Nvidia has released what it describes as "the most powerful professional graphics card in graphics history"--the Quadro FX 5800, which packs up to 240 of Nvidia's CUDA independent graphics cores for shouldering some of the load normally handled by the main processor as well as 4GB of graphics memory, another claimed first. The 5800 is intended mostly for scientific and medical visualisations, as well as crazy complex 3D rendering. One might imagine it would also play most of your video games at a decent FPS. Price? $US3500.

Read More »

Nvidia dropped by today to demo some of the awesome things that the GeForce 9400M in the new MacBooks can do that Intel's integrated graphics just can't touch and discuss a few technical points. Besides confirming that you'll see it in other notebooks soon, they definitively answered some lingering questions about the chip's capabilities: It can support up to 8GB of RAM. It can do on-the-fly GPU switching. And it can work together with the discrete 9600M GT in the MacBook Pro. Yet it currently doesn't do any of those things in the MacBook Pro.

Read More »

The new Nvidia graphics in Apple's latest notebooks will heavily come into play with Snow Leopard, which will leverage GPUs for parallel processing. But Apple might have already uncorked some of that GPU power: A bunch of MacRumors readers are reporting that the new MacBooks might use GPU acceleration to tear through h.264 video decoding, greatly reducing the strain on the CPU.

Read More »

The biggest update to the new MacBooks—on the inside anyway—is their graphical muscle, which has been hooked up with some Barry Bonds-level steroids. Apple ditched Intel's crummy integrated graphics and chipset (basically the traffic controller between the processor and everything else) entirely, opting for a new one from Nvidia that combines the chipset and a GPU on a single chip—the GeForce 9400M. The MacBook Pro, being more Pro-erer than the MacBook, now rocks two graphics cards—the integrated 9400M and a separate, beefier GeForce 9600M GT. If that swirl of numbers, letters and BS is confusing, here's what's up.

Read More »

Really Nvidia, what the hell? After steadfastly arguing that its defective graphics cards were limited to notebooks only—they've even sent me a lovely email or two reiterating that claim—HP has just confirmed that 38 different desktop models are plagued with faulty Nvidia graphics cards.

Read More »

This doesn't speak volumes for Nvidia's credibility. As you might recall, a huge swath of Nvidia's notebook graphics cards—ones with the G84 or G86 chipset—fail at "higher-than-normal" rates. MacBook Pros have the GeForce 8600M GT, which uses the G84. Nvidia assured Apple that MacBook Pros were totally cool. Turns out, they were lying! After doing their own investigation, Apple "has determined that some MacBook Pro computers... may be affected." Update: Nvidia just chimed in with their take.

Read More »

AMD has confirmed rumours that it is working on DirectX 11, announcing at CEATEC that it plans to release its first DirectX 11-compatible GPUs in 2009. The company also predicted an increase in general purpose computing on GPUs (GPGPU) and a transition to a 40nm fabricating standard, which ought to give graphics chip performance rates a considerable boost. In layman terms: Things are about to get a lot bigger and a lot prettier. [Xbit Labs via Tweaktown]

Rumours of imminent high fail rates notwithstanding, today's a pretty good day to own any GeForce 8 series or higher desktop graphics card, since they all get PhysX support with a free download (three PhysX-juiced UT3 maps are free too). Also tapping the CUDA goodness is badaboom, an insanely fast video transcoder, Folding@Home and a couple of tech demos--Nvidia showed me the Fluids demo on a GTX 280, and it was pretty neat. I'm snagging this stuff right now, actually. [Nvidia]

Read More »

About a year ago, we first brought you news on Intel's Larrabee multi-cored GPU chips, but some new info is hitting the intertubes and hints that the chips could have uses beyond graphics. An alternative to developing faster—but hotter—processors, Larrabee will have between 16 and 48 processor cores aboard, all compatible with the classic x86 instruction set.

Read More »

Dell isn't the only laptop maker offering its customers help if they have laptops with certain Nvidia chips that are prone to overheating. HP has issued a list of laptops of its own that feature the chipset and states that it's been a known warranty issue since late last year. While not offering to swap for new laptops, HP has made it known that if your laptop meets certain criteria then you may be eligible for a free repair. This is good news for those of you with fried portables in your closet, so check out the list on HP's website to see if you're affected. [HP via Nanotech]

Read More »