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Samsung's Ion-infused N510 netbook steeply priced across the pond
€499. $717. Or three easy payments of €171 ($246). That's the price folks in Europe are being asked to pony up for Samsung's admittedly svelte 11.6-inch N510 netbook. As one of the largest netbooks in its class, this machine -- which can purportedly last for around 6.5 hours under ideal circumstances -- also packs NVIDIA's Ion technology, but a sluggish Atom N280 is still manning the ship. If you'll recall, we actually heard that this here rig would surface sometime this summer, but it looks as if those orders may end up pushed to September. Anyone care to place a pre-order? Or are you more interested in those "real laptops" for just north of seven Benjamins?[Via Blogeee]
Alienware's M17X gaming laptop with twin GTX 280M GPUs truly is all powerful
The announcement wasn't scheduled for a few more days -- four according to the teaser site -- but it looks like Alienware's All Powerful gaming laptop has been set free anyway. So, does it live up to the clues? Pretty much... how does a pair of 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M GPUs strike you? No Core i7 listed, instead we're looking at a Core 2 Extreme quad-core CPU at the top end with up to 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory, and 1TB of 7200-rpm disk or a 512GB SSD if you prefer. RAID 1 or RAID 0? Sure. Rounding things out is a nine-cell battery of unstated performance, FireWire, 4x USB, eSATA, ExpressCard, 802.11n WiFi, 8-in-1 media card reader, dual-layer Blu-ray, a 1920 x 1200 pixel edge-to-edge LCD, DisplayPort and HDMI-outs all wrapped up in a massive chassis weighing 11.68-pounds with a 15.98 x 12.65 x 2.11-inch footprint. It's also packing a GeForce 9400M G1 GPU with HybridPower technology that allows you to scale the graphics back to conserve battery power. Prices start at $1,799 for a lot less than we mentioned above.As a footnote to the details above, PCWorld also says that Alienware will use next week's E3 show to update us on its 42.8-inch curved monitor we went hands-on with back in January of 2008. [Thanks, Steve]
Dell stays vivacious with Studio 14z, gets going at $649
Go 'head with your bad self, Dell! The colorful Studio line is expanding this fine morning, with the newest member rocking a slightly unorthodox 14-inch (LED) display size. Designed for hipster students and those at the top of the computing bell curve, this perfectly average portable offers up Core 2 Duo CPU options, 720 / 900p screen resolutions, integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, HDMI / DisplayPort outputs, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, dual headphone jacks, up to 500GB of HDD space, a 34mm ExpressCard slot, six-cell battery (an optional eight-cell will last over six hours), WiFi, optional Bluetooth and even an external Blu-ray drive if you're feeling frisky. Supposedly the machine will be available to order later today in the US and Canada, with prices starting at $649.
Mac mini, Apple TV to use new Ion platform?
Tom's Hardware says that Apple will use NVIDIA's Ion platform in an updated Mac mini, and AppleInsider says it could also be used in an updated Apple TV. NVIDIA's Ion platform is a low-cost, small-form-factor logic board that includes both an NVIDIA graphics processor and Intel CPU (among other things). According to AppleInsider, Ion uses the same 9400M chipset used in the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models. We knew that existing iMac and Mac mini models are already using the 9400M as part of the NVIDIA MCP79 platform. Either way, with the 9400M, full-screen HD decoding is built-in. According to Tom's Hardware, the Ion package slated for use with the Mac mini includes an Intel Atom 330 processor. AppleInsider says that performance gains for a new Mac mini based on this platform could require OpenCL, a technology only available so far in builds of Snow Leopard. Tom's expects the new Mac mini to arrive in March, while AppleInsider, says that it could arrive "this month." Fingers crossed. The Apple TV, on the other hand, with its 1GHz CPU, would see a significant boost with Ion. The margins on the Apple TV are already tight, though, and adding more power could break the bank on Apple's "hobby" project. But what if the next-generation Apple TV and Mac mini were one and the same? It's a floor wax! It's a dessert topping! Stop, you're both right.
GeForce 9400M to hit notebooks from five major vendors, mock Intel
Now that NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M has made its debut in Apple's new MacBooks, Technical Marketing Director Nick Stam says that five major notebook vendors are planning to ship systems with the chipset -- though we don't know if that includes Apple or not. Stam expects NVIDIA will carve out 30 percent of the integrated graphics market for itself, partly by improving other experiences besides games -- Google Earth, photo editing, day-to-day video encoding, and other activities performed by people who use keys besides W, A, S, and D. Frankly, we're just thankful we've evolved past the days when we needed a 19-inch monster to perform high-impact 3D tasks without sacrificing to the sinister gods of screen tearing.
Putting the MacBook through the paces with Warhammer Online
Since the new MacBooks were released earlier this week, everyone's been talking a good bit about gaming on the thing, but our friend (and TUAW alum) C.K. Sample III decided to actually load up a game and make the new Nvidia chips put up or shut up. And as you can see above, put up they did: he loaded up XP in Boot Camp, installed Warhammer Online (not a small task, with a 13GB install and all the patching it took about two hours), and entered the Age of Reckoning with all the graphics turned up. The verdict: it worked. And pretty well -- while there was a tiny bit of slowdown on the highest settings (and YouTube compression makes it look worse than it is), the game was clearly playable and actually looked really good. The trackpad wasn't too easy to use, but you already know that for any substantial games, you've got to plug a mouse in anyway.This was the 9400M running in the new MacBook, with the 2.4 GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. You have to think the MBP would run even better, too. Seems like Apple's done it -- even on the low end machines, gamers should have no problem (assuming they're willing to load up Boot Camp and deal with a permissions error or two) running even the latest PC games. Now if we could only convince game companies to all make Mac-specific versions...
NVIDIA gets official with GeForce 9400M GPU
Not like NVIDIA really needed to waste the ink here, but it has decided to hover under the spotlight a bit more by officially introducing its GeForce 9400M GPU. Yeah, the same one Apple made official on its behalf yesterday. The single-chip design features 16 parallel processing cores, 54GFLOPs of processing power and promises 5x the graphics power over Intel's Centrino 2. In other words, this thing will come a lot closer to handling Crysis in a satisfactory manner than that lowly integrated set you're probably working with now. But you already knew that, now didn't you?[Via Physorg]
NVIDIA gets official with GeForce 9M series of laptop GPUs
NVIDIA's not just going after the MIDs and smartphones of the world -- oh no, it's making sure your future notebook has the necessary oomph to blaze through Crysis without folding in on itself. Announced today at Computex, the aforesaid outfit has officially introduced its GeForce 9M series of laptop GPUs alongside a new graphics innovation dubbed Hybrid SLI. Slated to launch this summer in Intel- and AMD-based rigs, the GPUs will boast a multi-core architecture, PureVideo HD, full support for Blu-ray Profile 2.0 / BD-Live and a graphics engine that delivers "up to 40% faster performance than the previous generation of GeForce notebook GPUs." As for the Hybrid SLI technology, this simply enables a pair of the company's GPUs (one low-power and one wicked fast model) to work together to save power and dole out maximum performance when needed. Head on past the cut for more of the nitty-gritty. %Gallery-24184%
