We have often identified our computers over the years by the frequency of the CPU, or the central processing unit. This was a convenient measure of a PC’s performance, and gave buyers an easy measuring stick to determine what kind of PC they were paying for. These days however, things are much more complicated, given that most parts have their own brands of performance that one must consider, depending on its intended use, the user’s budget, and the compatibility of the parts.

Nvidia is banking on this realization of the need for balance in a PC and is now focusing on a new program fittingly called the “Optimized PC Design Approach”. This program stresses the importance of having a balanced system rather than one with only a select few powerful components that is simply under-utilized by the user because intended use and the required components of the PC was not properly researched beforehand.

                                             In line with Nvidia's "educational" approach.

Nvidia wants to educate buyers of the need to balance the parts of the PC, and thus, as a primarily graphics – focused company, Nvidia touts the advantages of having a powerful GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) in addition to the focus of the CPU frequency that was so prevalent in previous years. This “Optimized PC” initiative centers on the premise of using the powerful GPU in tasks other than gaming and other graphics intensive work. In conjunction with this, a new focus on game physics, plus Nvidia’s proprietary programming interface called CUDA, was an underlining influence in this year’s Nvidia booth at Computex in Taiwan.

                                             The presentation during computex focused on the advantages of an optimized PC.

While the usual suspects were present (namely the 8000 and 9000 series Nvidia chip cards from different manufacturers – in fact Nvidia cards were very hard to avoid during the event), the main flavor of the day, as it were, was the balanced platform program, otherwise known as the “optimized PC design approach”. We can make a few quick observations on Nvidia’s departure from every year’s de rigueur introduction of “newer, faster, better” hardware and their shift towards stressing a balanced PC. Firstly and perhaps a bit obviously, when your products are the centerpieces (literally and figuratively) of many of the products displayed around the event venue, it is perhaps a bit superfluous display the same thing in the Nvidia booth. In this, Nvidia’s marketing and positioning is exemplary.

                                             Some vendors, such as Gateway, are already getting the message.

A second observation involves the shifting requirements of the most common consumer applications. It is not quite a decade ago that image and video manipulation became a consumer-centered activity due to the increasing number of affordable consumer videography hardware. Video editing depended a lot on CPU power and speed, but was also one of the first major applications to utilize videocard processing power with specialized drivers and programs. These days, applications like Google Earth, “mainstream” games like The Sims3, the VistaOS with its Aero graphical user interface, all require more graphics processing power than before – and this is only the start, or so Nvidia believes; more and more applications will require powerful graphics in the near future, in addition to the traditional CPU requirement.

                                             A whole wall of Nvidia-based videocards.

Yet even without specific applications that take advantage of graphics processing, Nvidia is anticipating the use of the GPU in non-graphic applications, in fields previously reserved for CPU “consumption”. For example, university students have already created a “supercomputer” based on Nvidia graphic cards in SLI, rivaling computing speeds on math-based calculations of those of CPU based systems.Nvidia’s CUDA programming interface was also created with the utilization of the GPU in mind.

                                             Cost efficiency was also a consideration.

A final observation is, although Nvidia has nearly cornered the high-end market with truly well-performing and quality products, Nvidia does not have a large presence in the mainstream, low-end, and notebook markets – where AMD/ATI, Intel, and to a small extent VIA, dominates. This optimized PC program can be seen as an effort to shift focus from the main criteria of PC performance from CPUs to GPUs, or from Intel to Nvidia, if you prefer. Perhaps Nvidia’s final goal will be to have PCs someday identified as Nvidia15800GTX – based, that is unless they are coming out with a CPU product to complement their graphics prowess. Either way, Nvidia is aiming to expand, and do it by pushing for a more balanced and practical PC for the consumer.

                                            Nvidia isn't only about videocards.