Eugenia asks: Please-please ask nVidia about BeOS 2D/3D support. This is a crucial question from all the BeOS users. I just uploaded the latest 3D benchmarks for BeOS against Win98 and Win2000 on http://www.benews.com/story/3760 and as you can see, major 3D cards are supported except nVidia's. Till now nvidia has been very tightlipped about giving the specs to Be. Or, if they don't want to give the specs out, how about making the drivers in house? We need a "yes" or "no" from nvidia for an issue that has been around 1 whole year!

NVIDIA: We have no current plans to offer a driver for the BeOS platform.

Irridial asks: Due to rising cost of video cards, most consumers cannot afford to upgrade every product cycle, or even every other product cycle, as it is far too expensive. How does Nvidia plan to make products more affordable?

NVIDIA: NVIDIA's strategy is to take one core technology and leverage it into many different markets. That's why you saw a full product line based on the GeForce2 Family. This included products ranging from the mainstream GeForce2 MX, which could be found in retail for as low as $99 up to the GeForce2 Ultra, not to mention workstation and mobile solutions. In addition to these consumers can still purchase products based on our older technologies at even lower price points.

Zeltch asks: Do you think CPUs will ever advance to the point where video cards will no longer be necessary?

NVIDIA: I guess it depends on your definition of what is "necessary." NVIDIA believes that we have only just started to scratch the surface of what can be achieved with 3D technology and we have assembled the best engineering team in the world. There's no doubt that NVIDIA will continue to push the envelope, our mission is to continually encourage content creators and developers to create applications which fully exploit our technology, while bringing an outstanding experience to the end user.

JabberJaw asks: How does NVIDIA foresee the 'current' state of affairs in California with rolling blackouts affecting their business plan, if at all?

NVIDIA: Of course the rolling blackouts were a concern to us, although that issue seems to have died down recently. As a company, NVIDIA has made an effort to minimize our power consumption by encouraging employees to power down systems when leaving for the night and so on. Because we do not have any production facilities, NVIDIA has really not been affected at all.

JabberJaw asks: I've read that NVIDIA has optimized their GPU for the Intel Pentium 4 Processor. How difficult (or easy) was that to implement into your development effort?

NVIDIA:NVIDIA has invested significant engineering resources in optimizing our software for Intel's new Pentium 4 processor. With these optimizations NVIDIA looks forward to bringing an even higher level of performance and quality to end-users.

JabberJaw asks: You guys ever hang out for lunch at the Fish Market Restaurant on El Camino? On the menu tomorrow: Mako Shark mmmm....

NVIDIA: I've had dinner there…..it's pretty good.

Well, that's it for this week. Our sincere thanks go out to the SharkyForums users for sending in their questions and especially to Diane Vanasse at NVIDIA for corralling all those PR/Exec/Engineer types into answering the questions.

Alex "Sharky" Ross
Editor-in-Chief

Moira Archdeacon
Editorial Operations