News Bits: Physics Processor for Notebooks, More XPS M1730 Info, Inside the $100 Laptop

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AGEIA announces Physics Processor for notebooks

AGEIA this week announced the PhysX 100M, a mobile physics processor for high-end notebooks. AGEIA says the 100M gives &quot;power, efficiency, and design flexibility.&quot;

AGEIA says the PhysX 100M is available now and notebooks feauring the technology are expected to be seen soon.

Games featuring PhysX technology are few and far between; the most notable title is Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and the next big title is the still-in-development Unreal Tournament 3.

ATI and Nvidia have yet to deliver a hardware physics processor, although both have previewed new technologies.

Read More (DailyTech.com)


Dell XPS M1730 packs dual 8700M-GT graphics cards

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Image courtesy Engadget

Additional details and pictures have surfaced on the new Dell XPS M1730 gaming notebook. For starters, the notebook will feature not one but two Nvidia GeForce 8700M-GT graphics card in SLI. In addition, it has also been uncovered that the system will use SSDs. Please check the link for more pictures.

Read More (Engadget.com)

The BBC looks inside the OLPC

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Chris Blizzard is the chief software engineer for the OLPC project ($100 laptop project). The BBC interviewed him this week and now have a video on their site in which Blizzard shows the internals of the $100 laptop and also shows how the black &amp; white no backlight mode works to conserve power. Blizzard says the hope is that for every one minute of cranking the laptop (the $100 laptop can be hand cranked for power) you'll get 10 minutes of usage.

Read More (BBC)

More Dell laptop fires

A man in Columbus Ohio experienced his Dell Inspiron 9200 laptop bursting into flames yesterday evening. Douglas Brown is a network administrator at a hospital in Columbus and while at home says his Inspiron 9200 battery exploded into flames and that it &quot;looked like fireworks which would have been cool had it not been in my house.&quot; He dialed the fire department and they showed up with two trucks to put the flames out -- a bit too much manpower maybe, but better safe than sorry!

Read More (ConsumerAffairs.com)


Via introduces 1-watt x86 CPU

Via today introduced a new Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) processor that has a maximum power consumption of only 1 watt (0.1 watt at idle). The Eden ULV processor is Via's third ULV CPU and is built on a 90nm process. It has a 128 kb L2 cache and a 400MHz front side bus. The CPU is aimed at ultra mobile devices according to the company.

Read More (TGDaily.com)

 

Nice...Dell laptop blows up, Dell says they hope the homeowner has insurance. Figures Dell probably won't own up to it.

 

The M1730 has got to be the ugliest laptop I've seen in a long time.......was it really the same team that designed the m1330??

Well, the specs seem to be quite nice though...although I wonder if the SSD will be more of a detriment to gaming or not

 

I'll bet the graphics card wont perform as well as it should in th 1730 because its embarrassed to be in such an ugly laptop

Actually, now that i looked more at it, its kinda cool, i might get one

 

What form factor is the PhysX 100M? The articles I've seen don't say. Will it be an express card add on? Or will it be minipci? Anyone?

Edit: It looks like it's going to be in a MXM-II format.....this is going to be interesting.

From Here.

 

xps 1730 my eyessssssssss.....

 

Dude, your Dell blew up! Seriously though if I were this guy I would sue both Dell and whoever made the battery. Imagine if it blew up in your lap, since some Dells have their battery in front I'm sure that would be ugly

As for AGEIA, I would think their resources would be better off being focused on other things then notebook physics cards and its pretty obvious what that other thing is. Out of curiosity, is it a mini PCIe card or something else?

 

Lol Apparently not.

Actually the laptop doesn't look so bad now.

 

I don't think the 1330 was designed by anyone at Dell. It looks very similar to those of a certain ODM....

 

I don't like the pushing of Physics cards , who really needs them ? with todays extra powerfull CPUs that just keep getting faster .

Pushing the driver down your throat with many new games looks like the start of a move to make those cards a must in games ( like a GPU ) and an extra source of revenue for hardware firms and software developers , all which will get a piece of the cake .

 

When they say it blew up, did the battery actually explode, or did it just catch fire?

 

That picture of the 1730 doesn't look bad, I wonder how many limbs you'll have to sell to afford one though. I know they are going to charge a boat load for that PC. Spec wise its not terrible its actually pretty good. I wish they got rid of those white lines across it and made the backlight on the keyboard red. The laptop would be truly special then.

 

I think Dell is going to surprise most people by offering different color combinations, making it more pleasing to the eye for some. I can only cross my fingers on behalf of the power gamers out there.

 

More Dells exploding and the M1730.

They're both bombs. One by way of looks, and the other literally.

=P

 

I think this pretty much explains it

edit

youtube video here

scary stuff

 

I think XPS M1730 looks doesn't bad, it's cool, but Toshiba Satellite X205 is cooler .

 

Wow, I can't believe those pics released a long time ago were really....how the M1730 looks.

I just can't see how Dell would make a notebook as sleek as the M1330...and then turn around and make such a fugly notebook....I wouldn't buy that if it was Dual 8700M GTX...

 

Well in the other thread its been discovered that the back has LEDs so they don't have to stay that ridiculous bright red color.

 

The thing that is really threatening the PPU (PhyX processor) are the GPUs. Which are extremely powerful when it comes to that. The PPU is focused on some specific things.
And IMO the thing that matters for many of the gamers is the Gameplay rather than the eyecandy. Much of the flashy new games suffer from an extremely dull gameplay. Physics can do a lot to improve the gameplay.
I think we need to see what will become of Unreal 3 and upcoming PhysX powered games to judge the AGEIA PhysX properly.

 

Yes PPUs can help with game play but I doubt any of it will come from a online FPS like UT3. All the physics processing costs a lot of bandwidth, and I mean a lot. PCGamer had a review of the full version of CellFactor: Revolution and when they tried to play it online they could only get to work on a LAN with other computers running the card.

So it seems that theres a lot stacked against AGEIA, they have to figure out how to squeeze all those calculations down the standard boardband bandwidth connection to get the full game play and eye candy benefit. Not to mention their already existing problems.

 

1 MINUTE of cranking for 10 mins power....that seems quite a lot to me......
I'd have to crank for 30mins to get what I do now.....

Of course that is missing the point, but I expected better somehow.

 

The OLPC makes me think of a supersoaker with the 1 minute of cranking for 10 minutes of use. The user is going to have some tired arms.

I noticed how one of the 1730 pictures at engadget has the 'Ruby color' label under it. This obviously refers to the color of the light... which doesn't match the backlit keyboard.

 

If I had a man-powered computer with a contraption that allows me to deliver the power with either legs or arms (my choice), I would actually get some exercise.. sigh, playing too much games these days.

 

Because the 1330 was designed by a different ODM than the 1730 (1720, right?).

edit: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2379927&postcount=51

There ya go.

 

I do like the horsepower in that new Dell though....

SLI 8700 makes me think that there isn't going to be a mobile 8800 part for quite some time, and this will have to suffice for the high-end GPU for the time being...

 

I think there'll be a lot of exploding XPS m1730. The poor things will be so upset over their looks they'll be suicidal and overheat and explode.

 

Well you know me , forming an opinion just by first look .

I agree with you about gameplay ( looking forward to TF2 for that ) and thats part of my attitude towards the PPU , don't nades bounce nice right now ?

I'm not sure how it would be better for gamplay if the physics would be 100% correct vs. "faked" physics tweaked for balanced gameplay like today ?

Someone wisely noted the extra bandwidth , I havn't thought of that till now , but this will surely kill any gameplay left

 

The Dell does look better in an actual real photo, probably looks killer in person check out this shot.

I think it looks badass there I definitely will be checking out dell.com tomorrow.

 

Can someone tell us what the **** an SSD is?

 

where the damn XPS oh and i heard the m 1710 is going to come with the 8700m gt card which is wery cool

 

http://www.google.com/

 

SSD:Solid State Drive, =)

 

I for one think the XPS1730 doesn't look all that bad, though it could certainly look better.

I was looking forward to yesterday's release, but it never showed up on dell.com. I chatted with an XPS rep and they wouldn't say when it's going to be released, just that it was 'very soon'. He referred me to dell.com/beast to sign up for an email alert when it is released. It's going to have to be a great price for me to go for one, but it's not out of the question.

 

Supposedly its Wednesday night when they usually update the coupons, but now theres rumors of it coming with an 8800 so we'll see.
http://www.laptopspirit.fr/5345/dell-xps-m1730-decouvrez-de-nouvelles-photos/