Razer Shows Off 'Edge' Windows 8 Gaming Tablet

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Razer has announced the launch of Razer Edge gaming tablet at the CES in Las Vegas. At the heart of Razer Edge Tablet is the 10.1 inch display making it one of the most comfortable for playing games. Edge runs on Windows 8. It has the feeling of a laptop plus it has the ability to play any games, even those made for laptops, personal computers and exclusive gaming consoles. Razer Edge is powered an Intel Core processor and the graphics are by Nvidia. The processor is i5 and has 4GB of RAM to give all the power required for a tablet. Included is also a 64 GB solid drive. There is also another instance of the Razer running on Core i7 CPU and RAM capacity of 128 GB which can be upgraded to 256 GB SD.

Though powered by impressive hardware, you will need to have lots of add-ons to get a rich experience. The Pro version can be bought with the Gamepad controller package with analog sticks and feed back for vibration. However, the cost is a little on the higher side. You can also add peripherals like for example a keyboard and what appears to be like an illuminated key. In addition there are 3 USB ports and a HDMI port for connecting the device to High Definition television. The original battery fitted to Razer Edge has a meager life time and requires frequent charging. Battery life can go down further if you attach a keyboard or other peripheral devices. If you want extra battery life, then the only option is to buy some additional equipment.

It may be remembered that Razer Edge was originally introduced as Project Fiona and it is only now that it has been renamed. The Edge is typically a low to midrange device. In form factor, the Edge is at least two times as thick as the iPad but weighs proportionately lesser for its size. So users get a feel that it is a light device. Much though has gone into the designing of the Edge and that can be gauged from the fact a lot of time has been spent on understanding user needs. What you may not like about the design is that the device cannot be opened for making upgrades. In simple terms it means you get stuck to specifications for the lifetime of the device.

One of the major selling points in favor of the Edge is not focused on gaming alone. In fact, it has functionalities that help to be used as computing device. So you just be able to use it for accessing email and browsing the internet as well. Performance wise too, the Razer Edge has been found to be satisfactory. Most user who tried the device think that that the underside of the device heats up when used for playing high end games, though none said it was unbearable.

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There are some downsides to the Edge besides the high price and the full complement of additional equipment it needs for gaming. When the device is on your lap you sure will find it comfortable, but when you have to handle it can be troublesome with the other peripheral device, and that was very much evident at the CES. The Edge can also be connected through the Bluetooth, giving it wireless abilities. On the whole, however it is more or less a decent solution for those who are looking for a device for gaming as well as for computing. Since the gadget provides enough connectivity ports, those who have other attachable devices with them already can choose the Edge and save substantially.

Randy Collins likes writing articles related to Technology News, Gadget Reviews and How To. He also does guest posting for buycharter.com - a site that offers savings and current information on charter internet.

Some of the High-End Graphics Card with Graphics Processing Unit

Most of graphics or video cards that can be used in today’s computers can be easily found in many stores. Many of these cards will have different interfaces that are used and some will have high definition television compatibility. However, not all of the graphics or video cards are going to be the same.

The graphics or video card that is available on the market these days is the GeForce 8800 GTX. Made by NVIDIA, this features a GDDR3 memory technology chip and is PCI compatible. This is what is also used in Sony’s PlayStation 3 gaming system. This second best video memory chip is available and has a memory clock rate that well expands over one gigahertz in speed.

More of the benefits of the GeForce 8800 GTX is that it is the first video card that features DirectX 10 GPU. This is the latest edition in the Microsoft series of multimedia programming and is used exclusively with the new Windows Vista operating system.

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PNY’s GeForce 8800 GTX Overclocked is a variation of this video card and is also one of the top video cards that are available today. In addition, a PCI card, this feature has the ability to create image resolutions as high as 2560x1600 in quality. It also supports DirectX 10, OpenGL 2.0 and high definition television systems. The memory bandwidth of this card is especially high, as it has a bandwidth of 96 GB per second.

BFG’s GeForce 8600 GTS OC2 is one of the top video cards in the PCI Express line. The PCI Express is a unique and easy to use interface for the video card. This specific card will handle more than thirty gigabytes of bandwidth per second and has 256 MB of video memory. OpenGL 2.0 and DirectX 10 are also used here

The GeForce 8 series arrived with NVIDIA's first unified shader Direct3D 10 Shader Model 4.0 / OpenGL 2.1 architecture. The design is a major shift for NVIDIA in GPU functionality and capability, the most obvious change being the move from the separate functional units within previous GPUs to a homogeneous collection of universal floating point processors (called "stream processors") that can perform a more universal set of tasks.

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GeForce 8's unified shader architecture consists of a number of stream processors (SPs). Unlike the vector processing approach taken with older shader units, each SP is scalar and thus can operate only on one component at a time. This makes them less complex to build while still being quite flexible and universal. Scalar shader units also have the advantage of being more efficient in a number of cases as compared to previous generation vector shader units that rely on ideal instruction mixture and ordering to reach peak throughput. 

The lower maximum throughput of these scalar processors is compensated for by efficiency and by running them at a high clock speed. GeForce 8 runs the various parts of its core at differing clock speeds (clock domains), similar to the operation of the previous GeForce 7 Series GPUs. For example, the stream processors of GeForce 8800 GTX operate at a 1.35 GHz clock rate while the rest of the chip is operating at 575 MHz.

AGP cards are available for those who have computers whose motherboards can only take in AGP formatted cards. Diamond Multimedia’s S120 Radeon 9550 is one of the top video cards in this category, and it is great for those who are not willing to spend a great amount of money on a video card. This costs around fifty dollars in a typical retail store. This contains a VGA analog output. This Video Graphics Array output is easy to connect. It also features 256 MB of video memory and a maximum resolution of 2560x1600, and it is AGP compatible. This is a great video card for those who are looking for a card that is affordable.

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Another good AGP video card is the XFX GeForce 6200. These features VGA connectors and a dual 400 MHz RAM. It contains 256 MB of video memory, which refers to the coordination of depth in three-dimensional images. The CineFX 3.0 engine is one of the most notable parts of this card. It makes it one of the top video cards because it uses unique shader architecture so that images will be displayed at a smoother rate.

Some of the graphics or video cards are SLI ready cards. This refers to Scalable Link Interface, which helps to link multiple video cards to create one output. NVIDIA’s GeForce 7300 GT is one of the top video cards in this range. It features DDR2 memory and is compliant with PCI Express cards. Its unique transmission encoder will help to provide HDTV and composite output signals.

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Biostar’s GeForce 7100 GS TurboCache is also popular. This has 256 MB of video memory and a top resolution of 2048x1536. It is also HDTV ready.

Those are some of the top video cards to look for when shopping. These video cards all have different interfaces for PCI, AGP and SLI formats. They all have different resolution qualities and video memory ranges, but some of them will even handle HDTV signals. These cards will not only be great for a computer but they will work well for individual computer users.

Graphics Processing Unit or Virtual Processing Unit

In the early days of computer video card or graphics card does not possess a processor. It has only a memory which is the main draw of the graphics card. The sizes of memory range from 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 MB for the high end type. That was then now memory capacity has expanded many more times the the smallest memory configuration for a graphics card is now set at 512 MB then from here the it can be 1 Gig, or more depending on your budget and requirements.

But as application grew in size and the task also required more details like rendering or 3D modelling or animation that could be mistaken for the real stuff. The memory may have more than it can handle. Manufacturer also needed to have a more active graphics card than what the current crop is offering. Somehow in application that require high output the processing task needs be taken from the CPU which traditionally handle all processing task.  Enter the GPU or Graphics Processing Unit, now what is this exactly?

A graphics processing unit or GPU (also occasionally called visual processing unit or VPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. Modern GPUs are very efficient at manipulating computer graphics, and their highly parallel structure makes them more effective than general-purpose CPUs for algorithms where processing of large blocks of data is done in parallel. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card, or it can be on the motherboard or -- in certain CPUs -- on the CPU die. More than 90% of new desktop and notebook computers have integrated GPUs, which are usually far less powerful than those on a dedicated video card.

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The term was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as "the world's first 'GPU', or Graphics Processing Unit, a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second". Rival ATI Technologies coined the term visual processing unit or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002.

As mention above this two company popularized the term GPU and VPU for marketing and branding purposes of both there respective product. Modern GPUs use most of their transistors to do calculations related to 3D computer graphics. They were initially used to accelerate the memory-intensive work of texture mapping and rendering polygons, later adding units to accelerate geometric calculations such as the rotation and translation of vertices into different coordinate systems. 

Recent developments in GPUs include support for programmable shaders which can manipulate vertices and textures with many of the same operations supported by CPUs, oversampling and interpolation techniques to reduce aliasing, and very high-precision color spaces. Because most of these computations involve matrix and vector operations, engineers and scientists have increasingly studied the use of GPUs for non-graphical calculations.

Dedicated graphics cards

The GPUs of the most powerful class typically interface with the motherboard by means of an expansion slot such as PCI Express (PCIe) or Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) and can usually be replaced or upgraded with relative ease, assuming the motherboard is capable of supporting the upgrade. A few graphics cards still use Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots, but their bandwidth is so limited that they are generally used only when a PCIe or AGP slot is not available.

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A dedicated GPU is not necessarily removable, nor does it necessarily interface with the motherboard in a standard fashion. The term "dedicated" refers to the fact that dedicated graphics cards have RAM that is dedicated to the card's use, not to the fact that most dedicated GPUs are removable. Dedicated GPUs for portable computers are most commonly interfaced through a non-standard and often proprietary slot due to size and weight constraints. Such ports may still be considered PCIe or AGP in terms of their logical host interface, even if they are not physically interchangeable with their counterparts.

Integrated graphics solutions

Integrated graphics solutions, shared graphics solutions, or Integrated graphics processors (IGP) utilize a portion of a computer's system RAM rather than dedicated graphics memory. They are integrated into the motherboard. Exceptions are AMD's IGPs that use dedicated sideport memory on certain motherboards, and APUs, where they are integrated with the CPU die. Computers with integrated graphics account for 90% of all PC shipments. These solutions are less costly to implement than dedicated graphics solutions, but tend to be less capable. Historically, integrated solutions were often considered unfit to play 3D games or run graphically intensive programs but could run less intensive programs such as Adobe Flash. Examples of such IGPs would be offerings from SiS and VIA circa 2004. 

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However, modern integrated graphics processors such as AMD's Fusion IGPs and Intel's HD Graphics are more than capable of handling 2D graphics from Adobe Flash or low stress 3D graphics, but struggle with the latest games like Battlefield 3. IGPs like the Intel's HD Graphics 3000 and AMD's Fusion IGPs have improved performance that may match cheap dedicated graphic cards, but still lag behind the more expensive dedicated graphics cards. While older platforms had the IGP integrated onto the motherboard, newer platforms (Intel Core i series and AMD Fusion) integrate the GPU right onto the CPU die.

Graphics Procession Unit will continue to be developed in all capabilities as more demanding high end application require more realistic and faster output.