Acer launches first NVIDIA Ion-based nettop: AspireRevo

Yet again, the rumors were (almost) true. A day earlier than anticipated, Acer is launching what amounts to NVIDIA’s first Ion-based nettop beyond those on display at CES and the like. The AspireRevo is debuting today alongside a plethora of other Acer wares, boasting a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 processor, up to 4GB of RAM, up to 250GB of HDD space, a 4-in-1 card reader, HDMI / VGA outputs, gigabit Ethernet, six USB 2.0 sockets, audio in / out, Windows Vista Home Premium / Basic and a svelte black and white enclosure that measures just 7.1- x 7.1- x 1.2-inches. The built-in Ion GPU means that this bugger is completely capable of handling 1080p (and thus, Blu-ray) content, DirectX 10 and even mildly demanding games such as Call of Duty 4 and Spore. Acer’s staying mum on a price and release date, but we’re still hearing that the late Q2 time frame is a safe bet. Check the full release just past the break.

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Acer launches first NVIDIA Ion-based nettop: AspireRevo originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: 23 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295s packed into one system, “overkill” exemplified

Ha, and you thought paying hundreds of dollars for a NIC was insane. For one reason or another (likely “another”), AtlasFolder has loaded in 23 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 graphics cards into a single server rig, and while only 17 were installed at the time of this video (he’s waiting for a few nuts and bolts before installing the others), we’re already amazed. Call us crazy, but something such is this definitely isn’t what NVIDIA had in mind when it revived SLI. Per usual, the vid’s past the break.

[Thanks, P]

Update: Turns out this is a GPU Folding Farm at Stanford. Impressive.

Continue reading Video: 23 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295s packed into one system, “overkill” exemplified

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Video: 23 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295s packed into one system, “overkill” exemplified originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA GTX 275 / ATI Radeon HD 4890 review roundup

Unless you’ve started your weekend early, you have probably realized that both NVIDIA and AMD announced new GPUs this morning. Coincidental timing aside, it sure makes things easy for the consumer to eye the respective benchmarks and plan out their next mid-range GPU purchase accordingly. A whole bevy of reviews, tests, graphs and bar charts have hit the web this morning extolling and panning the pros and cons, but without getting too deep in the nitty-gritty, we can sum things up pretty easily with this. NVIDIA’s GTX 275 showed performance that placed it perfectly between the GTX 285 and GTX 260, and in all but a few off-the-wall tests, it outpaced the ATI Radeon HD 4890 (albeit slightly). Granted, the HD 4890 was called the “fastest, single-GPU powered graphics card AMD has ever produced” by HotHardware, though apparently even that wasn’t enough to help it snag the gold across the board. If you’re hungry for more (and you are, trust us), take the rest of the day off and dig in below.

Read – HotHardware GeForce GTX 275 review
Read – HotHardware Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – ExtremeTech GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – DailyTech GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – X-bit Labs ATI Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – ComputerShopper ATI Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – Guru 3D GeForce GTX 275 review
Read – Guru 3D ATI Radeon HD 4890 review
Read – PCPerspective ATI Radeon HD 4890 review

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NVIDIA GTX 275 / ATI Radeon HD 4890 review roundup originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel to officially refresh laptop chips next week?

We had a hunch this refresh was coming, and according to information gathered by CNET, it’s all going down on Monday. The 2.53GHz SP9600, complete with its 6MB of cache memory and $316 sticker, will reportedly be revealed alongside the 1.6GHz SU9600, which will be pegged at $289. Furthermore, we should see a single-core 1.4GHz SU3500 ($262) with a thermal envelope of only 5.5 watts, which will obviously cater to those really, really low-power applications where horsepower isn’t a concern. Interestingly, these newfangled pieces of silicon won’t be those rumored CULV chips we heard about in January, as those won’t be good and ready ’til summertime. There’s also a slight chance that we’ll hear a bit more on Intel’s reemergence in the GPU field, but we’re not holding our breath quite so much on that. Dig in below for lots more, or just be patience and wait for the 30th. Totally your call.

Read
– Intel CPU details
Read – Intel GPU details

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Intel to officially refresh laptop chips next week? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ATI’s 1GB FirePro V7750 GPU pushes serious pixels for pros

Earlier this month, AMD popped out a 512MB ATI FirePro 2450 quad-display card, but if that’s just not pro enough for your professional needs, have a gander at the company’s FirePro V7750. Sporting 1GB of GDDR3 frame-buffer memory, a 30-bit display pipeline and twin DisplayPort connectors + one dual-link DVI socket, this workstation powerhouse also features High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering with 8-bit, 10-bit and 16-bit-per-RGB color component support. You’ll also get 320 stream processing units, full Shader Model 4.1 support for vertex and pixel shaders and a unified video decoder for H.264, AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2 video formats. Show your CAD who’s boss for just $899.

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ATI’s 1GB FirePro V7750 GPU pushes serious pixels for pros originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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17-inch MBP fan / overheating issues causing GeForce 9600M to bug out?

Oh, brother. We can already tell this one’s going to be a fun, enjoyable journey to follow. Shortly after Apple’s 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro began making its way out to early adopters, small legions of owners have reported all sorts of bizarre graphical glitches. While we first assumed that it was NVIDIA’s GeForce 9600M causing all the mayhem, further investigation has led us to believe that faulty fan controls could be the culprit. Granted, all of this is just speculatory at the moment, but it seems that some users have noticed that their fans aren’t kicking into high gear when they should. ‘Course, some folks have seen those RPMs spin up while the funky lines and psychedelic colors remain, so it’s still hard to pinpoint a definite root cause. We’re told that folks from NVIDIA and Apple are spending their weekends working to figure it out, but we can’t help but be reminded of an eerily similar string of events with overheating MacBook Airs just last year. Hopefully a fix will be out soon; till then, just pretend those erratic colors are some new curative feature.

Read – Fan grumbling
Read – More discussions

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17-inch MBP fan / overheating issues causing GeForce 9600M to bug out? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA intros GeForce GTX 280M / 260M and GTS 160M / 150M laptop GPUs

It’s a big day here in Germany for NVIDIA, as it has chosen CeBIT to announce four new mobile GPUs. Without question, the biggest newcomer is the GeForce GTX 280M, which NVIDIA claims is “the fastest laptop GPU on the market, with up to 50 percent more performance than previous generation enthusiast laptop GPUs.” The company is also pushing out the somewhat less exciting GeForce GTX 260M, GTS 160M and GTS 150M, all of which feature the company’s own CUDA compiling architecture and support PhysX gaming effects. ASUS, Clevo and MSI are all showcasing lappies based on the new GeForce GTX 200M and GeForce GTS 100M Series GPUs here in Hannover, though there’s no word on when any of those mysterious machines will ship to drooling consumers.

[Via HotHardware]

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NVIDIA intros GeForce GTX 280M / 260M and GTS 160M / 150M laptop GPUs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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S3 crams DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI onto $70 Chrome 540 GTX

While the future seems bright for DisplayPort, it’s still tough to find a GPU out there with a DisplayPort socket — and the search becomes increasingly difficult when hunting one down that’s affordable. Enter S3, who is expanding its Chrome 500 series with the Chrome 540 GTX. Hailed as the “world’s most connected high-def card,” this PCI Express card boasts 256MB of GDDR3 memory, compatibility with DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0, support for Blu-ray playback and a trifecta of interfaces: DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. The best part? It comes bundled with WinDVD 8 for BD playback and can be procured today for the low, low price of $69.95.

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S3 crams DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI onto $70 Chrome 540 GTX originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA Quadro NVS 420 GPU brings powerhouse graphics to SFF rigs

NVIDIA’s Quadro NVS 420 is quite the unique offering — on one hand, it’s rather intriguing that a workstation card has been whittled down to fit within a small form factor PC, but then again, who else outside of advertisers (and their digital signage applications) will even need it? Nevertheless, said card is the industry’s only low-profile professional GPU that can sneak within SFF PCs and still power four 30-inch displays at 2,560 x 1,600 resolution via DisplayPort / dual-link DVI. As for specs, it’s boasting 512MB of memory, 11.2GB/sec (per GPU) of memory bandwidth and a CUDA Parallel Computing Processor. It’ll be available next month for the niche that needs it at $499.

[Via HotHardware]

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NVIDIA Quadro NVS 420 GPU brings powerhouse graphics to SFF rigs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD talks up mildly ambiguous graphics supercomputer

It’s not entirely clear what the purpose of AMD‘s newest supercomputer is, but it’s pretty safe to say that the company is making it out to be something better than it is. All harshness aside, the so-called Fusion Render Cloud will reportedly be the planet’s fastest graphics supercomputer. It sounds like the machine will be good for farming out tasks, and more specifically, for “real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale.” Evidently AMD’s hoping that gaming firms tap into the beast in order to develop and deploy next-generation game content, so that probably means it’s worthless for you. But hey, it sounds awesome, right?

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AMD talks up mildly ambiguous graphics supercomputer originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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