X-bit labs

Nvidia Reveals New High-Performance Mobile Graphics Chips.

Category: Mobile

by Anton Shilov

[ 11/19/2007 | 11:41 PM ]

Nvidia Corp. on Monday unveiled the industry’s first lineup of DirectX 10-compliant mobile graphics processing units that can boast with relatively high performance in intensive 3D video games that require massive computing power. The new chips will allow gamers to finally have high framerate in modern games even on laptops.

The new Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTX and 8800M GTS graphics processing units (GPUs) are based on the cut-down versions of the code-named G92 graphics core made using 65nm process technology. The new GeForce 8800M-series products fully support DirectX 10, high-definition video playback as well as technologies that help to reduce power consumption.

Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTX will have 96 stream processors enabled that work at 1250MHz, while all the other domains of the product are set to operate at 500MHz. The lower-performance 8800M GTS part features 64 unified shader processors amid the same clock-speeds. Both mobile graphics accelerators will feature 512MB of GDDR3 memory at 1600MHz.

The fully-fledged Nvidia G92 graphics processor consists of 754 million of transistors and features 112 stream processors as well as 56 texturing units, 16 render back ends and 256-bit memory bus. Still, even cut-down G92 can offer solid performance for gamers with laptops compared to existing DirectX 10-class mobile graphics solutions.

Both ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia enabled DirectX 10 support in their mobile lineups earlier this year, however, the ATI Radeon HD 2600-/2400-series as well as Nvidia GeForce 8600-/8500-/8400-series graphics adapters offered so low general performance in games that gamers either had to set lower quality settings or even choose to pre-install DirectX 9-supporting graphics adapters into notebooks. The new GeForce 8800M-series is projected to offer solid performance in addition to DirectX 10 support.

Notebooks with the new GPUs will soon be available for order from notebook makers worldwide including Alienware, Eurocom, Gateway, and Sager in North America; Airis, Chiligreen, Cizmo, Cybersystem, Ergo, Nexoc, Novatech, Plaisio, Rock, and Xxodd in Europe; MouseComputer in Japan; and Pioneer Computers in Australia.