Nvidia Mulls Cheap, Integrated x86 Chip

CWmike writes "Nvidia is considering developing an integrated chip based on the x86 architecture for use in devices such as netbooks and mobile Internet devices, said Michael Hara, vice president of investor relations at Nvidia during a speech that was webcast from the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference this week. Nvidia has already developed an integrated chip called Tegra, which combines an Arm processor, a GeForce graphics core and other components on a single chip. The chips are aimed at small devices such as smartphones and MIDs, and will start shipping in the second half of this year. 'Tegra, by any definition, is a complete computer-on-chip, and the requirements of that market are such that you have to be very low power and very small but highly efficient,' Hara said. 'Someday, it's going to make sense to take the same approach in the x86 market as well.'"

Comments

Re:oh god, please no.

[aliquis]

Heh, funny that you mention it.

I run WC3 on my Macbook Pro 1.5 year old and I use 1024x768, medium, high, medium, high, high, on, on, high. So medium models and textures ...

And I agree, especially in this price range :D

Re:x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

x64 is a Microsoft marketing term. Please stop using it. The architecture is x86-64.

Re:oh god, please no.

[Anonymous Coward]

For what most people do though, Intel's integrated graphics are more than enough (and use less power than discrete cards on notebooks). Gamers are a niche market, especially for notebooks.

Re:oh god, please no.

[coxymla]

Any MacBook Pro ought to be able to slaughter WC3 at all full settings on the high resolution. Maybe not in the nv9400 mode (although I wouldn't be surprised if even that chip could handle the awesome power of a 4 year old game) on the latest unibody models, but still.

Are you sure that you're running a Universal Binary version? If not, then your CPU has to emulate PPC instructions. Get the latest updates from Blizzard and your experience should be a lot better.

Re:oh god, please no.

[slyn]

Um, wat? I have the same model you do (it's the santa rosa MBP with the 8600m GT yes?) and it has no problem running WC3 at full res and everything maxxed. Anything less and your computer probably has something wrong with it.

I can run WoW in dalaran (for those not familiar with the game, the busiest city) on a packed server or do a full 25 man raid with everything but view distance maxxed and view distance at around 1/3 of max and still average ~30+ FPS. If I go any higher on distance I need to lower most other settings, as I think thats when all the various armor/player/model/building/etc textures start causing the 256 mb of graphics ram to have to swap out and things start getting shitty. WC3 is much less graphically intense than that even if you've got two huge armies going at it.

Maybe an early sign of this: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377

I got that but Apple fixes it for free warranty or not since its Nvidia's manufacturing problem (my understanding is its the same problem (conceptually) as the RRoD only on your laptop).

Re:Well, that is what netbooks do

[zdzichu]

Dude, external PCIe is available in laptop for years, it is called ExpressCard. And suprise, it's even used for external graphics: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vidock-expresscard-graphics,1933.html