Gigabyte Launches Tegra Note 7 Tablet

[exfileme]

Here's Gigabyte's version of the Tegra Note 7.

Gigabyte Launches Tegra Note 7 Tablet : Read more

 

[teh_chem]

While T4 isn't a POnot-respectable, it's also not amounting to all the hype Nvidia put out before its (oft-delayed) release. They seem to be having to do a lot of leg-work to get device-acceptance when qualcomm chips have been in wide use for so many devices already.

Regardless, seems to be an acceptable price (~$199) for a spec'd device. I personally don't care about super high-resolution screens, especially at the 7" form-factor I think 1280x800 is great, so this device is appealing. If reviews of quality and durability pan out it's a great alternative to a 2013 nexus 7.

 

[vmem]

^you have a point ther teh_chem

however, it is because people compare this device against the nexus 7 2013 (which has dropped to $199 on many sites), that is giving the Tegra tab trouble:

pros for Tegra Note:
1. arguably more powerful SoC for android gaming
2. microSD storage

Pros for 2013 Nexus 7:
1. full HD display
2. it's a nexus device so it gets stock android treatment (and updates)
3. 2GB of memory

at the end of the day, the Tegra Note 7 should be only attractive to people who really want a microSD slot (which isn't a small market I admit)

 

[Js4days1]

From what I have read the tegra note Is basically stock android and will be getting updates as well, tho not as fast as the nexus of course.

 

[InvalidError]

The Tegra 4 uses separate pixel and vertex shaders which causes problems with software that expects general-purpose shaders like most other SoC GPUs have. I might look at Tegra again after the 5 or 6 comes out.

 

[Borisblade7]

Keep in mind this has the special screen for writing. Something a nexus 7 doesnt have. And ive seen the benchmarks and actual game tests and this thing is blazing fast. It completely smokes even the new nexus 7 massively. So if you want one for games or for precise stylus writing/drawing, then this is the superior device. And I personally own a 1st gen N7 and love it, was thinkin of gettin the new one til i saw the reviews and benchmarks of the Tegra note. I would like the use of the stylus and the camera tech is pretty sweet. The rez is the same as my current nexus and you cant see pixels on a screen that size, so higher res is not really very beneficial.

 

[InvalidError]

And ive seen the benchmarks and actual game tests and this thing is blazing fast. It completely smokes even the new nexus 7 massively.

Pretty easy to "smoke" the new N7 when you drive only 800p instead of 1200p... the new N7 has 2.25X as many pixels to push at its native resolution.

 

[Cazalan]

Is 1200p really necessary on a 7" screen? Seems overkill to me.

Even 800p is more than twice the pixel density of one of the 17.3" laptops I use on a regular basis.

 

[InvalidError]

Is 1200p really necessary on a 7" screen? Seems overkill to me.

Seems like just about the maximum useful resolution to me.

At 800p, text still looks a little grainy and geometry edges in 3D games often have very noticeable aliasing. At 1200p, aliasing in most text is difficult to see and aliasing in 3D or vector graphics is far less distracting. If I had to put qualitative improvements in numbers, I would say 1200p (125% more pixels) makes text and graphics look about 20% and 40% better respectively on a 7" screen. The improvement can be fairly noticeable but clearly into diminishing return territory.

 

[somebodyspecial]

And ive seen the benchmarks and actual game tests and this thing is blazing fast. It completely smokes even the new nexus 7 massively.

Pretty easy to "smoke" the new N7 when you drive only 800p instead of 1200p... the new N7 has 2.25X as many pixels to push at its native resolution.

That's part of the point though right? My dad's nexus 10 is useless for gaming because it can't push 2560x1600 for gaming, and even then most just don't work right that high and play in small boxes etc with print you can't even read because they're made for 1024x768 etc. If I could easily change the res on the device like windows, this might not be quite the issue, but you can't for now. Android needs to fix this, and allow me to notch down to whatever is needed to run the games. Without this, a nexus 7 etc that can't push it's res very well is just a browser/vid watcher. Games are out.

Also N7 2013 device is $229 on amazon and it's specs are only 1.5ghz with A320. This will be beaten handily even if T4 was in this device running 1920x1200. T4 bumps heads with S800, but handily trounces S600 in everything cpu or gpu. Kraits are slower in everything at 1.5ghz vs a T4's quad A15's at 1.8ghz or 1.9 and T4's gpu is well above A320 also here. If this was T4i your comment might make more sense, which would probably be a tight race in everything cpu or gpu. Though cpu might be an easy win for T4i vs. S600 if speeds are high enough as NV's A9 is much better than older revs that showed Krait closer to A15 than A9. But this is not so with NV's amped up version vs. S600 - which should be 2.2-2.3ghz (far above 1.5ghz older krait model, and may catch T4's A15's at 2.3ghz if the T4i ships at that speed). Also as some noted, the touch stuff here is the best you can get for note taking (hmm, tegra note makes sense right?).

 

[InvalidError]

If I could easily change the res on the device like windows, this might not be quite the issue, but you can't for now. Android needs to fix this, and allow me to notch down to whatever is needed to run the games. Without this, a nexus 7 etc that can't push it's res very well is just a browser/vid watcher. Games are out.

I have tried a bunch of games on the N7v2 while I had one (tried three, returned them due to ghost touches, random restarts and other issues) and did not have any performance issues with any of them. The most graphically intensive one I tried probably was Demon Hunter 4. It played perfectly fine on the N7v2 instead of the unplayable slideshow I was getting out of it on my N7v1.

Some games like Real Racing 3 do seem to cut down rendering resolution - I did not dig through RR3's menus to see if there was a way to adjust that but this particular game looked about as grainy on the N7v2 as it did on the N7v1, which seems to indicate it is upscaling from something like 720p by default.

So, at least for the games I tried, the N7v2 appeared to have adequate GPU-power for its resolution... certainly a far better GPU-power to pixel count ratio than the N7v1 had.