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VIA and NVIDIA Working Together For PC Design
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Jun 07, 2008 08:14 AM
from the teaming-up-before-intel-drops-the-atom-bomb dept.
from the teaming-up-before-intel-drops-the-atom-bomb dept.
Vigile writes "With AMD buying up ATI and Intel working on their own discrete graphics core, it makes sense for NVIDIA and VIA to partner together. It might be surprising, though, that rather than see the rumors of NVIDIA buying VIA come true, the two companies instead agreed to 'partner' on creating a balanced PC design around VIA's Nano processor and NVIDIA's mid-range discrete graphics cards. During a press event in Taiwan, VIA showed Bioshock and Crysis running on the combined platform. They also took the time to introduce a revision to the mini-ITX standard, which Intel has adopted for Atom, that pushes an open hardware and software platform design rather than the ultra-controlled version that Intel is offering."
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Low watt, high performance? Seg fault (Score:3, Insightful)
However, with the way things are at the moment in the pc gamespace, I'd be pretty cautious expecting any decent performance, even with their Crysis and Bioshock demoes.
I do miss the days when games had 128 multiplayer maps, ran on cheap $200 video cards well and had more story rather than the shinies but I guess that's progress for you. *sigh*
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I wouldn't be so sure nVidia and VIA aren't on to something here.
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Whenever I build a new PC for myself, I buy just below the best. My previous PC lasted me 5 years or so, with a ti4200 (a powerhouse of a card, which will still outperform some modern 256mb cards). I'm hoping I can last as long with my current 8800GT, though I'm guessing it may be more like 4 years before I replace it.
That's the thing about buying a decent spec PC - if you buy well, you will not have to replace it for years, and you'll be able to play just about anything because everyone else is buying g
May the best chip win! (Score:5, Interesting)
So great hopefully we will see some real progress and we can have affordable laptops that have OK power. Because right now most normal laptops have integrated chips (you can't really fit a video card into a normal laptop) and of course the integrated card is horrible. Also the integrated card (at least in my laptop) sucks up all the power and makes my laptop have 3x less life. Also my integrated card overheats.
So yea it would be great if we could have decent video processing on normal mass market laptops.
Good Luck and may the best chip win!
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THREE is not enough! (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever I see these "strategic partnerships" which basically means "mergers so the DOJ won't notice", I think about what's happened to the airlines and the oil companies (oh and telecom). Going in different directions, they are, but the consumers are getting screwed all around when these big outfits team up.
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For users no, but AMD isn't doing so well for a long time and investors don't like to loose money, so who know how long they're still going to compete with Intel?
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Personally I would like to see Intel taken off it's high considering it delayed all their 45nm production just so they could sell out their older chips.
Umm, what? Yes, they've kept their prices high and 45nm only on the high-end to get rid of 65nm stock, but Intel would like nothing more than to switch to 45nm as fast as possible. The chips get considerably smaller and thus cheaper to produce, which translates direcfly to higher margins. Plus they get all the premium of being alone in the high-end market, another good reason to keep them stocked. I'm sure there's a lot you can blame Intel for, but I don't think this is one of them...
OK, OK, OK!!! (Score:3, Funny)
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/31/1633214&from=rss [slashdot.org]
?
Price and availability? Can we have a laptop that has a draw on wacom style touch screen where the keyboard is? I still want a keyboard though, but I guess I could use a docking station with a monitor. Can I get it like eee size and eee cheap and put 6 of 'em together in a custom beowulf cluster that grows and shrinks as the various laptops enter and exit the house over wifi N, or wimax, or whatever?
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Umm... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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PS Oh, can you install regular Urban Terror on each machine, too, so I have a 6 chair death match out of the box? Double Thanks in Advance. Might as well put a racing game on there too and bundle each with a dual analog stick. Thank
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Boost it to 1600x1200 or something like that, and it'd be a lot more comfortable to work with.
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Actually, I hate the way processors are getting faster and faster and hungrier and hungrier.
Umm... don't know if you've been following the processor market recently, but they're not. A lot of the advances recently have been about lower voltages, lower power consumption, and more cores. Pure processor power increase has most definately not been a feature of the recent processor market, at least not compared to the past. I mean, AMD released over 2ghz processors 6 years ago....
*Swoons* (Score:2, Interesting)
Will nvidia make chipsets for via as via ones suck (Score:2)
VIA tries to redefine Open as "Ours" (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, I have to laugh at the sight of a Mini-ITX board with a relatively low power VIA cpu having a huge, power sucking NVidia discrete GPU board on it. Surely anybody that cares about performance graphics is not using this catagory of board. Logically , NVidia would do an integrated graphics chipset for the Mini-ITX format, but a PCI-Express external card that quadruples the chassis height (and probably quads the power consumption of the board) is a joke. Ask embedded systems developers (still the main market for Mini-ITX systems) if this is really what they're looking for. VIA and NVidia cobbled together a frankenstein combination of technologies just to make the Atom look bad with irrelevant perf specs.
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There, fixed.
What, you haven't been watching a lot of CG porn recently? I'm not alone.. am I?
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Two years, if it keeps progressing as it has lately. Maybe less - surely the money will start ramping up soon.
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The major problem with CGI pron is that Uncanny Valley [wikipedia.org] can take on a whole new meaning.
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You're kidding, right?
So far VIA has been terrible with Linux. I've had much better experiences with Nvidia, even with their closed-source drivers. This talk about VIA being open in comparison to Intel is funny, considering Intel has provided opensource Linux drivers for their hardware for years.