NVIDIA Announces New Line of Fermi-Based Mobile Chips 54
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA has announced an entire line-up of Fermi-based GeForce GT and GTX 400M mobile GPUs, seven in total, and revealed a number of notebook design wins from major OEMs. Like their desktop-targeted counterparts, the mobile GeForce GT and GTX 400M series GPUs make use of technology from NVIDIA's desktop architecture, which debuted in the GF100 GPU at the heart of the company's flagship GeForce GTX 480. GeForce GT and GTX 400M series GPUs are DirectX 11 compatible and support all of NVIDIA's 'Graphics Plus' features, including PhysX, 3D Vision, CUDA, Verde drivers, 3DTV Play and Optimus dynamic switching technology. The GeForce GTX 470M and GTX 460M are the most powerful of the group and target enthusiasts and gamers, while the GeForce GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M target performance-conscious, but more mainstream consumers."
That's a lot of model names (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
99% of laptops do not have a cooling solution robust enough to handle a dual core CPU and a proper graphics card going full throttle.
I point a fan at my laptop whenever I have to do anything intensive so that it won't throttle back or just shut down.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is kind of like saying "The average car cannot handle 400 horsepower."
Well of course not, because the average car wasn't designed to handle it. Nobody would put a transmission that can handle 400 horses into a car that only produces 100. Laptops are built to spec. There are dual, even quad core laptops out there that handle 100% load just fine. Many of the new i5 and i7 based laptops come with graphics cards powerful enough to run Crysis on high settings, and within reasonable temp ranges too. That's not to say there aren't poorly designed laptops out there that overheat, but 99% is a huge exaggeration.
There *is* a point to high end graphics in a laptop though; 3D modeling and gaming just to name a couple. Personally, I'm deeply interested in the performance of laptops, as I believe they are a huge part of what drives manufacturers to make more efficient designs.
Re:That's a lot of model names (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares? Between AMD and Intel, they are toast. Even AnandTech agrees http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row/7 [anandtech.com]
Less power for the job (Score:4, Insightful)
I use G4 Mac to read your comment and reply, on Safari. It is like 4 hours of battery on laptop remaining. How? Apple, while still old good Apple, put a real, designed to accelerate 2D/3D GPU to the laptop. GeForce FX Go5200. That is some old GPU but I am sure it uses considerably less power than a integrated intel junk.
Newer nvidia stuff, with seperated/optimized mobile drivers does considerably better. That is part of magic on 13watt idling Mac minis who have significant issues even compared to a large laptop.
With Windows 7, a modern x.org based Linux&BSD and OS X, having a good GPU optimized for job is way more than "500 fps gaming".
Re:Let me answer to that (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't be surprised when Intel buys nVidia.
I hope they use this for a desktop board (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:1, Insightful)
The point is you want to use whatever hardware is most efficient for the job. Perhaps you missed the news over the last year or so that showed adding an NVIDIA ION chipset to an Atom processor actually *increased* your battery life. If a GPU can perform a unit of work while burning through less power than a CPU would require to do the same work, you'd be nuts to use the CPU to do it.
Re:What's the point? (Score:1, Insightful)
Sager is the 1% of laptops that *do* have a proper cooling solution. My i7 gtx 285 runs cooler than my desktop!
Besides, I'm glad that NVIDIA continues to support laptop and mobile devices. ATI/AMD/whatever-they're-called-now doesn't offer much support. They even have a disclaimer on their website when downloading their drivers which goes something like "installing this on a laptop? good luck with that".