GeForce G310 Fermi - Nvidia news! 2010

Nvidia has lost a lawsuit against OPti for a chipset technology and will be forced to pay, and perhaps even review the products they already have in the market. The judge has sentenced that Nivida used, without the required payment, an OPTi Inc technology from February, 1st, 2007 to April, 30th, 2008. For that reason, Nvidia will need to pay OPti $3.75 million, more exactly $750.000 per trimester.

The two companies had reached a license agreement on 2007, as a solution for a patent infringment that had been claimed by OPTi against NVidia on 2004. The agreement imposed Nvidia the payment of $750.000 in royalties, in case the company continued to use the technology, for up to twelve installments.

The patent in question, according to rumors, would be the PCI Prefetch from the chipset. Fudzilla affirms that Nvidia would now be forced to remove the feature from their chipset, and those include the versions from nForce 500 up to the more recent ones. Moreover, Nvidia would have to contact their partner in order to remove the BIOS with the PCI Prefetch code from the websites, and also develop “clean” BIOS for the current motherboards on the market.

Some rumors about a possible dual GPU solution by NVidia have been going around lately. Apparently, it would oppose the ATI HD 4870X2’s performance. Probably, the new dual GPU solution will be based on two GT200b chips, the 55nm version of the famous GT200.

Unfortunately, NVidia has been trying to prevent any information from slipping out, in order to preserve their future plans. It’s known that, other than the new 40nm architecture, the company is pushing harder on developing the CUDA and PhysX, and releasing no news about any other projects.

The main problem about the dual GPU solution is connected to the heat produced by the GT200. No other news on the dual GPU performance of the GT200b (54nm) is known at this point, but it is a problem that will have to be overcome, in case Nvidia decides to present a double GPU solution.

In the United states, many users have declared receiving a shipping notice for the MacBook Air units updated with the Nvidia chipset 9400M. Presented together with the new MacBook and Macbook pro, the first Air notebooks are now being delivered.

The MacBook air, even if it didn’t have the same attention as the MacBook and the MacBook pro, presents a series of new features, amongst them the chipset NVidia 9400M. The new chip Nvidia integrates the GPU and chipset functions in a single chip, amongst other features.

The delivery dates for Europe are still not clear. It was initially stated that the new MacBook Air units would be available at the end of October, but there’s still no official confirmation on it.

The next few months shold bring several news to the 3D graphics and videogames lovers that are watching curiouly the development in the GeForce line. The launch of a “refresh” version of the current top GPU GT200 is expected to come by the end of the year, while next year should mark the production of the first chips on 40nm and the first DirectX 11 solution.

The first step is called GT206 and it’s a graphic processor coming from the current GT200, but manufactured under a more refined process, on 55nm instead of 65nm. Other than the frequence, there shouldn’t be too many drastic changes, and from a architectural point of view, the product will be basically the same. The GT206’s arrival is expected by the end of the year, perhaps in time for the Christmas season.

After the GT206, there are plans for the GT212 and GT216 for next year, both of them manufactured with a new 40nm process. It seems that this manufacturing process can be implemented around June/July 2009. The GT212 and GT216 will interface with the memory through a larger bus than those used on the current GPU’s. They will also support GDDR5 memories, for the first time in an Nvidia card.

By the end of 2009, however, the GT300 should come, and with it, more noticeable changes. A completely redesigned architecture will indeed be the background for the first NVidia chip compatible with DirectX 11. And the biggest news about the GT300 should be the choice of ray tracing instead of “rasterizing” for the 3D graphics.

Nvidia won’t be cutting partners, but will reserve a special treatment to six companies, according to what has been reported by Fudzilla, that defines the choice as being “less radical, but aiming at the same goal”.

EVGA, PC Partner (Zotac), Asus, MSI, Palit and XFX will be treated with special attention from NVidia. “Better prices, delivery and anticipated design kits. It will be hard for any company outside this small circle to reach a good sales level”.

The objective would be, thus, to create a shield around the most reliable partners, allowing them to overcome with no problems the hard economic situation worldwide and the not-so-good sales estimatives on the Nvidia products.

Geforce 9400M is the newest motherboard GPU (chipset + graphics) that Nvidia launched on the new Apple MacBooks. Shortly after, they preented a new variant, destined for low-cost PC’s and a mobile version for notebooks, based on the Intel CPU’s.

The true protagonist is, however, the GeForce9400M, where the M stands for “mobile”, more specifically, the notebook version. Here are some of the strong points of this new nvidia solution:

Single Chip - the chipset and graphics are united in one package, which means less obstruction and the possibility of creating more compact “form factors”.
High performances - five times better than the Intel chipset graphics
Full DirectX 10 support - compatibility with the latest gaming and multimedia applications.

Many brands such as Acer, Asus HP and Dell have intentions of launching notebooks based on the GeForce 9400M. And estimates say that those portable computers will reach a significant market amount, up to 20% of all notebooks based on Intel CPU’s.

Asus has announced the new P5N7A-VM GeForce 9300 motherboard, based on the NVidia GeForce 9300 / nForce 730i chipset and featuring the LGA 775 socket for the Intel Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Quad / Core 2 Duo CPU’s. There will also be 4 DDR2 800 / 667 dual channel memory slots for a maximum of 16 GB.

Thanks to the GeForce 9300 chipset and the integrated graphic core, the motherboard supports the Hybrid SLI, CUDA and PhysX technologies, and it’s compatible with the DirectX 10 applications. Also part of the feeatures, VGA connectors, HDMI, DisplayPort and DVI.

Of course, the P5N7A-VM GeForce 9300 motherboard also has exclusive ASUS features such as the ASUS Express Gate, that allows for a quick Operational System start with basic features such as web browsing, email management and IM. Another exclusive feature is the EPU technology for energy savings.

The biggest motherboard manufacturers are working on having a SLI system on an Intel X58 chipset motherboard. The first ones will be ASUS, EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte and DFI, which, according to nVidia’s announcements, have intentions of using the NVIDIA SLI technology on their own motherboards with the new Intel X58 chipset, designed to work with the Intel Core i7 and Core i7 Extreme CPU’s.

The motherboard will be featuring the NVidia Nforce 200 SLI chipset, which will allow triple-SLI or “normal” SLI configurations with two graphic cards. It doesn’t seem possible for now to think of a quad-SLI. It’s easy to assume that the chipset will allow the SLI configuration normally (avoiding the need to insert the nForce 200 chipset) in a near future, thanks to an agreement with Intel.

As it was anticipated, some graphic card companies based on the nVidia chispet have decided to insert the Far Cry 2 game as a bundle with some of their cards.

The first company to announce the offer was XFX, that will supply the full version of the new Ubisoft shooter with their GeForce 9600GT, GeForce 9800GT/GTX+ and GeForce GTX 260/280.

EVGA will offer the game together with the GeForce GTX 280, GTX 260 and GTX 260 core 216.

BFG will add the game to their GeForce GTX 260 and 280, and together with the full copy of Far Cry 2, they will also offer a 3DMark Vantage Advanced Edition license and a mini-flashlight.

NVIDIA just released another set of beta ForceWare drivers (version 180.43), adding a variety of features and enabling NVIDIA SLI on Intel X58-based motherboards. They also offer performance improvements for Ubisoft’s shooter Far Cry 2. The drivers are being released with a quote from Ubisoft’s Louis-Pierre Pharand:

“Since we first began working on Far Cry 2 in early 2005, we have used GeForce GPU’s to develop the game and worked closely with NVIDIA’s excellent engineers. While Far Cry 2 represents an outstanding PC gaming experience for a wide range of systems, GeForce users can expect to enjoy the game quite literally ‘The Way It Was Meant To Be Played’,” says Pharand.

The latest 180.43 drivers are available for Windows XP 32-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit, and Windows XP 64 bit.