Nvidia is surging after unveiling new chips targeting cost-sensitive laptop gamers
- Nvidia on Sunday unveiled GeForce RTX 2060, which at $349 can make the company's new Turing architecture accessible to laptop gamers.
- The three first GeForce RTX graphics cards were unveiled in August with much higher prices and designed for high-ending desktop PCs.
- Management on Sunday said it's finally ready to bring those new graphics chips to gaming laptops.
- By getting to the laptop market and attracting cost-sensitive PC gamers, Nvidia could offset the recent impact of a plunge in demand from cryptocurrency miners.
- Watch Nvidia trade live.
Nvidia was up 5.26% to $143.35 a share Monday after the company unveiled a cost-sensitive gaming chip that can bring its new graphics technology to laptops.
At a Las Vegas event on Sunday evening, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the GeForce RTX 2060, a gaming graphics processing unit based on the company's recently-launched Turing architecture. Like Nvidia's previous Turing gaming GPUs, the RTX 2060 also supports new features that can improve the gaming experience, such as real-time ray tracing, a rendering technology that allows for more cinematic and realistic visuals, and Deep Learning Super Sampling, a technology that helps to improve image quality.
But the RTX 2060's $349 retail starting price is relatively surprising, compared to the company's previous three Turing graphics cards, the RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070, which sport starting prices of $999, $699 and $499, respectively.
In August, the chipmaker unveiled the first three GeForce RTX graphics cards, for high-ending desktop PCs. Nvidia held back at the time from announcing any plans to bring RTX beyond desktop machines, but on Sunday the company said it's finally ready to bring those new graphics chips - including Geforce RTX 2080, RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 GPUs - to gaming laptops.
"Introducing GeForce RTX Laptops," Nvidia wrote in a tweet late Sunday. "Bring the power of RTX GPUs on the go with over 40+ models rolling out starting January 29th."
By getting to the laptop market and attracting cost-sensitive PC gamers, Nvidia could offset the recent impact of a plunge in demand from cryptocurrency miners.
In November, the chipmaker reported brutal third-quarter earnings that missed analysts' expectations. Management attributed the underwhelming results to excess GPU inventories as the crypto boom turned into a bust.
Nvidia was down 36% in the past year.
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