NVIDIA: there's nothing 'Ultra' about Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks unless you add Kepler

This is a vaguely awkward message for NVIDIA to be putting out. On one hand, the company is best buddies with Intel and is hoping to see its next-gen GPUs bundled with a large portion of the Ivy Bridge notebooks that will ship this year. But to reach that target, it must risk irking Chipzilla by emphasizing the limitations of Ivy Bridge's integrated graphics. That's exactly what happened at a recent presentation, when NVIDIA told us there'll be "nothing Ultra" about the performance of a regular Ivy Bridge Ultrabook because the integrated HD 4000 graphics will only handle around 43 percent of current games.
By contrast, if you add in a GeForce GT 640M you'll find that 100 percent of current games are playable with frame rates over 30fps and high detail settings, including Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City, Crysis 2 and many others. If you leave the lightweight Ultrabook spec behind and combine Ivy Bridge with a GT 670M GPU then you can go even higher -- as we just discovered in our review of the MSI's GT70 gaming laptop. Fortunately, Intel was pretty magnanimous about HD 4000 when it briefed us, and readily accepted that enthusiasts will still want discrete graphics, so we don't imagine the slide above will cause too many hurt feelings.

Via engadget.com

NVIDIA Plots Mobile SoC GPU Performance, Surpassing Xbox 360 by 2014

Qualcomm was the first to tell us that it expects to offer console level GPU performance in the not too distant future, generally hinting that its Adreno 3xx GPUs would get us there. NVIDIA shared this slide (pictured above) with us today that gives its take on where PC, console and mobile GPU performance will land over the coming years. There's nothing too revolutionary here but it does provide an interesting visual for much of what the GPU vendors have been talking about for the past couple of years.

The solid lines are estimated performance, while the dotted lines are trends. According to NVIDIA, somewhere in the 2013 - 2014 timeframe is when we'll get Xbox 360-class GPU performance out of mobile SoCs. The console line only has two points (Xbox 1 and Xbox 360), while the mobile line starts with the original iPhone, moves up to Tegra 2 and then follows Tegra 3.

Via anandtech.com

Killer Wireless-N 1202 and E2200 Ethernet controller launch, aim to squash your ping times

Killer Technology -- formerly known as Bigfoot Networks -- has certainly come a long way from its days as a scrappy startup, and now the outfit's taking one more step towards ping domination with the introduction of two new products. Qualcomm Atheros is actually doing the honors, as it formally reveals the Killer Wireless-N 1202 WiFi module with Bluetooth as well as the Killer E2200 gigabit Ethernet controller. Each one is aimed at DIYers and OEMs, enabling machines based on them to automatically classify and prioritizing gaming, video and audio network data -- a bit of behind-the-scenes black magic that's said to "provide a superior, uninterrupted online entertainment experience."
As you'd expect, both will include the Killer Network Manager software on associated rigs, giving end users a borderline ridiculous amount of control over how bandwidth is used. We're told that the 1201 will ship next month, while the E2200 is available now; pricing remains a mystery on both, though.

Via engadget.com