it could take advantage of this hole in the graphics market. It knows punters buying netbooks with larger screen sizes are going to want to see something on them.
Nvidia thinks it would be a wizard wheeze if it provided a GeForce 9400M attached to Atom. Recently it showed off a 1080p video with a GeForce 9400M graphics assist to the Atom processor.
Intel is against the idea. It does not want to see its Atom attached to a 12 inch screen, partly because it can't handle it, partly because Intel would prefer to sell a few more Duos.
But Nvidia could get nasty by having a go at the chipset side of things. With the Macbook, Nvidia managed to get the graphics card side of the business, but also the chipset socket too. All Intel could do was hand over the processor and sulk.
Nvidia has to convince Acer and Asus to make the switch to the 9400m with the Atom and its own chipset and its father's brother's name is Robert. Of course the likes of Acer and Asus do not want to hear of troubles with Nvidia's soldering. µ
L'Inq
CNet
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I don't know about Asus and Acer, perhaps the sourcing (purchasing) people have some common sense, but I would be quite skeptical about Nvidia's offerings until I were throughly convinced the process issues, i.e., bump and underfill, were completely resolved. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!
Why can't British journos just type an article without adding in a bunch of goofy nicknames for everything? Is is just to difficult to report the news without being the center of attention? I like coming here to read, but it really bothers me having to wade through all this "look-at-me" nonsensical blather all the time.
So you imagine that you get a representative sample of British journalism by reading the Inquirer? Your nom de plume is somewhat self-referential, I fear.
The Inq is a comedy newspaper of mostly IT tech stories. Have you not noticed this already?
I don't think I would be buying a netbook with a dedicated graphics chip. Doesn't make sense to me. Not worth the expenses in heat & power consumption, nevermind the additional monetary cost. My U810 has got a 945GM and it's just fine - who needs 1080 video playback on systems that have screens with 1024x600 max resolution?