The folks at iFixit are braver souls than us, taking on NVIDIA’s tank-like new gaming handheld, the Shield, in a teardown. Shield’s cavernous shell houses a mess of multicolored parts, and hilariously reveals its Batman mask-esque properties when freed of said parts. Though it certainly doesn’t look like an easy process, the repair site offers a six out of 10 rating; it specifically cites the battery and screen as being tricky to replace.
NVIDIA’s Shield was a big surprise at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show — CEO Jen-Hsun Huang showed up with the device on-stage during his company’s press briefing, where he used it to demonstrate the just unveiled Tegra 4 processor. We finally got our hands on the final retail version earlier this month and you can find the full review right here. Consumers can also finally purchase the $300 handheld as of yesterday.
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The MacBook Air’s integrated graphics all but rule it out as a serious gaming machine. However, Larry Gadea at the Tech Inferno forums has found a way to make the Air a powerhouse through an ad hoc external GPU. His design mates a PCI Express video card to the Mac’s Thunderbolt port through a combination of two adapters, a Boot Camp installation of Windows 7 and third-party software. The performance improvement is appropriately dramatic, leading to frame rates up to seven times faster than what Intel’s HD 5000 can manage. Just don’t expect to buy a pre-assembled version anytime soon — the peripheral needs a desktop-class power supply just to run, and Intel won’t issue the licenses needed to commercialize Thunderbolt GPUs. If you’re absolutely determined to get a Crysis-worthy ultraportable, though, you’ll find Gadea’s instructions at the source link.
Delivered in NVIDIA SHIELD is the first full-fledged mobile device crossover into the desktop gaming universe. SHIELD is an Android-based physical gaming controller with its own clamshell hinge-attached display, powered by NVIDIA’s newest mobile processor, stepping up as what the company claims is the world’s most powerful mobile gaming device. With NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 SoC
NVIDIA Shield is a truly strange device. It combines an eight-button console-size gamepad with dual analog sticks, and a 5-inch “multi-touch, retinal” screen. It runs stock Android 4.2.1. It touts wireless PC game streaming as its main selling point. It plays Android games, it plays PC games, it does the Twitter and the Gmail, et cetera. With Shield, NVIDIA is aiming to be the Swiss Army Knife of handheld game consoles. It slices! It dices! ShamWOW!
It also costs $300, weighs nearly 1.5 pounds and takes up quite a bit of bag space. Its main selling point — PC game streaming — is dependent on the user already owning a PC with a relatively fancy ($140) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 GPU or better. Let’s be honest, though: you already know this stuff, right? If you’re reading this review, you either already own all the necessary gear and wanna know if this is a worthwhile peripheral for your PC, or you’re morbidly curious about NVIDIA’s (admittedly bizarre) console experiment. Let’s all head below and try to find satisfaction.
Update: We’ve added our full review video below — please excuse the lateness! We ran into some technical glitches on our end, but the tribbles have all been eradicated.
It’s a frankenstein monster of efforts, this computing rig appearing this afternoon, one that connects a MacBook Air to graphics it has no business running on its own – but certainly has the ability to roll with, it would seem. This amalgamation of bits and pieces starts with a Thunderbolt to Express Card adapter, moving on then to an ExpressCard to PCI-Express adapter, then connecting in the end to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 graphics card. This beast then – after all that – brings what very much appears to be a high-end gaming experience to the Apple notebook.
The only caveat – other than an exposed set of fans, if you don’t wrap it all up – is the fact that you’ve got to use Apple’s Boot Camp to run Windows to make this all happen. Inside Boot Camp, Windows can bring the driver requirements needed to work with this high-powered graphics card, and the adapters seem to do the rest!
This setup is able to be plugged and unplugged with ease, making the MacBook Air an at-home beast of graphics delivery when you’re sitting down, a mobile computer as it’s marketed as when you’re not in the mood for gaming.
“You’ll get faster performance with an external monitor, but you’ll lose the convenience of not needing a giant monitor. This becomes relevant as people make better eGPU cases where your eGPU will be portable. Why bring a monitor to your friend’s place when your laptop already has one?” – Larry Gadea
Larry Gadea is the creator of this rig, and his original post to the Tech Inferno forums has more details on benchmarks and build options than you’ll ever care to sift through. Instead you’ll probably just want to kick this rig out yourself.
Meanwhile we’re reveling in the fact that someone saw things similar to Chris Davie’s column from earlier this year: Dear Apple, here’s what I want from the new Thunderbolt Display, complete with display-based GPU. Keep it powerful, and Apple – keep considering it!
This week NVIDIA SHIELD launches, bringing the company’s vision for a high-powered mobile gaming device to the market with a console-quality physical controller attached to a flip-up display with Android under the hood. This machine will be shipping to customers who preordered this device starting Wednesday, while in-store availability also starts its spread this week at locations like GameStop, Microcenter, and Canada Computer. You’ll be seeing SlashGear’s full review soon, as well.
This device works with a 5-inch “retinal-quality” multi-touch display which flips up in clamshell fashion from a controller full of buttons. This device works with two custom-tuned bass reflex audio-pumping speakers, and users will have full access to Google Play for media, apps, and games.
NVIDIA SHIELD works with a massive number of Android games, NVIDIA providing a list of 100+ games compatible with the physical controls of this device right out of the box. You’ll be working with both wired and wireless connectivity options for projecting the content of SHIELD’s display as well, these including a mini-HDMI port on its back, Miracast wireless display mirroring, and PC streaming.
PC streaming remains in Beta at the moment, but will be pulled up to full strength sooner than later. This connectivity allows SHIELD to play full-powered PC games while synced with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPU-toting gaming computer over a Wi-fi connection. Below you’ll see our most recent demo with PC streaming, while above you’re seeing a bit of Android gaming from our first NVIDIA SHIELD hands-on and unboxing.
This device will be rolling out for $299 this week and will be coming out in a Wi-fi-only form. There’s just one internal storage size: 16GB, and you get a microSD card slot to expand all the way up to 64GB if you wish. Stay tuned for SlashGear’s big run-down, sooner than later!
Like the look of Digital Storm’s VELOCE gaming notebook, but have strong loyalties with another system builder? Don’t worry — Origin PC has just announced another gaming rig with the exact same chassis: the EON13-S. The similarity is no coincidence, both models are based on the 13.3-inch Clevo W230ST, carefully branded and customized by each company.
Origin’s twist on the laptop includes a 4th Generation Intel Core processor, NVIDIA GTX 765M graphics and up to three storage devices. The company didn’t announce specifics, but Clevo’s own product page outs Intel’s 2.8GHz i7-4900MQ, 2.70GHz i7-4800MQ and 2.40GHz i7-4700MQ chips as possible options. The base model also supports up to 16GB of RAM, though its Digital Storm variant tops out at 8GB. Naturally, Origin says that many of these elements will be customizable and upgradable, with the most frugal configuration ringing in at $1,474. Additionally, customers that order before August 5th can score free overclocking and a gratis Corsair M95 mouse. Not bad, if you’re looking for tiny gaming machine. Check out the company’s official press release after the break.
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
