I know it sounds crazy, but a new MediaTek chip powered by Nvidia graphics promises to bring AAA gaming, ray tracing, and the coveted DLSS 3 to your car. The chips I’m talking about are MediaTek’s new Dimensity Auto Cockpit, which integrated an Nvidia GPU, along with a host of AI and gaming capabilities.
It’s not clear what Nvidia graphics are packed on MediaTek’s chips, but clearly, they’re using some variation of the Ada Lovelace architecture we see on RTX 40-series GPUs. Those are the only GPUs that support DLSS 3’s frame generation capabilities, and they’re extremely efficient — important for a chip packed into a car.
The basis of MediaTek’s new chips is a 3nm node that’s designed around the Armv9-A CPU. This chip has “deep learning capabilities,” according to MediaTek, but it sounds like the Nvidia GPU is really packing the AI hardware.
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DLSS 3 is already an AI feature, but MediaTek boasts that the Nvidia graphics include a Deep Learning Accelerator (DLA), allowing you to run things like a Large Language Model (LLM) directly from the car. The chip also supports Nvidia’s full software platform, including CUDA, Drive OS, and TensorRT. MediaTek is building the chip, but it’s clear Nvidia has a big influence on it.
I won’t drop an insane amount of cash on a car that can play Cyberpunk 2077 with all the shinies. However, there are some applications here for other products.
Nvidia is showing that it can build what is essentially an RTX 40-series GPU on a small system-on-a-chip (SoC), fit with support for ray tracing and DLSS 3. That holds a lot of promise for handheld gaming devices, where Nvidia has been somewhat of a sleeping giant for the past few years.
Rumor has it that the next version of the Nintendo Switch will support DLSS and ray tracing with an Nvidia GPU. On top of that, Nvidia is reportedly worried about “missing the boat” on handheld gaming PCs, such as the Steam Deck. Up to this point, we’ve only seen AMD chips in handheld gaming PCs.
These automotive chips aren’t going to show up in a gaming device, but at the very least, they show that Nvidia can pack a modern GPU into what is essentially a mobile SoC. I’m not too excited about ray tracing and DLSS in my car — but on a Steam Deck, I’ll take it.
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Jacob Roach is a writer covering computing and gaming at Digital Trends. After realizing Crysis wouldn’t run on a laptop, he…
This might be why AMD’s FSR 3 isn’t picking up momentum
AMD’s platform-agnostic FSR 3 is a great feature, but months after releasing, it’s only available in a small list of titles. Now, we might finally have a clue as to why.
Developers of the upcoming open world survival game Nightingale posted a development update stating that it was removing FSR 3 due to crashes. “After reviewing crash data from the Server Stress Test, a significant number of them seemed to point to FSR3 integrations, whether or not users had the setting turned on,” a prelaunch update post reads.
AMD’s FSR 3 compromise just isn’t working
AMD made a compromise with FSR 3. The frame-generation tech was announced in November 2022, and it took nearly a year for it to show up in a game. Even now, months after release, FSR 3 is only available in 12 games, the lion’s share of which are legacy titles and single-player games that are past their prime. Adoption wasn’t working, hence the need for a compromise.
The compromise is AMD Fluid Motion Frames, or AFMF — one of the least catchy acronyms, but I digress. This is driver-based frame generation. FSR 3 isn’t available in a ton of games, but AFMF sidesteps that hurdle, so long as you have an AMD graphics card. You can use frame generation through the driver in basically any DirectX 11 or DirectX 12 game. Sounds pretty sweet.
Nvidia is missing a golden opportunity in PC gaming
There’s a rising tide of handheld gaming PCs, and Nvidia is missing out on the action. The push of handhelds into the mainstream started with some purpose-built AMD systems on a chip (SoCs), but now Intel is joining the fray with its Meteor Lake platform. Out of the big three, only one company is missing: Nvidia.
Nvidia probably isn’t too concerned with making an SoC for handhelds — after all, it was AI that pushed it to become a trillion-dollar company — and it’s a long shot that the company would ever make one. With that in mind, consider what follows to be wishful thinking because Nvidia could make one insane SoC for handheld gaming PCs.
Charted territory
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