The New NVidia GPU is knocking Intel off their feet with the Tegra GPU that is offering HD playback with less than a watt of power. The device’s CPU leaves the Intel Atom in the dust with a lot less energy usage to boot.
At a presentation the Tegra was used to play a video from their rival Intel saying that a GPU mobile device would not support HD playback. The video was shortly followed but the HD trailer to the new Star Trek movie which played through flawlessly.
The Tegra is ARM based with 8 cores each dedicated to a separate task and when a core is not in use it is put to sleep to conserve power. This technique allows it to complete most tasks using less than 1 watt of energy. Even the Intel Ultra low Voltage processors use about 15 watts and do not perform nearly as well. Here is the breakdown of what each core is used for.
- ARM 11
- ARM 7
- GPU
- 2D Engine
- HD Video Encoder
- HD Video Decoder
- Audio
- Imaging
The Chip is so energy efficient that is could support up to 25 hours of music playback verses Intels five, ten hours of HD play back where the Atom only gets 3. This sort of power saving will make your netbooks and mobile devices even more portable than before. You won’t have to worry about bringing a charger with you, just plug it in every night like you would your cell phone.
Nvidia hopes to one day be able to create a gaming platform out of the Tegra although it is no where near Crisis standards at this time. Just to give it a little test they tried out the classic quake and were able to achieve 46 fps second which is definitely playable. The Atom Could Only Reach 17 fps.
When the first batch of these guys hit the shelves they will have a cap of 512mb of RAM and some lower end models with as little as 256mb. The effort is to keep them under $200 and they may be even cheaper with carrier discounts when you sign a contract. Because of the processor configuration they will only support Windows CE and Android which is less than exci
ting but those who have got to used them seemed to have little complaint so we will have to see.
It will be a few months before the first few go up for sale to the public but there are already a few OEM’s with working samples of what they are planning and NVidia is talking to two phone carriers who are still un-named.
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