News Bits: Intel Acquiring Nvidia Rumor False, Toshiba Fuel Cells, Nvidia G80 Details Unveiled

Nvidia acquisition by Intel not happening

October 5<SUP>th</SUP> - Analysts said that Intel is not a likely suitor for Nvidia. Due to the speculation on Wednesday, Nvidia shares rose in excess of 8 percent. Analysts doubt a deal like that would ever happen. A source claimed on Thursday that various players in the sector have expressed interest in Nvidia, but it is unknown whether there are any formal talks going on. After jumping 8% on Wednesday night on the rumor,Nvidia shares dropped back down 88 cents to $30.20 on Thursday; the company is valued at $11 billion.

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Toshiba fuel cells

Although fuel cells represent the way of the future, there are far too few products using them for it to happen anytime soon. Toshiba demonstrated a battery for a PC based on a fuel cell. It goes into the bottom of the PC and is quite large.

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Nvidia DirectX 10 "G80" details unveiled

More details have been uncovered about Nvidia's new "G80" graphics processor, known as the GeForce 8800GTX and 8800GTS. It will be fully DirectX 10 compatible and supports Shader Model 4.0. The 8800GTX will be the flagship card, featuring a core clock of 575MHz, 768MB of GDDR3 memory running at 900MHz, and a 384-bit memory interface that provides 86GB/s of memory bandwidth. The 8800GTX also features 128-bit unified shaders at 1350MHz. The 8800GTS will be a cut-down version of the 8800GTX, and features a smaller amount of memory (640MB GDDR3), although it is still clocked at 900MHz. The core clock is reduced to 500MHz. Both the 8800GTX and 8800GTS are HDCP compliant and support DVI-D, VIVO, and HDTV outputs. The products are expected to be launched in the second week of November.

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Seven Linux distros fight over one old ThinkPad

Many employers have a stash of old PCs that will not run the latest version of Windows. The solution? Put Linux on them. Rick Lehrbaum used an old Pentium III-based ThinkPad and tested seven different distros of Linux on it.

In order to decide which distro of Linux to run, he put together a checklist of basic requirements and installed a variety of applications. See more here.

Sales to grow in Chinese notebook market

The demand for notebook computers in China is skyrocketing, and is expected to reach 5.5 - 5.6 million units in 2006, a significant increase from last year's 3.8 - 3.9 million.

The top five brands - Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asustek Computer, and Asus - maintained quarterly sales of 100,000 units or more this year. Lenovo led the pack, selling over 350,000 in 1H 2006, trailed by Dell and HP selling between 120,000 - 140,000 units per quarter.

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As the happy owner of a vintage ThinkPad X21, the article on Linux distros is of great interest. It was time to experiment with Linux anyway...

C.

 

I'd like to see fuel cells in a lot more products too. The laptop powerbase by Toshiba looks intriguing.

And that Geforce 8800GTX looks nice. Other than the DX10 and Shader 4.0 though, how much more powerful than the 7950GTX is it?

 

Sorry , but I think you made a mistake in your quote :

"The top five brands - Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asustek Computer, and Asus "

In the article it read :

"The five leading vendors—Lenovo, Dell, Hewlett Packard (HP), Asustek Computer and Acer"

 

Well, clocks aren't too different and the 8800GTX has less RAM. Not sure. I wonder if these are going to be SLI-ready on release.

C.

 

Yeah, they're going to let the hardcore gamers upgrade their 7950GTX to the 8800GTX before releasing the 8900GTX . Then, the 8950GTX will be announced .

Thanks for the info. It didn't seem like much of a step up from the 7950GTX and the VRAM is a bit disappointing.