That NVIDIA and Intel haven’t been getting along lately isn’t big news but it looks like NVIDIA has finally gotten up from the dinner table and left the restaurant in a huff. The epicenter of the problem appears to be NVIDIA’s Ion chipset, which provides some much needed oomph to netbook and nettop platforms. Intel wants to keep a distinct separation between its low-power, low-cost Atom chips and its more-capable Pentium chips. When NVIDIA’s Ion is added to an Atom platform, the extra power makes Intel’s higher-end (and higher-cost) CPU offerings a tougher sell.

You’ll recall earlier this year that Intel announced its new “PineTrail” Atom platform, which shifts system boards from a 3-chip architecture down to a 2-chip architecture. Apparently Intel’s decided not to license the platform to NVIDIA, which means the graphics company won’t be able to integrate its Ion chipset into the new PineTrail offerings.

Naturally, NVIDIA took issue with that. According to DigiTimes:

Nvidia said in a statement “…because of Intel’s improper claims to customers and the market that we aren’t licensed to the new DMI bus, and its unfair business tactics, it is effectively impossible for us to market chipsets for future CPUs. So, until we resolve this matter in court next year, we’ll postpone further chipset investments for Intel DMI CPUs.”

It should be noted that this isn’t the first time that Intel and NVIDIA have been involved in licensing disagreements. Earlier this year, the two companies scuffled over whether NVIDIA was licensed to create chipsets based on Intel’s Nehalem-based products.

So that leaves AMD and VIA as possible partners, right? Well, not AMD actually, seeing as how AMD owns ATI now — NVIDIA is “halting development on AMD chipsets since the market is no longer economically viable.” VIA and NVIDIA already have a partnership in place for Ion-based systems and it’s likely that the two companies will continue the partnership for NVIDIA’s upcoming Ion 2 platform.

[DigiTimes]

So when NVIDIA works with them to accelerate decoding the format, it’s a bit of a mixed blessing. Better performance and integration like this will surely extend the life of, and silence performance complaints about, FLV. For now it’s a good thing, but come HTML5…

See, there are plans to implement a plain ‘ol <video> tag which would embed the actual video in the web browser, sans Flash wrapper. This means that (hopefully) it’d be hardware-accelerated regardless of the make and model of your video card, and most importantly, regardless of any licensing agreement that’s been made with the video’s proprietor.

Still, HTML 5 is a ways off (and widespread video tags even further off, considering how entrenched FLVs are), so right now it’s the devil you know, and it’ll run better than ever. I have no problem with that.

[via Netbooked and Lilliputing]

Well good morning, Interesting Netbook. You have caught my attention thanks to your inclusion of NVIDIA’s Ion chipset, 1366×768 display, 2GB of RAM, Windows 7 operating system, and longer-than-long battery life.

The ASUS Eee PC 1201N features the following:

• Atom N270 CPU at 1.6GHz
• 250GB SATA hard drive (5400 RPM)
• 12-inch LED-backlit display with 1366×768 resolution
• Six-cell battery good for up to 11 hours
• Windows 7
• NVIDIA Ion graphics

Now before you get all jibbly about this one, it’s only shown up on a Chinese website. It’s priced at the equivalent of $513, though, which is pretty good. Because of the inclusion of Windows 7, we’ll probably not officially hear about this one in the US until the end of October when Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system becomes available to the public.

ASUS EeePC 1201N [Product Page (Translated from Chinese) via SlashGear]

ASUS’ NVIDIA Ion-powered EeeBox PC has gotten sort of official. It’s on ASUS’ website now, at least, although there’s still not much in the way of pricing or availability. The specs look pretty nice, though, with a whisper-quiet setup thanks to a dual-core Atom N330 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 250GB SATA hard drive, 802.11b/g/n wireless, card reader, and, of course, the horsepower to push full 1080p video.

There’s HDMI and VGA output, along with three USB ports and an eSATA port for external upgrades. The system weighs 2.4 pounds and will be available in black or white. The OS is listed as Windows Vista Home Premium, which pretty much means that this little guy will be out before late October when Windows 7 gets released.

EeeBox PC EB1012 [Asus via Gizmodo]

It’s got an odd 1792MB of memory and is clocked up about 15%-20% over the stock GTX 295. It’s also got a self-contained cooling system by BFG partner CoolIT, a company that is doing a lot of work to make liquid cooling easier and cheaper (their Domino system is supposed to be great).

Check out the very thorough review over at Guru3D.

[via PC Perspective]

Nvidia is running a deal on a handful of graphics cards that comes with a download code for Rocksteady and Eidos’s upcoming Batman title, Batman: Arkham Asylum. If you haven’t played the demo then go and do that now here. It launches with Nvidia 3D Vision support and PhysX game physics on September 15. Oh, the following Nvidia GeForce cards are part of the deal: GTX 260, GTX 275 and the GTX 285.

via Big D

There’s a reason why the Zune HD’s interface moves so smoothly. Powering the device is the Nvidia Tegra, which Nvidia recently described as an “an entire computer-on-a-chip,” and one with “eight separate processors, including: a GPU, two video processors, and audio processor, two ARM core processor and more.” (That “and more” bit is a bit ambiguous for my liking, but what are you gonna do?) In any event, the Zune HD looks to have some serious computational power going for it. WILL IT BE AN IPOD KILLER?

As Peter’s video shows, the interface zips around with not a hint of slowdown. You can thank Nvidia’s GeForce for that, assuming you’re in the business of thanking big companies for anything

Web pages are accelerated by the GPU, as is any video you play, be it from the Zune itself, transferred over from your Xbox 360, or downloaded from allthelatestmoviesarehererightnowforyoutodownload.com.

So yeah, the Zune HD looks neat, but as a Mac user, and given the device’s lack of compatibility with my preferred operating system, I wonder whether I should even bother getting excites, let alone prepare myself to shell out hundreds of dollars to be able to listen to a couple of MP3s.

Tegra was supposed to change the way we thought about smartphones a few months ago but the chipset never took off. Sadly, this doesn’t seem like it will make any headway either.

Semiaccurate writes:

The idea is simple, take a Tegra ARM part and saddle it with Wince. You get all the bloat of Windows with none of the compatibility. Throw in Flash Lite, Acrobat Reader, and a handful of other apps, and you have a passable crotchtop. That is what Nvidia is peddling around to ODMs with Firefly.

There are two problems though, first is that it is not a standard chip. The launch parts may have a smattering of accelerated wares, but like all the other purpose built software, as soon as the spotlight is off, you will probably never see another update. Then your widget becomes a doorstop.

So what happens next? After the end of this current product cycle (so probably next year), Apple may be dropping NVIDIA like a rock. But wait a second, it would take a lot of convincing to get AMD to put their GPUs in an Intel system, considering their growing interest in whole-system advantages. It’s all so confusing! Fortunately, it’s also all speculation, so we can wait it out and see what happens.

What do you guys think? Back to AMD? Perhaps Intel has something up its sleeve? Or maybe NVIDIA will apologize and they can have hot and sweaty make-up negotiations. Semiconductor gossip is so juicy!

[via Electronista]

Nvidia’s Tegra chip hasn’t even hit the market, but we know for fact that Tegra 2 is on its way next year. There’s no set timeframe, but we believe it will hit the market sometime during the summer or so its been hinted at. The first Tegra device to be released stateside will be the Zune HD in the fall. I’ve already seen what it can do with Windows CE on a handful of netbooks that were showcased at Computex last month and I walked away very impressed. So what can we expect from Tegra 2?

The chaps from Nvidia stated that Tegra 2 could go toe-to-toe with current laptop configurations. In other words, Tegra 2 is said to be twice as fast and powerful as Tegra 1. Does that mean we’ll see it as the stand-alone core for a regular laptop? Maybe. All we know is that it’s “twice as powerful” and will drop next year.

Good news for you Adobe Photoshop (and other Creative Suite applications) CS4 users who just so happen to have a high-end Nvidia GPU. Nvidia released today a bunch of plug-ins for Adobe CS4 (both PC and Mac) that leverage the power of your GPU. For example, one such plug-in, Elemental Accelerator 2.0 for Windows, taps into your Quadro GPU to help encode video faster. Encoding H.264 video with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 while using the plugin improves encoding time by 11 times. (Mac users will have to settle with Elemental Accelerator 1.2.)

It gets better! Nvidia is selling all these plugins at 50 percent off if you buy from their own Web site.

Again, you’ll need a heavy duty GPU to partake, a one of those Quadro babies, to play along. Sadly, my poor pre-unibody MacBook will still be rendering video the old fashioned way.

We’ve been talking about Nvidia’s Tegra on CG here and there, but not very many people know exactly what it is. Sure, it’s a tiny mobile computer, but how does it work and where did it come from? Where can we find it and why is it better than Intel’s Atom? We asked Nvidia this and more.

CrunchGear: What is Tegra?

Nvidia: Tegra is a mobile internet device platform that runs Windows Embedded CE, and devices will sell from carriers for as low as $99 USD. Tegra is an entire computer-on-a-chip, which includes 8 separate processors, including: a GPU, two video processors, and audio processor, two ARM core processor and more. This processor enables a low-cost, always-on, always-connected HD mobile Internet device (MID) that can go days between battery charges.

This platform will enable OEMs and ODMs to quickly build and bring to market devices that carriers can offer at minimal cost —bringing broadband connectivity and the entire Web’s HD content to the masses. The Tegra MID delivers:

* Up to 1080p high definition video playback
* Full resolution web page viewing
* Accelerated Flash support for a responsive full web experience
* Days of typical use between charges
* Wireless connectivity with WiFi, 3G or WiMax support
* Optimized hardware support for Web 2.0 applications for a true desktop-class internet experience
* A complete software solution including Microsoft Windows Embedded CE OS, application viewers, full Internet browser, UI framework, board support package (BSP), software development kit (SDK), Web mail client, and more

CrunchGear: Why and how is it better than atom?

Nvidia: Atom is just a cpu…nothing else.

Tegra is a low power full computer on a chip – 2 cpus, gpu, 2 video processors, audio processor, IO processor and a data processor. It runs a less that a watt for the most daunting tasks, ie: hd video playback.

CrunchGear: Why windows CE?

Nvidia: Right now we support Windows CE, Windows Mobile and Google Android…we feel that right now the Windows platform are more developed and more robust for the netbook market.

CrunchGear: Where will consumers buy Tegra?

Nvidia: Consumers will be able to get Tegra –based devices from carriers, like AT&T or T-mobile, for $199 USD, depending on the contract, by the end of this year.

CrunchGear: What does Tegra mean for the netbook space?

Nvidia: We think there are three meaningful categories of consumer computing devices—the PC, Mobile Internet Devices (also known as MIDs), and smartphones. If consumers are looking for a device that runs Windows 7 or Vista with demanding applications, they should get a PC. But if consumers are looking for an always-connected device for social media applications such as Facebook and YouTube, as well as great multimedia performance for recording and watching HD movies and videos on the go, they should think about a Tegra-based MID. If you need to fit your communications and entertainment device in a pocket – you need a Tegra-based smartphone or media player.

Nvidia Tegra

I still would have liked to see a slightly bigger screen, the better to show off that beautiful UI, but I guess you can’t have everyzing.

My heightened blogger senses allow me to determine the best deal, and it’s probably the 250M, which has the best cross between low power, fast memory, and advanced architecture. No need to thank me, citizen.

Have you been following this Nvidia-Intel spat? Long story short: Nvidia suspects that Intel has been giving laptop manufacturers a sweet deal vis-à-vis Atom processors and Intel’s whole chipset+integrated graphics chip. This upsets Nvidia because its own laptop graphics platform, called Ion, hasn’t been able to find a way onto a laptop… until now! Yes, the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 will be the first laptop to use Nvidia’s Ion platform. It’ll be $449 when it launches in June. And yes, it’ll have a 12-inch screen (like my first PowerBook).

Now, why is this Ion thingamajig important to you? Well, as the owner of a pre-unibody MacBook, let me tell you that graphics performance, whether I’m playing World of Warcraft or trying to watch 1080p video—I just saw Valkyrie the other day, and I kinda liked it, to paraphrase that dumb song—is criminal. I’d be better off connecting a strawberry Pop-Tart to the motherboard, using that as the graphics processor instead of the on-board Intel nonsense.

In short, the Intel integrated graphics “solution” is trash. Rubbish of the highest order.

So, we hold out hope for Nvidia. I’ll defer to Venturebeat when it claims that Ion will be able to run XP, Vista (something of a resource hog, as you’re all well aware), and 7, as well as 1080p video.

(Isn’t it a holiday or something? Why am I even here?)

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – May 25, 2009: Lenovo today announced the IdeaPad S12, the company’s first 12-inch netbook. The new netbook takes the best in connectivity, style and entertainment features in Lenovo’s other netbooks and brings users the next level in netbook computing with improved usability and performance. These enhancements include a 12.1-inch screen, a 100 percent full-size keyboard and new graphics options with the NVIDIA ION™ platform.
“We’ve heard from consumers loud and clear about the need for affordable and extremely portable computing devices, and we’ve responded by introducing our third netbook with a completely new form factor, making mini-computing more usable and redefining value in today’s market,” said Dion Weisler, vice president, Business Operations, Idea Product Group, Lenovo. “We are pioneering new territory in the developing netbook arena by being the first vendor to give customers high quality video and entertainment capabilities in a netbook with optional NVIDIA ION graphics.”
Elevating Power and Performance

Whether it’s looking at photos, playing music, emailing or cruising online, consumers want smaller and more portable PCs. The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook is raising the bar for higher levels of netbook computing with choices of the Intel Atom processor with Intel integrated graphics or the Intel Atom processor with NVIDIA ION graphics. Also, for the first time on a netbook with NVIDIA’s ION graphics platform, users will be able to enjoy brilliant 1080p high definition video with silky smooth playback.

“NVIDIA ION graphics help deliver the same features found in premium PCs at lower price points and new form factors,” said Rene Haas, general manager, Notebook GPUs, NVIDIA. “With enhanced graphics, the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook is perfect for watching movies, playing popular games like Spore, flipping through vacation pictures or enhancing family videos.”

The IdeaPad S12 netbook offers plenty of up and running time with up to six hours of battery life to support the mobile demands of netbook users1. Because netbook users need to stay connected wirelessly, the netbook comes with WiFi connectivity and ready for 3G with an ExpressCard slot to enable connectivity2. To hold the photos, music and videos users keep on their netbooks, the IdeaPad S12 netbook offers ample hard drive storage and memory with up to 160 GB of storage and 1 GB of memory. For peace of mind in case data becomes corrupted, Lenovo’s OneKey™ Rescue System can help recover user data or device settings.

Loaded with Style and Entertainment

In addition to the netbook’s sleek and sophisticated ring pattern design in black or white, users can make the netbook their one-stop entertainment device, starting from the moment they turn it on. Lenovo’s expanded VeriFace facial recognition technology makes logging in a snap by recognizing the user’s face. If users want “on demand” functionality, they can go into the Lenovo Quick Start environment and check email, browse the Internet and more without waiting for the full operating system to boot. They can also don any set of headphones and enjoy surround sound audio with Dolby Headphone technology. If opting to watch video on an external monitor, they can easily connect through the netbook’s VGA port or HDMI port on select models. They can also choose among several multimedia formats to upload through the 4-in-1 multicard reader.

An Improved Computing Experience

Lenovo designed the IdeaPad S12 netbook for consumers looking for a super thin, portable and affordable device that offered a familiar, computing experience. Lenovo enlarged the netbook’s WXGA screen from 10.1 inches to 12.1 inches for better viewing and made the keyboard 100 percent the size of a full-size laptop to make typing easier and less cramped. And when it comes to portability, by measuring less than an inch thick4, the netbook leads the industry for thinness compared to other 12-inch netbooks. The lightweight IdeaPad S12 netbook weighs in at just three pounds5.
Pricing and Availability6

The IdeaPad S12 netbook will be available in June through business partners and www.lenovo.com. Pricing for models starts at $449. Models with the NVIDIA ION graphics will be available later this summer.

Oh, man, I cannot wait to punch a boulder in 3D. (Actually, I can wait, but that’s immaterial for the purpose of this post.) In addition to the earlier Street Fighter IV announcement, Capcom also let it be known that Resident Evil 5 will be released sometime this year. In and of itself, sorta blah. But!

Yes, there’s a “but.” The game will support Nvidia’s GeForce 3D technology, which, as you might guess, renders games in a sorta 3D deal.

GeForce 3D requires a GeForce 8, 9 or 200 Series GPU; Windows Vista; and a LCD monitor with 120MHz (or any CRT monitor). Of course, you’d need to wear those glasses, too. And, as Stephen Merchant related in the “Guide to the English” podcast, life is so much harder when you already wear glasses.

Not a fan, sorry.

They score similarly and their discerning characteristics are pretty low-key. So what do you buy? I’m tempted to take the advice in the conclusion and snag something from the more mature 4870 series, which will be a tremenjus bargain. Tremenjus. Of course, if you’re planning an AMD-based system (something in a Dragon, perhaps?), you’ll definitely want the 4890 to make sure you get all the benefits of a mobo-processor-video card monopoly from AMD.

[Update: Got a hi-res shot. Still waiting to see it in action.]

ArcSoft claims that using CUDA, they can perform the huge amount of calculation necessary to make usable 1080p video out of 480p. Now, resizing cleanly on the fly is one thing, and totally doable. Otherwise all our video would look like garbage, and the NES games I play would be all pixelated. Check out these three shots of the Contra title screen. One is actual pixels, one is blown up with no filter, and the third is blown up with a 2xSaI filter. (click for full size)

What ArcSoft is promising is related to this process, the way we’re related to chimps. But that doesn’t mean it can do what they say. They promise an “HD-like viewing experience,” which sounds innocuous, but when you show a picture like the one at the top of the article, you better be able to back it up. Speaking of which, it looks suspiciously like the image on the right had a filter put on it to make the image at the left, instead of vice versa. In fact, let’s see what that would look like. The “original” image is on the left in the top row, the “processed” image is on the right:

Wow. So, basically, I’ll believe this phantom tech when I see it. Maybe the shots they’ve put up are just mock-ups, but that would be really irresponsible when you’re selling your product based on image quality. I’d love to be proven wrong, and their idea of salvaging information from multiple frames (thus requiring CUDA) is good, but I think they’re making promises they can’t keep.

Update: They got back to me with a high-resolution picture. I’ve embedded a crop below. I leave it to you to determine its BS/reality ratio. Personally, I don’t buy it.

According to Thomas Ricker, things are hotting up at NVIDIA thanks to their ION platform, a netbook and nettop motherboard that will serve 1080p video in a package that fits on the palm of your hand. The first new model should be the Acer Hornet, a Wii-like gaming machine with an odd 3D remote.

Anandtech has a full description of the new platform but, in short, it’s a tiny, self-contained computer with great graphics capabilities.