WE are happy to inform you that Nvidia plans to get aggressive on H.264 acceleration and HDTV support. A month ago we wrote about Nvidia's driver that is supposed to make H.264 much faster and we are still waiting for it. The driver should re-surface around Cebit time. If you remember, Nvidia usually have only four drivers each year, one per quarter.
Nvidia's Geforce 7600 GT and 7600GS are born to take the 6800 GS and 6600 GT place. Those cards should give you much more gaming power and nice video support.
Nvidia is so aggressive that it plans to bundle H.264 decoding software. You usually need to pay some money for the decoder. We found out that Cyberlink, for example, charges €12.99 for its H.264 player meant for ATI cards. Nvidia will give you its decoding software for free.
We are sure that Geforce 7600GT and 7600GS can give X1800GTO and X1600XT/PRO a run for the money but we still don't know which will end up faster.
Nvidia is also promoting HDTV support and we are sure that both companies are going to claim supremacy over the other. Good job, green boys, and I think it will force the red boys to make a similar move. µ