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NVidia Announces Mobile GeForce 2 Chip
AFCArchvile writes: "NVidia might be giving ATI, the current dominator in the laptop graphics chip sector, a run for its money. This Yahoo article tells about how the release was announced in Vegas, and PlanetHardware has a preview of the chip (a low-power derivative of the GeForce 2 MX), with some technical specs as well. The GeForce2Go, as it has been labeled, performs over half as well as a GeForce 2 GTS (572 Mtexel/s) while consuming much less power (0.8 watts typical, 2.4 watts maximum)."
Half the performance is nothing. The power ain't any better than most of the competitors at this price range. Hardware transform is a white elephant. Half speed and you start to find that your processor's free time is more than adequate to outperform it. Maybe it does give the CPU more time to spend on other tasks, but games are written without any other tasks.
I bought the Inspiron to be more of a "mobile word processor/internet station", but it's proven to be a solid gaming beast. Nvidia may introduce some decent chips for laptop gaming, but as it stands right now, the ATI chip performs more than admirably.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I currently own a Toshiba 4340. For all intent and purposes it is a leading edge Labtop. It has a 650 PIII with 128MB RAM and a 6X DVD Player. Its only problem is that it has a S3 Virge 8MB Video Card (64bit). I looked for a labtop with a more powerful video card but unfortunately there are none to be found. 8MB is the max amount of memory you can get in a mobile video card. Some feature 128bit instead of 64bit, like on my card, but that is basically the most you can get for a mobile system. Depending on what your viewing (AVIs, MPEGs, DVDs), it occasionally freezes for a 1/3-1/2 a second. So far I have not had a problem with games, but I hope that they can put more RAM into a mobile system. (And then find some way to upgrade mine :) )
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
If you hadn't noticed, NVIDIA's cards (GeForce2 GTS, GeForce2 MX) are LESS expensive than the comparable ATI models (Radeon DDR 64MB, Radeon SDR 32MB) Not only that, but performance is mucho better.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Actually, the refresh rate of an Active Matrix screen is around 100hz (I think, at least it should be capable of that.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Good god. The average PC chews up about a high-power lightbulb or two's worth of power (My room as a 200W halogen bulb). If you can afford a PC, you can afford the electricity to run it. (around $20 a year)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
3 years ago, the fastest chip on the market was a PII300. At a $1200 pricetag no less.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You know, given how well most laptops could handle 3d games, but for the non-availability of gaming chipsets, I sense a market for upgrades.
I mean, ever laptop made in the last 2-3 years has had CardBus (32bit, 33Mhz PCMCIA) and ZoomedVideo (direct write from PC-Card to vidram) support - what's stopping the production of a PC-Card 3d accelerator for PC laptops? (I understand there was one for Powerbooks a few years back).
I'd drop $300 on such an accelerator for my laptop.
Just one data point,
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Why in god's named you turn APM off?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Battery life.
How about a video chipset that consumes less than one watt of power? Wouldn't *that* make more sense?
Out of all the world's laptops, how many are *really* being used primarily for 3D video games?
Out of all the world's laptops, how many are *really* being used for wordprocessing, spreadsheets, e-mail and other simple data processing?
Right. So why, oh why, do the dumb knobs keep focusing on stupid things like clockspeed, 3d video, dvd players and shit like that?
How about a nice 200MHz ultra-low-power CPU with a nice fast-refresh, accelerated 2D video card with rock-solid drivers; a nice, low-power hard drive; a good 128Mb of low-power memory; and a ultra-hi-res screen (one of IBM's 200dpi ones!) with a super-reflective backplane that reduces the need for backlighting?
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Doh!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
When I was in Viet Nam, I inserted more than my "video card" into the Vietnamese. I even used SCSI
Read the article...
It says that Toshiba will sell A machine with this chip (the Satellite models)
Available on Q1 2001
Hetz (Heunique)
Laptops already get pretty hot, I assume that with the lower power consumption they also solved the heat issues with their chipset, as there's little to no room for a heatsink, much less a fan.
Finally we'll have quality 3D acceleration on a laptop running linux. Combined with the nvidia drivers (ok, so they're not open source, but closed source is better than no source), one can finally have a decently fast setup.
The ATI cards seem to work fine, but have always been lacking in the performance area.
The point is that LCDs are getting better all the time and that that blur is as much the fault of the cheapass vid cards they put in laptops as the fault of a a LCD problem. So this will help and it will be very cool.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
like 3DFX does. I love my 3DFX cards, but the new cards just didn't deliver.
Later that day, I hooked up the tower to a monitor and proceeded to play Q3 and Unreal Tournament during my study hall and PC Practicum class. My friend even tried out Q3 and a little Q2.
Now, if I had a laptop with the GF2Go in it, I could've carried 20 pounds less of equipment (I lugged around the tower, keyboard, and mouse; I found a monitor wherever I could). For E3/COMDEX reps, this means the difference between a good impression and a questionable impact.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Of course, if you're computer is less than 4 years, old, its sucking up 10w for 2/3s of the day. (Unless you use it more than 8h/day) So immediatly, your figure of 140 drops to ~50. Then you factor in the fact that you probably don't use it every day, and you've got ~40 or so. So, I underballed it, the actual figure is more like 80-something under your usage load. For me however (maybe, 3-4 hours at most) with a lesser set of monitors, the cost should be around $30 or so.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I don't know about most people here, but that mobile GeForce chip is still more powerful than most of the desktop graphics chips being sold today. Now I for one wouldn't mind having it in my machine, without requiring any fan or heatsink on the graphics card, which has been the problem recently.
Still, this will make one powerful laptop, although destined more for the power laptop (mostly plugged into an external power supply) rather than the mobile laptop (low power requirements from battery). Don't expect to see one of these in a Transmeta powered laptop soon. Maybe a die reduced ATI mobile chip will make it there, where power consumption is the priority and killer 3D graphics are less important.
In a year or so these chips will be amazing. 0.13 micron
You obviously haven't used a laptop manufactured in the last 4 years. Things have gotten much better. My nice 15 inch TFT display has zero blur.
And yes, I would love to be able to play some of the latest 3D games on my laptop. As it is right now, Quake (the original) is just playable on my crappy, supposedly 3D excelerated ATI Rage 'mobile' chipset.
-josh
40 fps. Is that a trick question?
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Out of all the world's laptops, how many are *really* being used for wordprocessing, spreadsheets, e-mail and other simple data processing?
Right. So why, oh why, do the dumb knobs keep focusing on stupid things like clockspeed, 3d video, dvd players and shit like that?
Well you obviously have a point that a laptop oriented to the business world will generate more revenue, but that's simply because that business world has more cash to spend on such things. The reason that no laptops are primarily used for 3D is that there are no laptops suitable to gaming. Just ask anyone who ever tried to get a reasonably hightech 3D gaming going on a laptop. Seeing as the games industry just keeps growing (it eclipsed the movie industry quite a while ago already), I can see how a laptop with decent 3D support finds its market both with developers and gamers..
With the release of the GeForce 2 Ultra, NVidia's fastest "gamer" board is now faster than their fastest "pro" board. There's no Quadro product corresponding to the GeForce 2 Ultra. It's not clear if the Ultra is crippled, like the older models, to maintain the gamer/pro distinction. Does anybody know for sure? (Asking NVidia and ELSA (the last remaining Quadro board maker, now essentially a unit of NVidia) produced no useful response.)
In any case, it's very clear that the gamer/pro distinction has very little life left in it. The low-end chips are now better than high end stuff of two years ago. The high end guys don't get enough sales volume to pay for the IC design needed to keep up. So most of the pro-only graphics board companies have dropped out.
Low pwoer is great. But ATI didn't win because they had the lowest pwoer consumption of any of the options. They won because those chips they sold to motherboard makers were dirt cheap while (barely) 3D capabale and not a total off-brand.
This is the first really exciting product announcment of Fall Comdex '00 thus far, though Comdex doesn't officially kick-off till tomorrow morning.
.18 micron manufacturing process
The actual figures that pertain to the GeForce2 Go chipset are not that impressive off the bat, especially when compared with Nvidia's GeForce2 and GeForce2 Ultra products. However, one must keep in mind that this chipset is aimed at the mobile market, and its performance is truly geared in that direction. For instance, Nvidia has tried to reduce the power consumption of their chip, making for increased battery life of the overall mobile system.
Heres a feature list:
---------------------
Built on a
Based on the GeForce2 core
143/166MHz (core/memory) speed
17.2 million triangles per second
4 Texels/clock
286Mpixel/s, 572 Mtexel/s, 2.6GB/s memory bandwidth
0.8watts typical power consumption, 2.4watts maximum power consumption
AGP 4x support, with FastWrites
HD Video Processor/DVD decode
Nvidia Shading Raserizer (NSR)
TwinView & Digital Vibrance Control
32/64/128-bit SDR/DDR configurations
8 - 32MB of memory
Integrated dual-channel LVDs
I love my 'desktop replacement' laptop to death. Never mind the fact that it scorches my lap on long plane flights and cuts of circulation at my knees - I just can't go without the power of a full desktop. My one niggling complaint has always been 3D graphics performance, and it is good to see that a high end card manufacturer is finally taking this market segment seriously.
I don't game much, but it is a shame that you can buy the highest end laptop, pack it with a 30 Gig hard drive, 15 inch screen, 512 MB of RAM, and you still can't play Quake II at reasonable frame rates.
-josh
Yes, it is indeed totally pointless for business applications
And yes, relatively simple 3D games already run fine on the current chips.
But, have you ever tried to take your cutting edge 3D game, development tool, or engine to a tradeshow like ECTS or E3, to give a demonstration ? Currently, you can choose between either taking your full tower (right), a laptop with crappy 3D support, or a couple of demo CDs -- hoping for the best concerning publisher's hardware & driver uptodate-ness. A laptop with a cutting edge 3D chip with proper driver support would rock, which is exactly what NVidia has been delivering, save the "laptop" part.
Granted, it won't generate the revenue of a business model (well, maybe when VRML kicks off or something), but there are many (would-be) game developers waiting for this thing..
And about the screen part; when giving a demonstration a decent screen or even projector is usually available. It's the hardware+drivers that are the risk.