150°

Rumor: nVidia Tegra wins contract for next-gen Nintendo DS.

When Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of nVidia announced that he expects to see Tegra capturing 50% of nVidia's revenue within the next couple of years, a lot of people thought that this is a smoke screen to sway the attention from its battles against AMD and Intel.

Incredibly how it may sound, from what we are hearing nVidia is dead on achieving its course. With a very aggressive approach, the company managed to sway not just Microsoft with the Zune HD multimedia player [based on Tegra APX 2600], but also a long-time IBM and ATI customer - Nintendo.

Launched in 2004, the Nintendo DS and its two latter redesigns [DS Lite and DSi] sold in massive 111.49 million units. With almost 40 million handheld consoles sold in United States alone, Nintendo DS owns 68.3% of worldwide market share.

As the time passed by, Nintendo started to work on the successor of its handheld console with a debut planned for late 2010 [Tokyo Game Show?]. According to our confidential sources, Nintendo is going to use Tegra System-on-Chip processor for the successor of DS/DSi handheld console. Unlike the current design, nVidia offered a single-chip proposal to Nintendo, a company famous for keeping the hardware platform absolutely simple.

Read Full Story >>
brightsideofnews.com
Kakkoii5327d ago (Edited 5327d ago )

Awesome, can't wait to see how this turns out. I've seen Nvidia's newest Tegra revision up close and personal. The specs are quite good, enough to run Windows 7 with no problem and some minor games, all on a small little motherboard+chip that fits in the palm of your hand.

Now that they are moving to 40nm, it's going to get a much needed boost with a better GPU core and a better ARM core. Currently it's using the ARM 11 and 7. Should be moving to the ARM A8 which is a lot better.

Pandamobile5327d ago

Maybe we can get some late 90's PC quality graphics on a DS. That'd be pretty cool.

Bust out some Quake, or Unreal Tournament or Half-Life on the subway :D

Who knows, maybe this will be enough to get Nvidia out of the financial problems they're in.

mintaro5327d ago

Grim Fandango on the go would be crazy.

evrfighter5327d ago

Smart move by Nintendo. Tegra is a real heavyweight

SpoonyRedMage5327d ago

Panda have you seen Renegade Kid's shooters?

They're not quite up to the graphical standard of those games you mentioned but they're pretty darn good.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

NeoCloud5327d ago

If this turns out to be true then i cant wait to get my hands on the new DS, I wonder what the PSP2 will be like??? remember Nintendo always puts Gameplay etc over graphics.Also Darthv72----- 1gb of ram?? Even the PS3 and X360 dont have that much, and u think a Nintendo Handheld Gaming System will have more Ram then the PS3/X360??? remember Nintendo want it to be cheap too, thats one of the reasons the DS has done so well.

Kakkoii5327d ago (Edited 5327d ago )

Oh, it will be able to do much better than that :P

Here's the first public version of Tegra that's about 2 years old running Quake III at 800x480 with an unspecified amount of AA/AF @35FPS:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

The Tegra has already had a new version with increased power since then, and another new one coming in 2010 that will be a ton faster.

TheIneffableBob5327d ago

Haha, imagine a DS with a Snapdragon CPU and next-gen Tegra GPU. Beastly.

Kakkoii5327d ago (Edited 5327d ago )

@TheIneffableBob:

Tegra isn't a GPU. It's a complete "System on a Chip". It is a GPU+CPU combined with all the other controller chips you find on a motherboard, into a single small chip. Including a bunch of smaller single purpose processors to aid in power efficiency by only using the cores needed for a certain task.

http://benchmarkreviews.com...

http://benchmarkreviews.com...

Snapdragon is a similar type of platform. Although less complex and requiring more on the motherboard.

The Tegra 650 has more powerful video/graphics capabilities than Snapdragon. And when Tegra moves to a dual-core ARM Cortex a9 on February 2010, it's going to have a much faster CPU also. Snapdragon has an ARM Cortex a8 CPU.

Nvidia's roadmap for Tegra has it getting a revamp every year, and showing itself off at the Mobile World Congress event in Febuary of each year. I really hope Nintendo uses their upcoming one in February, and not one of the existing series =/.

+ Show (6) more repliesLast reply 5327d ago
randomwiz5327d ago

The beast that is tegra. Nintendo will probably take something like Tegra and the new PSP will probably have a brute force processor, something like snapdragon that clocks at 1.5ghz.

I mean come on Sony its time for the psp2. The phone i'm going to get in 3 months has 3 times the processing power of the psp.(HTC HD2)(1GHZ Snapdragon processor)(PSP 333mhz)

kwyjibo5327d ago

Are you sure you want a Windows Mobile phone? I've been using the HTC Diamond 2 and it's an absolute pain. You need the stylus, even the HTC bespoke front end doesn't really hide how bad it is.

cardgenius5327d ago

Yeah, its too bad all that processing power wont help the sh*tty software that is Windows Mobile.

Kakkoii5327d ago

Clock speed is only a good comparison of performance between 2 of the same processors. It has a lot less impact when your comparing 2 completely different processors.

darthv725327d ago

Aside from a bettery cpu/gpu I have some other important expectations.

Must be able to play existing DS games which implies that the new "DS" will essentially have two screens like the others. Double if not...triple the internal memory for system performance. Maybe 1gb of ram would do. Considering the internal ram for the psp is 64mb.

SD card support and game launching. Like the current dsi but with added game launching. Maybe nintendo will get that working on existing dsi platform beforehand.

Better web browser with full flash/lite support. Considering the existing dsi browser cant run flash lite (could but it is up to opera to add it) as well as the psp cant run sites like youtube. I would expect the cpu power and higher memory of the new ds to be capable.

BISHOP-BRASIL5327d ago

The HD consoles don't use 1gb of ram and if anything the 360 vs PS3 teached us it's not a matter of how much but of how fast is memory.

For PSP2 I believe Sony will try something within PS3 lines, less focus on GPU and more focus on an all-tasks multi core CPU. For DS I'm this Tegra (maybe a specially modified version) news looks about right, Ninty likes to maintain it simple (and proprietary).

The media is my big concern... Both looks like are ready to make the jump for digital download (and charge us for a distorted backward compability - to me its not backwards if I have to buy again) which I really hope they don't.

SuperStrokey11235327d ago

Ahh yes, new handhelds on the way. Very exciting stuff. Looking forward to this indeed.

Hope we get some stuff on the psp2 and NDS2 this e3 as its long over due for both.

Quadrix5327d ago

I just bought a DSi! I don't want another damn handheld this early!

70°

Best GPU for V Rising in 2024 - our top picks reviewed

Here's our guide to the best GPUs for V Rising in 2024, now that the game is out of early access - the best from Nvidia, AMD, and even Intel.

got_dam4h ago(Edited 4h ago)

Slow news day, I guess.

70°

MSI releases new RTX 4060 Ti bundle that fans of Monster Hunter will love

MSI celebrates the 20th anniversary of Monster Hunter with this unique bundle that features a matching RTX 4060 Ti and game controller.

70°

RTX 50 series cooling tested up to 600W, but users want Nvidia to fix the adapter first

Nvidia is allegedly testing GPU coolers to handle up to 600W for the 50 series, reigniting discussion of melting 16-pin connectors.