Nvidia Releases Four New Mobile GPUs

Nvidia took the chance at the opening day at CeBit in Hanover to introduce four new mobile GPUs that will cover a range of notebook price points and forms.

The new line is comprised of the GeForce GTX 280M and 260M GPUs for enthusiast notebooks; and GeForce GTS 160M and 150M GPUs are for the more mainstream, less graphic-centric notebooks. Both levels of chips utilize Nvidia’s G92 graphics core manufactured on a 55-nm process.

The star of the mobile line-up is undoubtedly the GeForce GTX 280M, which Nvidia promises up to 50 percent more performance than the GeForce 9800M GTX. And if a single GTX 280M isn’t hardcore enough, two can be paired together in SLI to nearly double the graphics performance over a single GPU.

The GeForce GTX 280M features 128 cores, while the GeForce GTX 260M gives is a small step down at with 112 cores. The 100M series don’t compare in graphical performance with half as many cores as the 200M line.

While notebooks with such graphics power aren’t likely to be road warrior weapons, the new GPUs feature Nvidia’s HybridPower technology to power down the discrete graphics chip and transfer the duties to the IGP to lower heat production and increase battery life.

As with the other Nvidia GPUs, the ones introduced today also feature CUDA and have support for PhysX physics acceleration.

ASUS, Clevo and MSI are all showing notebooks based on the new GeForce GTX 200M and GeForce GTS 100M Series GPUs at CeBit, though release dates and pricing are still unknown.