NVIDIA’s Secret Weapon: 40nm GPUs
According to the most recent details regarding NVIDIA’s upcoming graphics products, the Santa Clara-based chip maker is planning to release its very first 40nm GPUs, even before competitor AMD has a chance of delivering its own 40nm-based solutions. Apparently, NVIDIA will step up to the next-generation TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) 40G process technology with the introduction of new mobile chips, codenamed N10x.
At this point in time, there are no details regarding availability and official release date but, according to VR-Zone, NVIDIA will try to be the first to offer a 40nm graphics card, thus increasing its chances of gaining the number one spot in the graphics card market. Read more
Cool Sculpture
From a distance it looks like a piece of cool modern art, which maybe it is, but you’re unlikely to see one of these in a gallery or on public display, in fact it’ll probably never see the light of day as it’s designed to live out its life inside a PC case, keeping CPU chips cool. The Thermaltake V1 is designed to replace the boring old fan on many popular CPUs, including Intel Core 2, Pentium and Celeron processors, AMD Athlon 64 FX and X2 series processors. Heat from the chip is removed by four heatpipes and dissipated by the cooling fins, a super quiet fan set between the fins keeps the air moving. There’s more information that you need on the Thermaltake website, which may also be able to tell you where you can get your hands on one, if you want to be cool, and seen to be cool…
Dell Releases NVIDIA Patch
Owners of some quirky Dell Inspiron, Latitude, Precision, Vostro and XPS models should be relieved to learn that a patch has been announced that fixes most of the problems associated with a rogue NVIDIA graphics adaptor chip. These include lines on the screen, multiple images and random characters and they can appear when the graphics processor unit (GPU) overheats. The BIOS patch optimises the fan’s temperature regulation of the GPU. The problem, which is caused by a packaging fault on the chip should solve the problem for most users but if the chip fails then NVIDIA has set aside up to $200 million to cover warranty claims. There’s a list of affected models, and link to the download on the Dell2Direct website.
