GeForce G310 Fermi - Nvidia news! 2010

The arrival of the first smartphones with the potent Tegra chip from Nvidia should be arriving in Autumn. The chip offers advanced graphic features and an evolved user interface.

Mike Rayfield, responsible for nVIDIA’s mobile division, has confirmed it, although he hasn’t mentioned any specific brands that will have the Tegra chip integrated. During the last few weeks, many names have been rumored, such as Samsung, Motorola and HTC, as well as Microsoft for their new multimedia device Zune HD.

nVidia has decided to use the Microsoft Windows CE OS for the new Tegra platforms. The analysts maybe expected this move, but the Open Source world perhaps didn’t.

According to nVidia, the Linux and Android solutions are not yet evolved enough to support the technical necessities of the future netbooks based on Tegra. For example, Android doesn’t support the latest generation of graphic units. Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Moblin, instead, seem to still have some hardware compatibilities.

Windows CE will obviously be pushed aside by the netbook edition of Windows 7, but at the moment, it seems to be the only OS that support the ARM multi-core architectures perfectly and allows device manufacturers to optimize their products.

nVIDIA has recently introduced new mobile graphic solutions manufactured with a 40nm process and supporting the DirectX 10.1 APIs; after a few doubts due to the number of stream processors present, it was confirmed that the architecture used on these solutions was the GT200.

It seems that now, even though it’s still just a rumor, nVIDIA would want to bring the 40nm also to the desktop line, but not applied to a new architecture, but simply using it on the GT200, making a few small changes. The new desktop cards, compatible with DirectX 10.1 and manufactured with a 40nm processo should arrive on September, using a known and reliable architecture.

The codenames are yet to be confirmed, but they should be called GT210 and GT220, and they will allow, thanks to the new fabrication process, to reach higher frequencies and less energy consumption.

Also nVIDIA has released the latest updates on their GeForce drivers, a new WHQL certified version in which the main objective is the fixing of some bugs that were found on Windows 7. The new drivers 186.18 are basically an update of the 186.08 that fix a few bugs with Windows 7, and in fact, these drivers integrate the PhysX v9.09.0428 which is the same of the previous release, the same goes for the Ambient Occlusion support and CUDA 2.2.

The drivers support all GeForce cards from the series 6 on and are optmized for ION platforms with the chipset GeForce 9400. They also take advantage of the hardware acceleration through the GPU in the video encoding also with cores with less than 32 shaders, but such feature was already introduced on the 185 version.

Despite nVidia’s work was concentrated on bug fixing, there are also performance enhancements with some titles such as Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Crysis, Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge.

The drivers can be downloaded on nVidia’s driver download page.

nVIDIA has confirmed that inside the Zune HD there’s a Tegra processor that manages all the functions. In particular, the Tegra allows the Microsoft player to manage high-definition video playback. The all-in-one chip offers the hardware acceleration for the decodification of video streaming up to 720p with consumptions of 140mW. Besides the video acceleration, this platform also offers 3D rendering performances that are definitely superior than any other palm device.

The new Zune HD should use the APX 2500 or 2600 version of the Tegra processor, which combine an ARM11 core with a graphic controller based on GeForce architecture. From a technologic point of view, thus, Microsoft puts itself one step higher than the competition, such as Apple iPod touch and iPhone, that support videos only up to 640×480 pixels, even when connected to an HD external screen.

While the 40nm start to show up in the graphic card market, with ATI opening the doors wit the 4770 and nVIDIA proposing their new mobile GPU line, there is still not enough in order to create a big launch of new cards on the market. We’ll probably have to wait for September and October for those, but the partner manufacturers keep on launching new models based on existant GPUs.

Now it’s Sparkle with their GeForce GTX 275 featuring 1792MB of GDDR3 RAM. The manufacturer hasn’t changed much of anything else compareds to the reference board: the frequencies remain unchanged: 633 Mhz for the GPU and 2268Mhz for the memory.

The double amount of memory seems to have a commercial value more than anything: In fact, games that use more than 896MB of memory, which is the standard of the Geforce GTX 275, are rare on the market. The choice of enhancing the on-board graphic memory seems less appealing than enhancing frequencies, as the latter does help enhance the frames per second in all games.

After having presented the new GT200M mobile series from GeForce in March, nVIDIA has now updated their list, with the objective of fully supporting Windows 7. Right now, the GT200M is featured by three models, but nVIDIA introduced five more solutions, in order to replace the ones that already exist. The new models are called G210M, GT230M, GT240M, GTS250M and GTS260M.

The five new solutions, according to what was declared by nVIDIA, should replace the current offers, but there will obviously be an adaptation period on the market. Two will be the characteristicts that differ the new solutions from the old ones: 40nm fabrication process and support to DirectX 10.1. NVIDIA presents, in this way, the first GPUs manufactured and developed with the new fabrication process, that should be brought to the desktop products in the course of the next months.

It’s still not completely known which architecture was used to develop the new models: analyzing some of the technical specifications, however, it’s easy to notice how the shader values are quite similar to what was seen on the previous generation, hence it’s easy to assume that those are mobile GPU models that are based on the G92, and not on the GT200 as it had been thought. Some of the technical specifications on the GT240M, GTS250M and GTS260M models there’s the support to the GDDR5 memories: a major modification made by nVIDIA in order to make the new GPUs support this kind of memory and guarantee a better bandwidth. The memory bus was fixed at 128bit.

NVIDIA hasn’t only worked on developing five new solutions, but also continued to collaborate with a big number of OEM in order to develop more than a hundred models of notebooks by the time of the launch. Obviously, the technologies present in the past such as Hybrid Power, CUDA and PhysX were kept.

The Computex 2009 has finished a few days ago and it was the opportunity for many companies, especially for nVIDIA, to reveal some netbooks based on the Ion platform. And the guys from jkkmobile have released a video where a netbook with Ion plays Call of Duty 4.

The game seems to be played without any difficulties, with a lot of fluidity as well, although the resolution hasn’t really been commented on. But it’s still quite an accomplishment, since up to a few months ago, no one thought that a netbook could play a game, especially not one such as Call of Duty 4, as the first mini-notebooks were developed for the Internet navigation or office work.

The first netbooks with the Ion platform will be introduced in the market soon, although there are no official dates.

The performance and power of nVIDIA’s graphic processors will be used to optimize and speed the Flash PLayer, not only on the desktop GPU’s but also on the compact devices that use the nVIDIA Tegra platform.

The announcement was made during the last few days, on the occasion of the Computex in Taipei: Adobe and nVIDIA have also said that the collaboration is already going inside the Open Screen Project, an Adobe initiative taht thanks to the collaboration of many important companies throughout the world, will bring Flash contents to any kind of devices, from smartphones to computers and TV.

We’ve talked about the new GT300 few posts ago, and the rumors were that the new chip would be completely revolutionary when compared to the present GT200, and nVIDIA has indeed confirmed that.

The GT300 will not be simply a smaller GT200, thanks to the 40nm fabrication process. It will be compatible with DirectX 11, and nVIDIA has declared that the leap will be similar, if not bigger, than the one taken from the G80/G92 to the GT200.

The new chip, whose codename is still unknown, should be ready by the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010. It is promised to be a better watt/performance ratio and a bigger number of transistors.