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VIA and NVIDIA Working Together For PC Design
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."
Competition can't hurt. Now that we have Intel, AMD/ATI, and Nvidia/VIA all throwing their hat in the ring it will keep prices down and of course spur innovation considering its a race to the find the best technology. 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. Of course they were able to do that because AMD is so behind in the 45nm race.
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!
I am a big fan of the Nano. I think it has potential to be huge if it lives up to 1/2 of it's claims. I always cried thinking I would need to use the Chroma crap that Via Integrates. Nvidia Graphics on a Nano platform. Tiny little gaming boxes and notebooks. Dear lord, its nerd heaven! Media centers for the poor! I am buzzing with glee just thinking the possibilities. KUDOS!
I wouldn't really call this a merger. VIA is a processor maker and nvidia is a GPU maker obviously Nvidia's all-in-one chip wouldn't be viable on their own. VIA makes a lot cheaper and low power chips so for the purposes of this they have a leg up on intel. The whole point is you don't really need (or want for that matter) a fast, monster processor for a smart phone. But there could be obvious benefits to having a kickass video card....playing video. The same also applies to ultra portable laptops. Your not going to be using it for gaming (but you can if you want) but it's quite possible that your going to be watching on your ultra portable. Also the ability to output 1080p is insane.
:P).
Right now I just want to see Intel get off their high horse. Even though they haven't really done anything wrong and they are ahead for a reason (they made 45nm chips) I think that someone needs to keep intel in check and make sure they know that the only way for them stay ahead is to further their technology and provide good value (45nm chips are really good value
And yes three is not enough. Its never enough. Competition is good. You know why the margins on food are paper thin? Because their is a publix, wal-mart, target, albersons, and win-dixie in ever corner.
The major problem with CGI pron is that Uncanny Valley can take on a whole new meaning.
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 generic PCs which have crap graphics cards in them every year or two. YMMV, as always.
Hmmm, the old Mini-ITX format had multiple vendors (VIa, Intel, others) using it and right now the only vendor using Mini-ITX 2.0 is VIA-NVidia. How is this more open? And in what sense was Intel making the old standard less open -other than jumping into that market and doing well?
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.