The Inquirer

ATI Radeon 4800 squares up to Nvidia GT200

Stewart Meagher — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:35:25 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 13:14:00

Dating game

PIXEL PUSHER ATI will introduce the much-anticipated 4800 series of graphics card on a date "somewhere between the 15th and 22nd of June" according to our old mate Theo over at TG Daily. This is, coincidentally, the same week in which Nvidia is expected to unveil the significantly more expensive (though not significantly more advanced) GT200. The 4800 range is expected start at less than two hundred of your yankee dollars for the 4850 variant with half a gig of GDDR3 graphicy goodness and the abilty to run up to four cards per system. The 4870, and 4870X2 to be launched in July, will carry 512MB and 1024MB of GDDR5 respectively....

So, who will design AMD graphics in the future?

Nebojsa Novakovic — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:29:00 GMT

Nebojsa Novakovic the Inquirer, Thursday 15 May 2008. 10:52:00

Analysis Brain drain lowers collective IQ

WHILE Nvidia's Jen Hsun Huang sometimes gloats a tad rudely over the competition's headaches, there could be one point justifying his recent analyst talk confidence - the leapfrog game between Nvidia and AMD-ATI is expected to continue as usual between the HD4870 series, then GeForce 9900 series, then their respective 40nm shrinks early next year. It's business as usual, with the two parties doing a regular leadership switch. What about deeper into 2009? Yes, you'll all mention Intel Larrabee - after all, that is Nvidia bosses' favourite topic these days it seems. They don't even seem to mention DAAMIT much in that contest....

Alan Wake decides to lie in a bit

Wily Ferret — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:30:48 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Thursday 15 May 2008. 09:11:00

Vole-sponsored alarm clock hits snooze

ALAN WAKE is due to go back to sleep until 2009, with Microsoft apparently resigning itself to the delay. Due to be released in 2008 on the Xbox and PC, Alan Wake was supposed to be a mystery story about a guy who wakes up with no memory and lives in a ghost town, etc, etc, etc. More interesting was the fact it was from Remedy, the chaps behind Max Payne, and who are supposedly going to base the game on a version of the 3DMark engine, with all the spectacular graphics that that entails. The game was scheduled for its first major outing at GDC this year, which it missed - and there is no sign of it this week at Microsoft's Gamers Day in San Francisco, the Vole's showcase for its top 2008 titles....

Microsoft denies slimmed-down Xbox 360 rumour

Nick Farrell — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:44:37 GMT

Nick Farrell the Inquirer, Thursday 15 May 2008. 08:26:00

No slimmed down SKU in 2009

MICROSOFT has taken the unusual step of actually denying that it wants to bring out a smaller Xbox 360 in 2009. Various places had been reporting that Vole was planning a new console based around a 45nm "Valhalla" combined CPU / GPU motherboard. The machine was supposed to come in a redesigned, smaller case in the autumn of 2009. However a SpokesVole said that while Microsoft did not usually comment on rumours and speculation he could confirm that this was a non-starter. He said that Microsoft had no plans to release a new console in 2009. While it is not possible to rule out that Vole might be trying to put up a smokescreen, to cover its true plans, it does seem fairly unlikely....

Playstation3 helps Sony triple annual profit

Sylvie Barak — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:43:40 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Wednesday 14 May 2008. 12:20:00

Consoles itself with $3.5 bill.

JAPANESE GIANT SONY posted tripled profit for 2007 over 2006, despite a shock fourth-quarter loss. Strong sales of the Playstation 3 as well as increased sales of electronics in general propped up the company's figures following poor results in its film and financial sectors, and millions of dollars of operating losses. Sony beat analyst predictions with profit of $3.5 billion over the year. The electronics giant said sales grew 6.9 per cent to an impressive $84.15 billion with revenues for electronics, including LCD screens, Vaio computers and cameras, up by 8.9 per cent. Gamers were the ones that really gave Sony a boost though, with the company's game division seeing a whopping 26.3 per cent jump in revenue due to increased PlayStation3 sales....

Nvidia talks chops - again

Wily Ferret — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:29:15 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 09:13:00

DAAMIT, Chipzilla both square up in the firing line

NOT CONTENT WITH WAGING war with Chipzilla, Nvidia is back on the PR offensive against ATI, too. Yes, it's the man with the plan, the inimitable Roy 'The Boy' Taylor who, not content with his job liaising with development houses to implement its TWIMTBP scheme, is piping up about ATI's market share. Or, rather, the perceived lack of it. Talking to legendary hardware hack Jeremy 'Don't call me Lord' Laird, Taylor said that "The UK is the only place in the world where anyone talks about AMD or ATI, "referring to marketshare and mindshare statistics that put DAAMIT's graphics card share at around 12 per cent....

EA drops draconian DRM

Wily Ferret — Mon, 12 May 2008 07:32:51 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 08:13:00

Will now only be mildly annoying

ELECTRONIC ARTS HAS backed down from its plan to ship uber-draconian DRM software on two of its top PC releases for the year, Mass Effect and Spore. We previously brought you the details on the software here. The gist is that Securom's latest software not only phones home to activate when you install, it re-authenticates every ten days thereafter - and if it suspects anything is up, it will happily nobble itself. Unsurprisingly, the interwibblers went absolutely nuts over the suggestion that they might actually be required to have their internet connections active whilst on the PC. Or at least, to be using their always-on connection for something other than downloading warez....

GTA4 causes mass manslaughter

Wily Ferret — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:31:24 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Friday 9 May 2008. 11:00:00

Online hotbed of car crime

GTA4 INSPIRED more than 2.3 million people to get online with their Xbox 360s over launch weekend, according to stats compiled by Volish Guru Larry Hyrb. The online console service saw 1m concurrent players at its peak, thanks to GTA's seamless built-in multiplayer experience that allows gamers to set up their matches via the game's mobile phone. The game has now overtaken perennial favourites such as Halo 3 and Gears of War to become by far the most popular game currently being played online by Xbox users. Indeed, the average gamer spent more than four hours playing the game online in just the first week - not including time spent in the epic single player campaign....

Graphzilla posts marginal losses

Wily Ferret — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:31:23 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Friday 9 May 2008. 11:04:00

G92 yield yields cost hike

NVIDIA HAS HAD a bit of a tough time making its margins targets, according to its Chief Financial Office Marv Burkett. Burkett's comments are explored on top financial feed Barron's this morning. Hidden in the post are a few choice cuts from our man Marv, who explains that G92 is not yielding as well as they might like it to - yeilds from them chip " were not what they wanted them to be", he says. This has driven costs up and is an issue that is being fixed, Graphzilla reckons. Probably just in time for G92 to be scrapped for a new part....

Nvidia kicks Windows Mobile into shape

Stewart Meagher — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:32:18 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 13:10:00

APX 2500 packs a low-powered punch

PIXEL-PUSHING graphics gurus at Nvidia are to rebuild handheld devices running Windows Mobile from the ground up. No doubt spurred by the Cupertino Connection's I-want-one-of-those Iphone, Nvidia is taking a massive punt on the predicted upturn in mobile gadgets with in-built Interweb connectivity. According to CNet, the new devices will have all of its core gubbins on one main board, which Nvidia will build in its entirety, a bit like the forthcoming Moorestown processor which Intel are expected to start punting out at the tail end of next year. Nvidia's whole approach to the design of the new APX 2500 has been all about keeping the power consumption as low as possible whilst still driving high performance apps and what promises to be stunning graphics....

Vvikoo card sports full copper jacket 9600GT Turbo

Paul Taylor — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:12:08 GMT

Paul Taylor the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 06:02:00

First INQpressions Vvikoo 9600GT Turbo

Product: Vvikoo 9600GT Turbo Website: www.vvikoo.com Price: €200 THIS LAST GENERATION of GPUs - and the general attitude GPU-makers have towards their AIB partners - has definitely put a different spin on the whole graphics card market. AIB partners can essentially have their way with graphics cards with the blessing of the GPU maker. This essentially puts companies like Vvikoo on par with giants like Asus, MSI, XFX or eVGA. Sure tier-one AIB partners get in lorry-loads of chips first, but when it comes to engineering something unique, they are on a level playing field. You can stick three MXM modules on a card and watercool it, but just how viable is that in retail - not to mention aftersales support and warranties? That's why Vvikoo slaps a sensibly solid Zalman VF1000 GPU cooler on its card, overclocks it a bit, puts it in a nice box and calls it the Vvikoo 9600GT Turbo....

Vvikoo cards sports full copper jacket 9600GT Turbo

Paul Taylor — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:32:50 GMT

Paul Taylor the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 06:02:00

First INQpressions Vvikoo 9600GT Turbo

Nvidia needs to simplify GeForce range

Wily Ferret — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:26:01 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 06:39:00

Admits people just don't get it

IN A STARTLING bout of self-awareness, Nvidia has conceded that its range of products is too complicated for most customers to understand. "It's a challenge that we're looking at right now," said Roy 'The Boy' Taylor, VP of Content Business Development at Graphzilla, talking to GI.biz. "There is a need to simplify it for consumers, there's no question... we think that the people who understand and know GeForce today, they're OK with it - they understand it. But if we're going to widen our appeal, there's no doubt that we have to solve that problem." It rather goes without saying that hardware geeks are absolutely fine with the bewildering array of products....

Nvidia needs to simply GeForce range

Wily Ferret — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:09:41 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 06:39:00

Admits people just don't get it

Vvikoo 9600GT Turbo

Paul Taylor — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:21:55 GMT

Paul Taylor the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 06:02:00

First INQpressions Full copper jacket

Product: Vvikoo 9600GT Turbo Website: www.vvikoo.com Price: €200 THIS LAST GENERATION of GPUs - and the general attitude GPU-makers have towards their AIB partners - have definitely put a different spin on the whole graphics card market. AIB partners can essentially have their way with graphics cards with the blessing of the GPU maker. This essentially puts companies like Vvikoo on par with giants like Asus, MSI, XFX or eVGA. Sure tier-one AIB partners get in lorry-loads of chips first, but when it comes to engineering something unique, they are on a level playing field. You can stick three MXM modules on a card and watercool it, but just how viable is that in retail - not to mention aftersales support and warranties? That's why Vvikoo slaps a sensibly solid Zalman VF1000 GPU cooler on their card, overclocks it a bit, puts it in a nice box and calls it the Vvikoo 9600GT Turbo....

EVGA drops USB monitor boxes

Wily Ferret — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:24:14 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Tuesday 6 May 2008. 09:01:00

Cheap and cheerful real estate

THOSE LOOKING FOR a cheap way to hook up lots of monitors to their computer now have a new option from one of the top green team partners - EVGA. The company best known for its extreme overclocking Geforce cards has come out with a new product called Display link, which is basically a box with a USB port to plug into your computer and a DVI port to plug into a monitor. The system allows for connection of four monitors at once which, combined with a pair of dual-output graphics cards, results in... a lot of monitors. The Display Link comes in two models - the UV12, which goes to 1280x1024 (or 1440x900 widescreen) and the UV16, which goes to 1600x1200 (or 1680x1050 widescreen)....

Game Browser helps you find PC titles...

Wily Ferret — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:24:14 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Tuesday 6 May 2008. 09:11:00

...That are endorsed by Nvidia.

NVIDIA HAS LAUNCHED a new site on the interwibble that allows gamers to have a looksie at all the different games they can play on their PCs, sorted according to interesting categories. The Nvidia Game Browser, as it has been titled, is a fancy-pants Flash application that allows browsees to search for games by things like their ESRB rating, curret price, genre or any combination thereof. Of course, this isn't neccessarily more than many online retailers might offer, but other online retailers don't have the advantage of only showing Nvidia TWIMTBP games. Which, obviously, this one does, as far as we can tell....

Nvidia buys 3DFX

Wily Ferret — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:52:59 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Tuesday 6 May 2008. 08:31:00

Do not adjust your sets

NVIDIA HAS FINALLY completed all the outstanding matters relating to its acquisition of graphics company 3DFX. No, this isn't Back to the Future - just this week a federal bankruptcy court threw out the last remaining lawsuit over Graphzilla's monumental acquisition from 2001. After picking up the firm for a bargainous $112m, there were plenty of unhappy parties - including creditors of the firm who believed they didn't get a big enough slice of the pie. They brought a lawsuit against Nvidia claiming it had underpaid fraudulently to avoid paying the debts. A court threw out those claims and said that Nvidia had acted properly - although there is still the possibility that there will be an appeal....

Firm puts electronic eyes in 3D gaming

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:11:46 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 5 May 2008. 14:36:00

Your electronics can see you

A COMPANY CALLED Prime Sense has wrapped up its second round of funding, bagging a whopping $20.4 million from the American venture capitalist firm, Canaan Partners. The cash is a huge boost to the firm which had already managed to raise $9 million from Gemini and Genesis partners in its first round of funding. Prime Sense's technology has created a device that lets computers see the world around them in three dimensions, deriving spatial understanding of their surroundings in the same way as humans do with their eyes. The device has a tiny optical sensor, which it uses to see the person using it (in the context of his/her surroundings) and also possesses a digital component which acts as its "brain", which can learn from, as well as understand, the various actions of those using it....

XBox 360 overhaul come August

Paul Taylor — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:57:00 GMT

Paul Taylor the Inquirer, Monday 5 May 2008. 10:47:00

BD player, new graphics chip

ACCORDING TO KNOW-IT-ALL EDN newspaper in China, Pegatron Technology (bastard offspring of Asustek, in case you're wondering), has managed to grab the highly-denied "Blu-Ray for Xbox360" deal of the year. We imagine Microsoft denied the existence of such unit, not to shield its upcoming launch from the competition's prying marketeers, but rather because its staff were responding in default "mirror" mode whereby hacks that asked the Vole if they had plans for a BD add-on, they received a 100% flat/honest "No". True. All things considered, it won't be an add-on. The newspaper adds that Pegatron will assemble Microsoft's console with the in-built BD player, with units hitting the market in Q3/2008 - Mid-summer, as it were....

Nvidia reschedules editors day

Charlie Demerjian — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:25:01 GMT

Charlie Demerjian the Inquirer, Monday 5 May 2008. 10:05:00

Mailwatch Helpful signup forms inside

NVIDIA HAS CHANGED the date on its editors day from the 13th and 14th to the 22nd and 23rd. We still aren't invited though, so we will bring you the news much earlier than the NDA'd folk. Here is the email on it, be sure to check out the word doc posted on the public forums if you want to know how us journos are treated. Well, maybe not us us, but others like us. It is not a conspiracy or bribery, this is really quite normal. If you feel like filling it out and sending it in, please let us know what happens....

Summer will bring a GPU war

Charlie Demerjian — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:14:27 GMT

Charlie Demerjian the Inquirer, Friday 2 May 2008. 17:05:00

Analysis PR teams gear up for carnage

THIS SUMMER WE are going to see an large scale GPU war, something we haven't really seen for a few years now. Nvidia may have all the headlines today , but ATI has been plotting and rebuilding for the 7xx series launch. Last year, the mere suggestion of ATI doing well was laughed at, but the firm took the outright lead with the X2 cards and forced NV into the reactionary GX2. ATI can do three and four-way adequately, albeit with the the Broken OS, while NV can only do it in name. Same with the bucket called 'hybrid' for both power and frame rate....

Nvidia throws another party

Charlie Demerjian — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:26:32 GMT

Charlie Demerjian the Inquirer, Friday 2 May 2008. 16:23:00

Mailwatch Forgot to invite us again

NVIDIA IS THROWING another party and flying everyone out, but we have somehow fallen off the invite list. Unfortunately, this means that you are going to get the info several weeks sooner than if we had gone. If these go anything like the phone briefings, there will be several fewer graphics editors in the world on May 15th, biting your tongue off is the honorable way out after the third slide deck. In any case, we will bring you the info as soon as it happens. Here's the missive we didn't receive: -------------------------------------------------- You are cordially invited to attend the NVIDIA Editor's Day May 2008 event, which will be held at the NVIDIA Santa Clara campus from May 13th to May 14th, 2008....

GTA smashes sales records

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:19:55 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk the Inquirer, Friday 2 May 2008. 12:59:00

We just wanna be bad

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV looks set to become the fastest-selling computer game in the short history of fast-selling computer games. The controversially-criminal romp flogged 609,000 copies on its first day of release, ringing tills to the tune of £24.4million ($48.5 million). It beat equally controversially-criminal romp GTA: San Andreas, into second place. That title sold 501,000 copies in 24 hours in October 2004. And retailers report sales have held up all week. The game appeared on both Playstation and Xbox at the same time but has struggled to run at all on some varieties of hardware. Rockstar has said it is working on a fix....

Foxconn shows off P45 board

Wily Ferret — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:16:22 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Friday 2 May 2008. 09:54:00

Board of boreds yet?

THE P45 CHIPSET from Chipzilla is en route tout suite, due to land in a month's time. The first pics of a completed P45 board have emerged out of the land of leaks, known to cartographers as Taiwan, and it's from Foxconn - one of Intel's top-tier manufacturing partners. The board, which you can see here, is called the 'Quantum Force Avenger'. Quite whether it's about to re-write the laws of physics with a side mission in blood-spilling we don't know (although we suspect not). What we do know is that it's blue, it's got two PCI Express graphics connectors for Crossfire support, a dual BIOS, 8-phase PWM for the processor and two-phase PWM for memory power regulation....