Yesterday we reported on Nvidia’s upcoming Shield Tablet and the massive leak that basically unofficially announced the new device along with pricing, hardware specs and pretty much everything else related to it. Today is the official announcement from Nvidia themselves along with all the details, pricing and launch date information as well.
It may seem a bit repeatitive but there are a few details we didn’t mention in our post yesterday that we will be mentioning now. To recap the hardware specs for the Shield Tablet, this device will come with Nvidia’s Tegra K1 chipset which has 192 CUDA cores. This will be paired with 2GB of RAM to ensure smooth operation. Screen-wise the tablet will feature an 8″ HD LCD display with a resolution of 1920×1200, a front-facing 5MP camera and a stylus like the Nvidia Tegra Note 7. There will be a 16GB and a 32GB model available, both with expandable storage via MicroSD slots.
Of course this tablet will come with a lot of the software that comes with the current Nvidia Shield including Nvidia’s GRID cloud-streaming software so you can play PC games on your tablet. This is still in beta and available to residents of Northern California although those of you nearby can also access it. There just might be some latency issues. It all depends on your internet connection. This won’t be the case when it actually launches fully. GameStream will also be on the Nvidia Shield Tablet for local PC-to-tablet game streaming.
The Nvidia Shield Tablet will also be the first mobile device to feature direct streaming to TwitchTV. While this is already possible through a little bit of DIY steps, having it built right in will make things a lot easier for those of you who want to stream Android games onto TwitchTV while you play them. Nvidia’s ShadowPlay will also be integrated into the tablet for those of you who would rather record your gameplay and upload it later instead of streaming it to TwitchTV. Of course you could always do both.
Like the release of the Nvidia Shield, the Shield Tablet will have some games pre-loaded on it while other games optimized for the Tegra K1 chipset will be available. These are some pretty great games too. Trine 2: The Complete Story will be pre-loaded onto the tablet while War Thunder, the Talos Principle, Portal, and Half-Life 2 will be available at launch. Other current games already optimized for the Tegra K1 chipset are Pure Chess, Rochard, Anomaly 2, Flyhunter: Origins, Dungeon Defenders Eternity and Chuck’s Challenge 3D: Reloaded (original game is already out), all of which will be available on July 29th, 2014.
Pre-orders are now live for the Shield Tablet in both the 16GB Wifi or the 32GB Wifi + LTE models starting at $299. The wireless controller from Nvidia for use with this tablet is also available for $59 and the company is also offering up a tablet cover which can also act like a stand for when you’re playing games for $39. The Shield Tablet will hit Europe on August 14, a few weeks after it’s US and Canada release.
Official Website: Nvidia Shield Tablet
