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All posts tagged "GPU"


Friday, December 19, 2008

NVIDIA Now Providing Notebook Graphics Drivers On NVIDIA.COM

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Software" @ 02:40 PM

http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1229602132882.html

"Users with notebooks equipped with NVIDIA® graphics processing units (GPUs) now have the added flexibility of downloading upgradeable graphics drivers directly from NVIDIA.com so they can immediately take advantage of new features, improved application compatibility, and performance optimizations. The first graphics driver release from NVIDIA will extend the NVIDIA CUDATM architecture to notebook GPUs, enabling the growing number of consumers moving to a notebook-only lifestyle to immediately experience the wide range of CUDA-based applications-from heart-stopping GPU-accelerated game physics to GPU-accelerated video conversion."

Three words: about freaking time! It's always driven me nuts when I buy a notebook and the lazy OEM never bothers to give me updated video drivers - that's exactly what happened when I bought a 17" Fujitsu notebook a few years back. It was the closest thing to a gaming laptop they made, and they never updated the graphics drivers. But that's all over not!

Oh, wait, it's not quite freakin' time yet - I just tried to download updated drivers for my XPS M1330, and got the same 176.44 drivers that I currently have, along with a message saying that I have to get drivers from Dell. I poked around a bit more, and found some beta drivrers - it turns out that they won't have WHQL-certified drivers available until early next year. Gee, thanks Nvidia. This is why PR gets a bad name sometimes - they omit part of the truth, making the headline deceptive. I'm not keen on trying beta drivers on my laptop - I value stability too much for that - but if you're up for some beta driver action, you can download the 179.28 beta drivers now for your 8000M and 9000M series notebook GPUs.


Monday, August 4, 2008

Intel's 'Larrabee' Graphics Chip is Really a Bunch of CPUs?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home News" @ 01:00 PM

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-1...=1&tag=nefd.top

"Intel has disclosed details on a chip that will compete directly with Nvidia and ATI and may take it into unchartered technological and market-segment waters. Larrabee will be a stand-alone chip, meaning it will be very different than the low-end--but widely used--integrated graphics that Intel now offers as part of the silicon that accompanies its processors. And Larrabee will be based on the universal Intel x86 architecture."

I was wondering what Intel was up to, and it seems they're doing what Intel does best: CPU stuff. Larrabee is really going to be a bunch of CPUs on a card, and not a GPU-based solution that early speculation thought it was going to be. CPU's tend to be vastly less efficient at 3D graphics than dedicated GPUs, which is why we've seen the industry adopt dedicated GPUs as the solution of choice for 3D gaming. Intel's approach is quite interesting - one the one hand, it seems foolish to ask a CPU to do a GPU's job. Having eight CPUs on a card might be an expensive, power-hungry approach. Read more...


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