Deteriorating world economy claims another victim in the tech world: NVISION, the annual flagship visual-computing promotional event by NVIDIA for 2009 is reportedly called off, according industry observer DigiTimes. NVISION draws parallels with MacWorld Expo, an event that showcases Apple technologies.

NVIDIA hosts the NVISION event ideally in the third quarter of an year. NVISION '08 was held in between August 25th and 27th, at the San Jose Convention Center, California, United States. The economic decline has reduced the number of attendees considering visiting the show, says NVIDIA. It was added that the company would hold several smaller forums in the coming fall.

One of the highlights at the NVISION '08 event was a world-record attempt LAN Party organised by NVIDIA and sponsors for the longest continuous LAN party. The BYOC (bring your own computer) event saw 203 gamers battle it out for 36 hours, and winners awarded gold medals. Several multiplayer LAN Party favourites such as the Quake series, Unreal Tournament series and Team Fortress 2 were played. Some were seen continuing their (never-ending) World of Warcraft campaign too.

During the events, gamers were allowed 10 minute breaks every 60 minutes of play or six of such breaks could be saved up for a 1 hour break every six hours. During the course, they were provided free food and drinks. An adjudicator from the Guinness Book of World Records was flown in from London to monitor the attendees and keep records of the event. An attendee, Raymond Yuen captured the event to compile a public album of the GeForce LAN 4, worth taking a look here.

Apparently NVIDIA has decided to give all Intel owners a big present by introducing the native support of its SLI technology for Intel Nehalem. This information was published first at The Tech Report by Scott Wasson, and comes directly from the final editors meeting of NVISION. According to Tom Peterson, director of Technical Marketing for MCP products at NVIDIA, the company will authorize native SLI support on Intel X58 motherboards without the need of its nForce 200 chip - under certain circumstances. Those circumstances actually include a certification process of every Intel X58 motherboard at NVIDIA's Santa Clara certification lab. Once in the lab, the boards must pass basic testing for functionality, slot placement, and other criterions. After that the makers of these boards must select from a menu of licensing options available to them. Afterward to be certified boards will also be required to display an "SLI Certified" logo on their boxes and other marketing materials. Once the above steps are completed without a problem, NVIDIA will provide the board maker with an approval "cookie" key that it must embed in the system BIOS. The combination of this approval key and an Intel X58 chipset will then unlock SLI support in NVIDIA's ForceWare driver software. The whole process of certification is reported to be cheaper than the cost of the nForce 200 chip alone, which is around US $30. That's the interesting part you need to know, now we wait. The full story is posted here.

NVIDIA regulates its partners from coming up with non-reference cooler or PCB designs for certain high-end products. It seems like NVIDIA has either lifted the regulation over GeForce 9800 GTX(+) or has given Palit the exception of coming up with a non-reference design for the GeForce 9800 GTX+. Palit showcased a card sporting a red PCB with a component arrangement dissimilar to that of the NVIDIA PCB, at the ongoing NVISION event. Quick snaps of this card were taken at the Palit booth. Additionally, Palit also showed-off a GeForce GTX 280 card with a factory-fitted Tieton water block made by Danger Den.

Team R21 of FiringSquad studied the credibility of a rumor on NVIDIA materializing its long-term processor plans. They said they would be surprised if NVIDIA didn't have an x86 plan chalked out at least at a very interior level. The Inquirer speculated earlier that NVIDIA could lift the covers from its x86 plans as early as some time this week, during the ongoing NVISION event. The credibility of this rumor is based purely on who's breeding it. Many point it to have been doing rounds during IDF.

Reality bites: NVIDIA lacks a regularized x86 license which has to be issued by Intel to be able to use x86 in their products. Any mass announcement at this point could cost them. NVISION however looks to be an ideal substrate for discussions on CUDA and NVIDIA's SoC (System on a Chip) plans.