nvidia

Nvidia's fortunes took a turn for the worse during the quarter, as slowing sales plus faulty products never add up to anything good.

The company announced Wednesday that revenue and gross margins for its second quarter will come in below its own projections, blaming a delay in the ramp of a new product, price cuts prompted by competitive pressures, and a general economic malaise. Analysts were expecting revenue of around $1.1 billion, but revenue now will be just $875 million to $900 million for its second quarter, which ends on July 27.

And then on top of that, … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices' bet on a new approach to graphics chip design appears to be paying off, according to analyst Jon Peddie. This could put AMD's ATI graphics chip unit on top again--or at least on equal footing with Nvidia, the graphics leader over the last few years.

Peddie heads Tiburon, Calif.-based Jon Peddie Research, which specializes in graphics chip market research.

Test reports on AMD's and Nvidia's newest graphics chips are pouring in. Both companies are racking up good scores. (See Diamond Viper Radeon HD 4850 review here.)

But beyond the day-to-day test scores, AMD'… Read more

The Linux Foundation is trying to push Nvidia to make its graphics drivers more accessible. The Foundation's beef: closed drivers make Linux look unstable to end users.

Though a statement issued Monday does not cite Nvidia by name, Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board Chair James Bottomley cited Nvidia in a phone interview. "My intent is to point out the problems Nvidia has been causing themselves with their binary-only (drivers)," he said. "They are certainly one of the few companies sticking to a binary-only strategy." Binary-only means the drivers are essentially closed.

"We...consider any … Read more

Our entertainment systems have evolved from black and white to color, from fuzzy 480i to ultraclear 1080p, from mono to 7.1 surround sound, from Sony's Betamax to Sony's Blu-ray--what's next you might say? With Mitsubishi's latest line of televisions, the company has stuck out its leg into the elusive realm of 3D; that is, 3D with the glasses and stereoscopic display.

You'll notice from the image above that Mitsubishi's display isn't using the traditional 3D headgear. Old '50s era black-and-white movies used what's called an anaglyph display, which simply means … Read more

Nvidia has posted a video that involves the new GTX 280 chip, overclocking, lots of liquid nitrogen, and the Nvidia labs. Oh, and no quad-core processor. Get the point?

"A lot of people believe you need an Intel quad-core or Intel quad-core Extreme to build an extreme PC," says the post by "Steffee" on the Nvidia Web site. "Today I'm going to build a gaming PC using the Intel Core 2 Duo. That's duo. Got that? Duo, two cores."

I think the point the blogger is trying to make is that the … Read more

We've come to expect these cunningly timed product announcements from Nvidia every time AMD announces a new Radeon graphics card, and it looks like with the GeForce 9800GTX+, Nvidia is right in step in anticipation of next week's official Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 launches.

Unlike Nvidia's $650 GeForce GTX280, which debuted last week, AMD has been content going after the lucrative $200 to $450 price range with its Radeon graphics cards the past few years. Next week's Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 continue that pattern. Neither is going to compete as a standalone … Read more

Nvidia has announced it will release a graphics chip that matches Advanced Micro Device's manufacturing process--an advantage that the latter has often touted.

The Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+, announced Thursday, is made on a 55-nanometer process. Current Nvidia processors--including the just-released GTX 200 series--are made on a slightly "fatter" 65nm process. AMD has moved most of its graphics chips to a 55nm process.

Typically, the smaller the process, the more energy-efficient a processor is. Smaller processes also typically offer better performance. Tech Web site PC Perspective has photos showing that the chip package is smaller than a … Read more

Brighter, crisper images are the goal for top Intel researchers in their work on future graphics technology.

I talked Wednesday with Intel's Jerry Bautista, the co-director of the Tera-scale computing research program, and Daniel Pohl, an Intel researcher. I focused mostly on a concept called ray tracing but also questioned them about Intel's upcoming Larrabee processor.

First, some background. Ray tracing--whether you agree or disagree about its viability--has been a fairly hot topic. It has been mentioned frequently by Intel over the last six months. An Intel blog titled "Real Time Ray-Tracing: The End of Rasterization?" and later comments by Intel executives that the company is looking at doing ray tracing on its processors set the stage for debate on the viability of ray tracing in mainstream gaming.

Ray tracing is a technique for rendering three-dimensional graphics using complex light interactions, allowing the creation of extremely detailed reflective surfaces, for example, with stunning photorealistic results.

In the future, ray tracing may compete with today's traditional raster-based graphics used in games running on Nvidia and AMD-ATI graphics processors. Intel claims ray tracing runs better on general-purpose processors, such as its Core 2 Quad processors, than on traditional graphics processors. Ray tracing may also run on future processors such as Larrabee.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini alluded to this at a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Strategic Decisions Conference last month. Asked who Intel's major future competitors are, Otellini responded, "In graphics, as we move up the food chain, we're bouncing into ATI via AMD and Nvidia more than we used to. And I don't expect that to abate anytime soon." … Read more

If you've gone video card shopping online lately, you may have noticed that you certain retailers are now asking you to click through to your shopping cart to see a price for Nvidia-based 3D graphics cards. As H Enthusiast reported earlier this week, that newly inconvenient shopping experience is part of a calculated effort by Nvidia to regulate the advertised pricing of its 3D cards.

The gist is that Nvidia is conducting a test run of this pricing scheme, and if online retailers like NewEgg, Buy.com, and others don't comply, they will face a series of penalties, … Read more