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Acer Chromebook 13 review: long battery life, sharp screen, good price
After years of getting little respect, Chromebooks are finally on the rise (at least in schools), which means every major PC maker is trying to get in on the action. That includes chip makers too, like NVIDIA. Though the company previously shied away from Chrome OS devices, it's now pledging to power a whole range of different Chromebooks with its Tegra K1 chip, each of them promising long battery life and more graphics muscle. The Acer Chromebook 13 is the first of the bunch, and while some of you might be Chromebook'd out, we were actually excited. Here was a $300 laptop boasting at least 11 hours of battery life, a 1080p display option and enough horsepower to clobber Intel at things like gaming and rich websites. As it turns out, it was all just a little too good to be true.
HTC will mark its return to tablets with Google's Nexus 9
Rumors of an HTC-made Nexus device have swirled for some time, but only recently have details of a next-generation tablet started to become apparent. Not long after NVIDIA inadvertently leaked that the Taiwanese company is linking up with Google to launch the Nexus 9, the Wall Street Journal has added even more credibility to reports by stating that HTC engineers have been regularly flying to Google's Mountain View HQ in order to finalize the 9-inch device. As part of a patent lawsuit against Qualcomm and Samsung earlier this month, NVIDIA revealed that it would be providing the muscle for the Android L-powered slate, HTC's first since the Flyer, which is expected to feature its Tegra K1 processor and launch within the third quarter. However, we're now just over a week away from the end of September, so it looks increasingly likely that we'll see something official next month. Remember, Google has a history of scheduling events in October.
Acer's Chromebook 13 lasts a stunning 13 hours on a charge
Until now, if you wanted a Chromebook with a full HD display, you only had one option: the 13-inch Samsung Chromebook 2. Want epic battery life? Yep, all roads lead to Samsung there, too. Well, not anymore, anyway. Acer just announced the Chromebook 13, and it matches Samsung nearly spec for spec with an optional 1080p display and NVIDIA's quad-core Tegra K1 chip, promising up to 13 hours of runtime (details on that after the break). This is interesting for two reasons. First off, although this is essentially the same class of product as what Samsung is selling, it costs $100 less: $299, versus $400 for the Chromebook 2. Sounds good, right? What's more, this is the first-ever Chrome OS device with an NVIDIA processor inside.
Nvidia's Tegra K1 processor plays nice with Unreal Engine 4
Nvidia and Epic Games have been friends for a while, so it's only natural the latest mobile processor from Nvidia, the Tegra K1, officially supports Epic Games' latest engine, the Unreal Engine 4. We saw our first hint at this union last summer, when Nvidia unveiled Project Logan – a mobile GPU built on the same Kepler technology powering Nvidia's latest PC graphics cards. "We can take absolutely anything that runs on PC or on a console and run it on Tegra," says Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, in the Nvidia announcement post. "The differences between the platforms is really blurred." Nvidia says Tegra K1 is the first mobile processor capable of pumping out graphics on par with Xbox One and PS4, and even offers "faster performance" than the Xbox 360 and PS3. In the sizzle reel above, Sweeney says all of Epic's tech demos – "Samaritan," "Infiltrator" and "Elemental" – came through collaboration with Nvidia. "I didn't think we'd be at this level on mobile for another three or four years," Sweeney said.
NVIDIA reveals second Tegra K1 with 64-bit support, dual 2.5GHz Denver CPUs
Ever since the introduction of Apple's A7 chipset on the iPhone 5s, 64-bit has become somewhat of a buzzword for manufacturers like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Samsung and MediaTek. The former has already followed in Apple's footsteps with 64-bit support on the Snapdragon 410, an SoC destined for budget devices and emerging markets, but we were anxiously awaiting word on NVIDIA's next-gen aspirations at tonight's press conference. And now we have it -- the company just announced a second version of the Tegra K1 introduced earlier, this time with a dual-core 2.5GHz Denver CPU (yes, that Project Denver) and 64-bit support. We're still waiting to hear specific availability, but NVIDIA tells us to expect more details in the coming months, so the extra boost in performance will require a bit of patience. Update: We received a little extra clarification from NVIDIA reps, who have told us that the K1 has already been certified by AT&T and Vodafone (among other carriers), and we should expect to see devices with the new chipset near the end of the first half of 2014. We also learned that although LTE support doesn't come natively on the chipset, it'll still be available thanks to an external chip that will be part of the K1 setup. It's hard to say whether or not this will help NVIDIA gain some lost ground on Qualcomm, but only time will tell. Ben Gilbert contributed to this post.
NVIDIA announces Tegra K1 with 192 cores and Kepler architecture
In what's becoming a yearly tradition, NVIDIA came to its CES press conference with tidings of its next-generation mobile processor which will begin gracing devices in 2014. The chipset maker officially announced Tegra K1, which features the first 192-core GPU based on the Kepler architecture which was originally designed for desktops and notebooks and later added to supercomputers. As you can imagine, NVIDIA is bringing its graphics chops to the new DirectX 11-powered GPU, and it packs a serious punch -- so much so, in fact, that it will come with support for Unreal Engine 4 and OpenGL 4.4. In the company's usual form, we were treated to demos of the new chip's power compared side-by-side with a Tegra 4, and the difference was quite noticeable; the K1 offers real-time computing, global illumination, higher dynamic range and greater detail like reflective surfaces, dripping water and other realistic physically-based rendering. Interestingly, Tegra K1 will actually come in two different versions: a 32-bit option with a 2.3GHz "4-plus-1" A15 CPU and a 64-bit unit with a 2.5GHz dual-core Denver CPU. Naturally we're a bit more curious about the latter at the moment, and we'll update you as we get more information about either chip -- such as availability. Update: We received a little extra clarification from NVIDIA reps, who have told us that both versions of the K1 have already been certified by AT&T and Vodafone (among other carriers), and we should expect to see devices with the new chipset near the end of the first half of 2014. We also learned that although LTE support doesn't come natively on the chipset, it'll still be available thanks to an external chip that will be part of the K1 setup. It's hard to say whether or not this will help NVIDIA gain some lost ground on Qualcomm, but only time will tell. Ben Gilbert contributed to this post.
