If you live on the wild side like we do you likely want to have your hot dogs without mustard, watch football games on TV with the volume really low and download new graphics card beta drivers. So we have a deal for you. Nvidia this week released some new GeForce beta drivers (177.92) for all of their current chips. These include the newly released 9400 GT, 8500 GT, 980 GT and 9800 GTX+ models.The release notes for the new beta drivers reveal a number of game related issues that have been addressed in this new download including Prey. F.E.A.R and City of Heroes. There's also some performance improvements for games like BioShock, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4. As usual, this is a beta release and thus is not officially supported by Nvidia....

There have been tons of different approaches for making PC games and then projecting them into 3D space. Nvidia believes it has a new solution and showed off their plans at their own Nvision conference this week. Our sister site Game Daily has a report on some of Nvidia's plans for this subject.Nvidia is partnering up with TV manufacturers like Mitsubishi and PC LCD monitor makers like Viewsonic (like the one pictured above) to support their upcoming GeForce Stereoscopic technology. Nvidia will release an emitter and 3D glasses in the new future that will allow anyone with a PC rig with an Nvidia Geforce 8 graphics card or higher to view over 350 PC games released in the last five years in 3D. Pricing for the GeForce Stereoscopic technology, along with a release date, has yet to be announced. Meanwhile, San Diego based iZ3D already sells a similar technology along with their own $600 22-inch monitor that they claim supports over 400 PC games in 3D....

Last week Futuremark announced the first details on their first PC game, the space-based zero-gravity themed first person shooter Shattered Horizon. Now comes word that Futuremark has decided to ally with graphic processor maker Nvidia by joining the company's "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" marketing program.Basically, Shattered Horizon's dev team will work with Nvidia's engineers to make the game run well on Nvidia's GeForce processor and will also implement the PhysX game physics software support. The game is also being shown at the Nvision conference in San Jose that began on Monday....

Nvidia continues to hype up its support for the PhysX game physics software solution that Nvidia can now support via new drivers for its Geforce series of graphics chips. Today Nividia announced that future versions of Gamebryo, the game graphics engine developed by Emergent Game Technologies, will fully support the PhysX physics features.Gamebryo is used in a number of previously released and future games including Bethesda Softworks's Fallout 3 and Mythic's upcoming MMO Warhammer Online. While it's too late for those games to intergrate the PhysX support, one of the first games that might use the PhysX features in Gamebryo is the recently announced RPG sequel Divinity 2 from developer Larian Studios....

Nvidia continues to promote the use of their PhysX game physics support (which it purchased early in 2008) for its GeForce graphics chips. Today the company announced that All Points Bulletin (better known as APB) is the latest to add support for PhysX tech to its game. The upcoming urban action MMO, developed by UK based Real Time Worlds, is due to launch sometime in 2009.According to the press release, APB will use the PhysX tech "to enhance the game's free-form combat and real-time driving environments." The game recently has been ramping up for its upcoming beta test but so far there's been no word on when that will occur....

Last month, graphics chip maker Nvidia warned that it would miss its planned financial targets for the second quarter of 2008 due to various factors. Now the company has released its final official numbers for that quarter that ended June 30 with revenue numbers of $892.7 million, down from $935.3 million for the same period a year ago. Nvidia had a loss of $120.9 million for the quarter compared to a profit of $172.7 million for the same period a year ago.As previously announced, Nvidia is taking a $196 million one time loss to cover warrenty and repair charges on older notebook computers. However its the revenue loss that seems to trouble the company's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, calling the loss "disappointing." Nvidia has been feeling more pressure lately from its main rival AMD who just launched their new flagship product the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2...

As promised last week, Nvidia has now released new official drivers for its GeForce 8, 9 and 200 series of graphics cards today. The 177.83 drivers are the ones that enable those chips to have hardware game physics support for PC game that support the PhysX software that Nvidia bought early this year (although its likely that there will be some framerate loss with that support).Nvidia's new drivers are not the only thing the graphics chip company has available for download. You can also download the previously released PhysX enabled free multiplayer shooter Warmonger from developer Netdevil, the Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX mod, the Folding@Home support and several tech demos (some interactive, some not) that show off various PhysX effects....

While we wait for the release of the downloadable game Bionic Commando Rearmed later this week (at $5 more than its console counterparts), Capcom and graphics chip maker Nvidia have announced that the PC version of the full-fledged retail action game Bionic Commando will feature full hardware physics gameplay via Nvidia's PhysX game physics software.According to the press release, PhysX support for for the GRIN-develop Bionic Commando will enhance the game's debris, smoke, dust, and weapon effects. "Walls can be torn down, trees bend in the wind, and water flows with body and force." Nvidia plans to release new official drivers on Tuesday that will enable PhysX support for its GeForce 8, 9, and 200 series of graphics cards. Meanwhile the press release seems to confirm that Bionic Commando won't make a 2008 release date as it states it is now due out in early 2009....

The non-profit PC Gaming Alliance hasn't really had a proper logo for the organization but that changed this week with a new press release announcing plans for the group's first major report on the status of the PC gaming industry. The group, which includings major hardware rivals like Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Dell, Acer and Microsoft, is aiming to help promote the industry as well as give developers a better idea on how to best use PC hardware.The PCGA will present its first "Horizons" research report on August 19 during the GC Developers Conference in Leipizig, Germany and will also give the same presentation during Nvidia's own NVISION event in San Jose, CA on August 25. The report will "shine a light on challenges for the industry, from PC Game platform promotion to creating a standardized minimum system requirement."...

If you're eyes glaze over with delight when you consider the purchase of a brand new Nvidia graphics card, you might want to sit still another week before dashing to the nearest Best Buy. According to Tech Report, Nvidia will be adding PhysX support to its existing GPUs beginning August 12. The initial line-up of Nvidia cards planned for the added support are all GeForce 8, GeForce 9, and the entire GTX 200-series.After expressing interest in PhysX, Nvidia purchased the technology from creator Ageia earlier this year. Adding PhysX to Nvidia's GPUs garnered more interest in the technology, which was slow to gather support due to most users not wanting to pay for yet another card to add to their machines....

While Intel's integrated graphics chips are used a lot, gamers who like the high end PC hardware rigs need stand alone graphics chips. In this area, Nvidia (with their Geforce brand) and AMD (via their ATI Radeon brand) have ruled the roost with their products. Now Intel's 800 pound gorilla is planning to finally enter the PC graphics wars in force.News.com reports that Intel plans to release their own stand alone graphics chip, currently code-named Larrabee. An Intel spokesperson states, "It looks like a GPU and acts like a GPU but actually what it's doing is introducing a large number of x86 cores into your PC.' According to the article the chip could have dozens and eventually hundreds of processor cores and won't need anything special to run things like DirectX which means existing games will be able to be run on PCs with the Larrabee chip. There's no word on when the first version of the chip will be released...

Get ready to get excited. Yes, Nvidia has released some new beta drivers for a number of its GeForce graphics chips in several flavors, including Windows XP, Vista (32 and 64-bit) and more. This particular version number is 177.79 and is specifically for the GeForce 8, 9, and 200 family of chips.These are beta drivers and thus are not officially supported so download and install at your own risk. However if you do wish to walk on the wild site, the drivers' release notes do go into more detail on what this new version fixes including issues in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (for Windows XP) Call of Duty 4, Counter-Strike, Prey and more (Windows Vista)...

It's been a rough month for PC graphics chip maker Nvidia. Early in the month the company suffered a massive cut in its stock price following word that they would miss their projected revenues for their second fiscal quarter by a whopping $200 million. Today the company hopes to bring back some of their luster by officially announcing three new entries in its GeForce 9 series of graphics chips.The new products are the GeForce 9800 GTX+, 9800 GT, and the 9500 GT. The 9500 is the budget price version with graphics cards using the chip priced below $100. The 9800 GTX and the 9800 GT are for the enthusiast and mainstream market, respectively. All support Nvidia's SLI support along with the new PhysX game physics hardware technology. Cards with the chips are available for sale now....

It looks like it won't be long before the public will get a chance to play a portion of Space Siege, the long awaited sci-fi action-RPG from developer Gas Powered Games and publisher Sega. A banner and a countdown clock on NVIDIA's NZone gaming site indicates they will debut the demo which seems to indicate a release late on Sunday or early on Monday.The game, which has your player character fighting off nasty aliens on a ship that carries the last members of the human race, is scheduled to ship to stores late in August. There's no word at the moment on what the demo will contain at this point....

With the anti-trust suit against Nvidia and ATI still raging (which alleges the two kept prices artificially high by releasing products at the same time and at very similar prices) it was really bad timing for an unwanted Email to surface. Especially when the Email in question was written by Nvidia's Dan Vivoli to ATI's Dave Orton.Apparently as far back as 2002 (the suit has been going on since '06) the two graphic card giants were talking about alinging their marketing plans. The Email from Vivoli to Orton stated: "I really think we should work harder together on the marketing front. As you and I have talked about, even though we are competitors, we have the common goal of making our category a well positioned, respected playing field. $5 and $8 stocks are a result of no respect."Nvidia's stock at the close of market today was a "whopping" $11.56 while ATI's (now owened by AMD) was a "stunning" $4.65. Um, there still doesn't appear to be much respect for these guys. Where's Rodney Dangerfield when you need him?...