As Nvidia prepares for Nvision08 in San Jose later this month, organisers claim the partner event will be the biggest showcase yet for the visual computing industry.

Nvidia has designed a programme to unite its high-end users, from gamers to graphic designers, and from software developers to scientists. Astronaut, Buzz Aldrin is to speak at an exclusive screening of Fly Me to the Moon, a new digital 3D animated feature that will show today’s desktop owners the type of technology they can expect tomorrow.

Nvidia launched its latest graphics processing units (GPUs) in response to recent market competition. It has claimed the new GeForce series 9 GPUs will help end users cope with the increasing need for graphics power at competitive levels of power performance.

The vendor’s general manager of desktop GPUs, Ujesh Desai, said its three latest GPUs give the channel the “best bang for their buck in each price category”.

Meanwhile, at Nvision, Nvidia will present its case that mobile developers, operating system vendors and carriers will need to work with it to bring intuitive user interfaces and immersive games to mobile phones.

The next big thing, Nvidia claimed, is personal 3D navigation and how a computer on a chip can change the dynamics of designing mobile devices.

Meanwhile, a number of PC makers, including HP and Dell, have reported problems stemming from batches of faulty Nvidia graphics chips.

With Nvidia agreeing to pay HP $150 per incident and some total cost estimates running into hundreds of millions of dollars, it has been suggested this could impair Nvidia’s ability to address future markets.