Home Gaming Nvidia’s new mobile CPU runs Unreal 4

Nvidia’s new mobile CPU runs Unreal 4

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Coreblimey

We’ve yet to see any games running Epic’s new Unreal Engine 4 yet, but if the last generation’s anything to go by, we’ll probably be seeing very, very many of them. And we might even be seeing them in the palms of our hands. Nvidia’s unveiled a new version of its TEGRA mobile chip, the K1, which they say has more power under the hood than the Xbox 360 or PS3.

On top of that, being a chip intended for phones, tablets and other smart devices, it’s far more power efficient to boot, utilising far less energy than the aforementioned consoles.

Unveiled at this year’s CES, the new chip is based on the Kepler tech in Nvidia’s high-end desktop GPU’s, and boasts 192 cores, which CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says are “all fully programmable, all massively parallel.”

“We’ve brought mobile computing to the same level as desktop computing,” Huang said at Nvidia’s CES press conference. “We’ve brought mobile computing to the same level as super computing. We’ve brought the heart of GeForce and the soul of Tesla to the Tegra family.”

Huang also boasted that the new K1 will be able to run Unreal Engine 4, which is obviously quite an impressive feat, given that Epic’s said that Nintendo’s Wii U isn’t particularly suitable for the task, though it would likely be able to run the engine, despite  supposition to the contrary.

“We can take absolutely anything that runs on PC or high-end console and run it on Tegra,” said Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney in a statement. “I didn’t think that we’d be at this level on mobile for another 3-4 years.”

The Tegra K1 will come in two versions; one with a 32-bit quad A15 CPU (up to 2.3 GHz) and another one with dual 64-bit Denver CPUs (up to 2.5 GHz). That inevitable future, where we all have tablets or phones that we hook up to our TV’s and replace traditional consoles? It’s getting closer.

Here’s a demo!

 

Last Updated: January 6, 2014

41 Comments

  1. Alien Emperor Trevor

    January 6, 2014 at 08:35

    “being a chop intended” LOL

    Reply

  2. CypherGate

    January 6, 2014 at 08:37

    with awesome battery life as well to go with all that power (sarcasm alert)

    Reply

    • SaintsRowNigri

      January 6, 2014 at 09:07

      Phenomenal processing power!!!
      Itty-bitty battery life…

      Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot Llew. Jelly!!!

        January 6, 2014 at 09:52

        hahaha. Well done. On a Monday too. Someone had a good breakfast or something this morning. very sharp. Well done sir

        Reply

        • Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)

          January 6, 2014 at 10:26

          I think he got it all this morning 😉

          Reply

      • ALKi1234

        January 6, 2014 at 09:53

        That’s a fact…..battery life will always be the bottleneck for any mobile device.

        Reply

        • Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)

          January 6, 2014 at 10:31

          Well if what I’ve read(and understand) regarding Supercapacitors, this might not be a problem in the near future.

          Reply

  3. Alien Emperor Trevor

    January 6, 2014 at 08:38

    I wonder how much devices powered by this chip will cost.

    Reply

  4. VampyricSquirrel Monk

    January 6, 2014 at 08:51

    Welcome back Geoff!

    Running the Unreal 4 engine on a phone? Sounds ridiculous… but fun!

    Reply

    • Weanerdog

      January 6, 2014 at 10:42

      Run it for 2 minutes at a cost of 1 million dollars, sounds cool.

      Reply

      • VampyricSquirrel Monk

        January 6, 2014 at 10:49

        LOL! It’ll crash, run out of battery life, or overheat before 2 minutes are up.

        Reply

  5. Dethray

    January 6, 2014 at 08:57

    I call BS or else the Unreal 4 engine is pure crap……………

    Reply

    • ElimiNathan

      January 6, 2014 at 08:59

      Ye from the tech demo it looked like something not even the new gen consoles would run easilly

      Reply

    • Mabenito

      January 6, 2014 at 09:12

      Uses less power than PS/Xbox ? The aliens have landed and they work for Nvidia.

      Reply

  6. Melasco

    January 6, 2014 at 09:19

    Oooh, so your new R10 000 phone will have better looking games than my 5 year old PS3 that cost me R3000… Real shocker there… I doubt it’s accurate anyways. It’s easy to make it have a higher pixel fill rate, but will it be able to push the same poly’s to screen at 720p? Show us the proof.

    Either way, it’s still impressive, and we will get to a point where mobile devices go far beyond that level of performance… It still won’t kill the console, we’ll have these same debates 10 years from now.

    This is why Sony and MS chose mobile CPU technology for their new consoles, the efficiency made it the logical choice.

    Reply

    • CypherGate

      January 6, 2014 at 09:24

      Yup R10 000 for a phone with a great GPU and……. NO BATTERY LIFE LOL I’d say you would get a good 5mins of gaming if they should ever bring true HD console gaming to mobile phones. Yeah games looks.. OK on mobile, but nothing can really beat a console.

      Reply

      • Melasco

        January 6, 2014 at 09:30

        And on top of that, mobile technology changes constantly, like every 6 months there is something better, so there’s no chance of really building a strong lineup of well optimized games.

        Marketing BS imo.

        Reply

        • Rags

          January 6, 2014 at 13:24

          UE is targeting Mac OS. It does not have support for Android. Its the one advantage Apple has over Android. You just need to optimise for the latest two generations of any of its platforms.

          Reply

    • Sir Rants A Lot Llew. Jelly!!!

      January 6, 2014 at 09:47

      You make a valid point and one can’t argue. Not going to pay R7k + for a high end tablet or phone to play games. Would rather by a proper console or PC for the same price and get better performance etc.

      But think what this level of tech means.

      Imagine graphics cards utilising an additional tegra chip on the card itself for advance computational power, relieving the CPU.

      Now imagine nvidia launches a GFX card with a tegra chip and a ARM chip on the board of the GFX card. The power will be insane.

      Or what if nVidia decide to launch a console and upping the capability of the current mobile tegra chip by making it larger and able to do more. It wouldn’t be too tough. They would make a beast and at a much lower price because the phones aren’t expensive because of the tegra chips. In fact the tegra chips are very cost effective.

      Reply

      • CypherGate

        January 6, 2014 at 10:18

        The potential of the chip is definitely there and it is incredible tech, but like you mentioned that it would be great to see them use it in PC gpu tech. As for Nvidia creating a console. . . IF they decided they have the potential to create one beast of a machine.

        Reply

  7. 64bit

    January 6, 2014 at 09:19

    So which graphics company doesn’t have a chip in the new consoles….

    Reply

  8. 64bit

    January 6, 2014 at 09:20

    now when is steam bringing out a phone
    even and ubuntu phone which has my steam catalog of games

    Reply

    • Mark Treloar

      January 6, 2014 at 09:40

      Because not even Gabe can innovate like a Finn

      http://jolla.com/

      Reply

    • Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)

      January 6, 2014 at 10:06

      Canonical actually had an idea for the Ubuntu Edge, a phone that you could use for a desktop PC as well.

      Reply

      • CypherGate

        January 6, 2014 at 10:16

        That phone apparently will be released in the 3rd or 4th quarter of this year maybe early 2015.

        Reply

        • Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)

          January 6, 2014 at 10:26

          Last I read it failed to get funding and was canned and that they were going to rather focus on Ubuntu Touch

          Reply

          • CypherGate

            January 6, 2014 at 10:30

            I cant remember exactly where i read that they going to release around those times because Mark announced they acquired one hardware partner, but didnt say what company. Check this article out. Not sure how relevant this site is though http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU2MDY

          • Unavengedavo(aka. MadeYouLook)

            January 6, 2014 at 10:45

            That article seems to be more related to Ubuntu Touch than the Edge. I know that they wanted to release it around that time, but they only managed to get around $12m of the $36m they needed to fund it.

          • Weanerdog

            January 6, 2014 at 10:46

            Yes funding was returned and project was put on hold/canned was the last press release I read from the project.

  9. Sir Rants A Lot Llew. Jelly!!!

    January 6, 2014 at 09:43

    Ok that’s actually crazy. If it’s true that a small mobile chip can run the unreal 4 engine, then what would happen if nVidia actually decided to make a fully fledged console?

    Now, having a mobile device that can push this kind of graphic levels is all fine and well, but battery life etc will be up to ****.

    However, just the fact that this tech exists, means that pretty soon prices will start to come down as these “mobile” tegra chips start becoming integrated and larger in other types of devices.

    Imagine the potential of this tech? It’s going to start going really fast now. Going to be an interesting 5 years in the graphics industry to see where it all goes

    Reply

    • Mark Treloar

      January 6, 2014 at 10:07

      I think Nvidia is investing itself right now in content streaming. If at some point they do launch a console it would be a thin client streaming from their servers.

      Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot Llew. Jelly!!!

        January 6, 2014 at 10:27

        Possibly. It would be the cool thing to do. But the world isn’t ready for that yet.

        I reckon they’d launch a fully fledged device before they launch a streaming service from their servers. However, as you said, they are very heavy in to the content streaming as they have already proved with their virtualised desktop tech running externally and being streamed

        Reply

    • Weanerdog

      January 6, 2014 at 10:47

      I wonder why they are not looking at putting these into laptops?

      Reply

      • Sir Rants A Lot Llew. Jelly!!!

        January 6, 2014 at 12:19

        I think the mobile GPU’s are more efficient at the moment but as the Tegra chips evolve I am sure it will become a reality

        Reply

  10. Sir Rants A Lot Llew. Jelly!!!

    January 6, 2014 at 09:57

    Welcome back Geoff!

    Reply

  11. Rags

    January 6, 2014 at 13:15

    UE3 ran fine on now old apple devices. The Mass Effect game look pretty good on Ipad 3 and is smooth as butter. But that with, like this the scaled down engine. Without doubt Epic is targeting current and next gen ipad and iphones. And with the 5s, it will be pretty impressive for a mobile device. But I don’t expect it to run the full infiltrator demo at more than a few fps if at all. Scaled down like the console versions, yes 🙂

    Reply

  12. Exalted Overlord Geoffrey Tim

    January 6, 2014 at 14:26

    I’m SID JAMES, BITCH!

    Reply

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