NVIDIA still interested in jazzing up the netbook space
By Darren Murph 
posted December 4th 2008 10:57AM
posted December 4th 2008 10:57AM
A month ago to the day we were weeping our poor hearts out as we heard that VIA and NVIDIA had canned whatever netbook plans the two had going on. Now, however, we're being given a glimpse of hope that all may not be lost... at least in relation to NVIDIA. During a webcast from the Credit Suisse annual technology conference being held in Scottsdale, Arizona, NVIDIA's CFO confessed: "We're not saying we're not interested [in the netbook space]; it's a matter of how the market will evolve." In other words, it's taking a wait-and-see approach before plunging in headfirst. Honestly, we're not too shocked to hear that it may still one day invade the swath of 7- to 12-inch mini-laptops out there -- after all, it already branched out significantly with Tegra and Tesla. C'mon NVIDIA, we've got legions of folks waiting to fire up Crysis on their next Eee, and you could be the one to make it happen.
Wow...I can't wait to be able to play Crysis on a 8" screen.
Go NVIDIA!
I thought the idea of netbooks was to keep costs down? Not to put higher and higher end components in...
But perhaps there is room for higher low end components?
.. with worse battery life. I already regret putting an nvidia chip in my "proper" laptop, let alone having one in a netbook.
Well...ATI does have more history in the market of ultra portable / Pocketable devices. ATI's Imageon Chipset had very little competion in the PDA space. In fact the only competition I can remember actually came from Intel. ATI provided the video system, for my Ipaq, and for my Lifebook as well. I don't know that Nvidia has ever really had to great an interest in that market.
Still, obviously the lower power / higher portability market is growing, but Nvidia is wise to watch, wait, and very deliberately decide how and when to enter the field. It's not as if they lack for new ventures and new oportunities outside of that anyway...
I dont want a frying pan for a netbook considering the track record nvidia have for graphics cards.
Nvidia and Via together would be a nice team for a netbook I think.
Yes!! I've holding off my impulse buy on a netbook because I want to run WAR on one!
That was his word of the day that morning, wouldnt take him too seriously
just because nvidia is still open to the idea of selling even more GPUs doesn't mean anything. Most user won't be open at all to the idea of paying $700-800 for a netbook even if you can play games on it and hence OEMs won't be open to the idea of building such machines. Plus I really don't think that nvidia is talking about 8" screens.
They can put 8200m or 9300m class IGPs. You already find them in the $400-500 range full size notebooks...
If you told the ~11 Billion people who play WoW and all the other games out there that for under $1k they can get an ultra portable machine that plays WoW... It would sell.
Imagine all the college kids who would buy them just for class and gaming while in class.
In other news: nvidia customers still interested in drivers that don't suck.
It doesn't seem that hard.
Match up an existing low-power chipset that matches up with the the capabilities of say, the Atom processor and scale it down further for more power savings.
Boom, you've got a more balanced low power machine.
Hmm...yeah, it does seem too easy.
Can't imagine how many dudes will buy a netbook that can play WoLK anywhere.
I think a conference in the Alps would be way better than Arizona.
"We're not saying we're not interested [in the netbook space]; it's a matter of how the market will evolve."
Sounds considerably similar to some of Steve Jobs' recent comments on the netbook space. Hmmm... Maybe something *is* up.