Nvidia recently showed off a tablet running on the company’s dual-core Tegra 250 chipset. Of course, it’s just a prototype, so we’ll never know if this makes it to a store shelf anytime soon, but if it ever does, it could give Apple’s iPad serious competition—at least with geeks and more tech-discerning users who put more premium on specs and performance over Apple’s built-for-the-mainstream device.
Graphics chipset maker Nvidia has just released its first graphics cards based on the Fermi chipset, highlighted by the top-end GeForce GTX 480 that the company labeled as the “fastest GPU in the world.” Along with the GTX 470, the two new cards are Nvidia’s first GPUs to fully support Microsoft’s DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.0 (once 4.0 comes out), but the spotlight is on the GTX 480, which claims to comfortably beat “the closest competitive product” (read: ATI’s Radeon HD 5800 series) in DirectX 11 gaming performance.
In case you’ve already bought into the whole 3D entertainment center thing and picked up a new HDTV and Blu-ray set that supports 3D video, you might want to enjoy those components for some in-your-face 3D gaming too. For $40, Nvidia’s new 3DTV Play software will let you connect your gaming PC to your 3DTV and enjoy them with a pair of 3D glasses for awesome immersive gaming on your big-screen.
Nvidia has announced that there will be more Tegra 2-based devices coming out next year, based on a next-gen Tegra System-on-Chip that will feature a dual-core ARM processor and better overall performance (which includes GeForce HD 1080p-quality graphics) for mobile devices. Current devices powered by Tegra platforms include Microsoft’s Zune HD player, but Nvidia promises a bunch of tablet PCs, smartbooks, netbooks, and MIDs powered by the new platform should come out within the first half of 2010, followed by major roll-outs of Tegra 2-based smartphones in the second half.
Nvidia has just come out with the new GeForce 310 graphics card, an entry-level graphics solution that supports 64-bit systems, HD movies, and Windows 7’s graphics-heavy interface.
