NVIDIA pulls 196.75 driver amid reports it’s frying graphics cards

One of the discussions that arise anytime we bring up a new graphics card from ATI or NVIDIA is about which company has the better drivers. Well, this should help sway the argument a little bit. It would seem StarCraft II Beta players were among the first to notice low frame rates while using the latest drivers from NVIDIA, and further digging has uncovered that the automated fan-controlling part of said firmware was failing to act as intended. The result? Overheated chips, diminished performance, and in some extreme cases, death (of the GPU, we think the users will be okay). The totality of it is that you should avoid the 196.75 iteration like the plague, and NVIDIA has temporarily yanked the update while investigating the reported issues. Shame that the company hasn’t got any warnings up on its site to tell those who’ve installed the update but haven’t yet nuked their graphics card to roll back their drivers, but that’s what you’ve got us for, right?

[Thanks, Shockie]

NVIDIA pulls 196.75 driver amid reports it’s frying graphics cards originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 leaks out with Fermi on board

Well well, what’s this? After months of whispers and small leaks, it seems the Fermi-powered NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 is starting to leak out into the wild before it launches on the 26th. Obviously the pictures don’t tell us much about performance, but we can tell you that you’ll need a serious power supply to juice this thing up — and a serious fan to cool it down. We’ll see how the GTX 480 and little brother 470 stack up against ATI’s latest when they finally arrive, but for now hit the read link for a few more shots.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 leaks out with Fermi on board originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mio’s Tegra-powered Moov V780 puts maps, 720p video, and the interwebs on dashboards

We’re not suggesting playing a 720p vid while at the wheel, but Mio’s Moov V780 — or “premium PND,” as they call it — sure is a jack of all trades. We spent sometime playing around with the 7-inch tablet at the company’s CeBIT press conference and came away surprisingly impressed with the entire experience. It’s tapered edges and smooth plastic back remind us a lot of the Dell Mini 5, though Mio’s gone with a NVIDIA Tegra chip (we were told Tegra 2, but our friends at jkkmobile sneaked a peak at the device’s console and discovered it was apparnetly rocking the progenitor Tegra chip, at least on the show floor) and created a nice 3D user interface on top of Windows CE. Though it doesn’t support multitouch, the capacitive screen made flicking through the coverflow-like interface a breeze and the virtual keyboard was a pleasure — those who wish to use the device to fire off e-mails can always pick up the carrying case pictured above. So yes, overall we definitely like the Moov V780 and its Internet tablet/PND capabilities… but not enough to pay the 599 euros the company expects to sell it for. Perhaps the video below will convince you, but for now we’ll be waiting for this one to drop in price when it starts shipping this summer.

Continue reading Mio’s Tegra-powered Moov V780 puts maps, 720p video, and the interwebs on dashboards

Mio’s Tegra-powered Moov V780 puts maps, 720p video, and the interwebs on dashboards originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zotac’s ZBOX HD-ID11 has NVIDIA Ion 2 and Atom D510 to thank for excellent media playback (updated)

Like gaming? Move right along to the iBuyPower booth, please. Want an unobtrusive PC that will feed your Hulu and YouTube HD streaming addiction? Say hello to the ZBOX HD-ID11. It’s basically a desktop version of the same Ion 2 setups you saw announced on the mobile front yesterday, and as such should provide flawless Flash 10.1 playback while occupying an extremely lean footprint on your desktop. Zotac has matched MSI’s Wind Box DE220 with its inclusion of a dual-core 1.66GHz Atom D510 CPU, though it obviously differs with its NVIDIA Ion 2 graphics subsystem that includes 512MB of dedicated DDR3 memory. HDMI 1.3a and standard VESA wall-mounting are expected extras, with six USB ports, integrated 802.11n WiFi, dual-link DVI, and a 6-in-1 media card reader covering the rest of your bases. Check out some 1080p playback on a similarly specced system right here while you wait for pricing and availability to be revealed.

Update: We’ve heard directly from Zotac on the matter of pricing and we’re told that the American MSRP will be $209.99 for the barebones edition, which will require you to add your own hard drive, memory and OS.

Zotac’s ZBOX HD-ID11 has NVIDIA Ion 2 and Atom D510 to thank for excellent media playback (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA’s Optimus technology shows its graphics switching adroitness on video

Explaining automatic graphics switching and the benefits thereof can be a somewhat dry affair. You have to tell people about usability improvements and battery life savings and whatnot… it’s much more fun if you just take a nice big engineering board, strap the discrete GPU on its own card and insert an LED light for the viewer to follow. NVIDIA has done just that with its Optimus technology — coming to a laptop or Ion 2-equipped netbook near you — and topped it off by actually pulling out the GPU card when it wasn’t active, then reinserting it and carrying on with its use as if nothing had happened. This was done to illustrate the fact that Optimus shuts down the GPU electrically, which is that little bit more energy efficient than dropping it into an idle state. Shimmy past the break to see the video.

Continue reading NVIDIA’s Optimus technology shows its graphics switching adroitness on video

NVIDIA’s Optimus technology shows its graphics switching adroitness on video originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer’s H5360 and X1261 projectors take it to the third dimension

You know who else is firmly situated on the 3D bandwagon? Acer. This fine morning the outfit has busted out two new beamers, both of which are eager and willing to be paired with NVIDIA’s 3D Vision setup for viewing in the third dimension. Outside of that, neither one is particularly awe-inspiring, but if you’ve got a 3D Blu-ray player on the brain, you might need one of these to fully complete the nerded-out basement experiment. Up first is the H5360, offering a native 1,280 x 720 resolution, a 3,200:1 contrast ratio, 2,500 ANSI lumens and an HDMI socket. The lower-end X1261 gets a lowly XGA resolution, a similar amount of brightness and a component video port. Check ’em real, real soon for $699 and $579 in order of mention, and hop on past the break for the rest of the details.

Continue reading Acer’s H5360 and X1261 projectors take it to the third dimension

Acer’s H5360 and X1261 projectors take it to the third dimension originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA Ion 2 now official; Acer, ASUS and Lenovo at the ready

NVIDIA’s Ion 2 chipset — or “the next generation of Ion” as the company clunkily calls it — hasn’t exactly been a secret, but NVIDIA is finally signing on the dotted line and giving up the deets on the new Intel Atom-compatible graphics chipset. It hasn’t been a secret that Ion 2 uses NVIDIA’s new Optimus GPU switching tech to automatically toggle between the Pineview chipset’s integrated GMA 3150 and a discrete NVIDIA Ion GPU, but we can now confirm that both the 16-core Ion chip for desktops and eight-core unit for netbooks are based on the GeForce G210 GPU. That means Ion 2 should support HDMI out, 1080p Blu-ray and Flash playback, Windows 7 Home Premium, and mainstream gaming out of the box. (Take that, Broadcom Crystal HD.) And unlike Ion numero uno, NVIDIA’s also promising up to 10 hours of battery life on netbooks — thanks to Optimus the system knows when to shut off the discrete GPU when not in use to save power.

How about some actual systems? While the Acer Aspire 532G netbook already popped up at MWC, NVIDIA is promising 30 more Ion netbooks, nettops and all-in-ones before the summer. To kick it off, NVIDIA confirmed that ASUS will update its Eee PC 1201PN netbook, Eee Top 2010P, and Eee Box with the new graphics solution, while Lenovo’s C200 and Acer’s Aspire Revo will also get in on the action. We got to see the Revo strut some Blu-ray playback, so hit the break for some video footage and the full PR.

Continue reading NVIDIA Ion 2 now official; Acer, ASUS and Lenovo at the ready

NVIDIA Ion 2 now official; Acer, ASUS and Lenovo at the ready originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS Eee PC 1201PN and Eee Top 2010PNT with Ion 2 caught lounging around at CeBIT

You didn’t think ASUS would let Acer be the only one with a next-generation Ion netbook, did you? While wandering around ASUS’s CeBIT booth we couldn’t help but notice some new Ion 2 systems, including the 12.1-inch Eee PC 1201PN. With an identical chassis to the 1201N that we reviewed a few months back, the 1201PN swaps out the Diamondville Atom for a new Pine Trail N450 processor and a discrete NVIDIA GPU. We couldn’t figure out much more from the system properties, but the neighboring sign confirmed that Ion 2 would use NVIDIA’s Optimus to switch between the discrete and integrated GPU. Around the corner we also stumbled into that Eee Top 2010PNT we heard about awhile back, and just as rumored it packs a dual-core Atom D510 processor along its “next generation Ion.” Really more than anything we’re looking forward to testing the HD performance and battery life of these new Ion systems, but until then we’ll be stuck watching the video below of the 1201PN playing a 720p promo clip.

Continue reading ASUS Eee PC 1201PN and Eee Top 2010PNT with Ion 2 caught lounging around at CeBIT

ASUS Eee PC 1201PN and Eee Top 2010PNT with Ion 2 caught lounging around at CeBIT originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple rumored to be readying Mac mini with HDMI

A Mac mini with HDMI. Makes sense, right? Well, it hasn’t to Apple so far, but it looks like it just might be ready to change its tune. That’s according to AppleInsider, at least, which has it from “two people familiar with the matter” that prototypes of a Mac mini with an HDMI port have been seen making the rounds in the usual inner circles. At least one of those prototypes was also said to be based on NVIDIA’s MCP89 chipset, which means that any forthcoming Mac mini revision would pass over the latest Core i3, i5 and i7 processors in favor of older Core 2 Duos if it is indeed the chipset used in the final product. Unfortunately, there’s nothing more specific than “this year” in terms of a rumored release date, and this is still just one rumor about what would be a fairly big shift in Apple’s strategy — so, you know, keep that in mind before you start ripping apart your current HTPC setup.

Apple rumored to be readying Mac mini with HDMI originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA Optimus-equipped ASUS N61JV-X2, N71JV-X1 hit the US

Well, we’d heard the first NVIDIA Optimus-enabled laptops would roll out at the end of the month, and lo and behold, the first NVIDIA Optimus-enabled laptops have rolled out at the end of the month. Right now, those include ASUS’ N61JV-X2 and N71JV-X1 models, which are just the first of five laptops that will be available from the company, and each of which cost the same $900. That’ll get you a 16-inch screen and Core i5-430M processor on the N61JV-X2, or a 17.3-inch screen and a Core i3-350M processor on the N71JV-X1, along with the same switchable GeForce GT 325M graphics, 4GB of RAM, and 500GB hard drive on each of them. Still unclear on what NVIDIA has brought to the table with Optimus? Check out our hands-on for some more details and a few benchmarks.

NVIDIA Optimus-equipped ASUS N61JV-X2, N71JV-X1 hit the US originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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