NVIDIA and ATI look to redefine high-end mobile graphics
Yesterday saw a flurry of activity on the mobile GPU front from both NVIDIA and AMD/ATI.
ATI launched what is the world's first 40nm GPUs - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860 and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830.
AMD today announced the world’s first graphics processors to harness 40nm process technology: the ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 4860 and ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 4830. These feature-rich graphics processors redefine mobile PC entertainment with advanced capabilities including support for the latest Microsoft DirectX® 10.1 games, a home theater-quality HD multimedia experience, and energy-efficient features for long battery life at work, at home or at play.
From NVIDIA we have the GeForce GTX 280M and 260M GPUs for enthusiast notebooks and the GeForce GTS 160M and 150M GPUs for high-performance, sleek notebooks.
NVIDIA today introduced GPUs in four separate categories that push performance to the highest levels ever achieved in enthusiast and high-performance notebooks. Included in the group is the fastest notebook GPU in the market, the GeForce GTX 280M, with up to 50% more performance than previous generation enthusiast notebook GPUs.
A few points worth noting:
- These are all high-end mobile GPUs - notebooks is where the actions is nowadays, but the main movers are at the budget/mid-range end of the spectrum.
- Note that these GPUs are DirectX 10/10.1 pieces ... no mention yet of 11.
- I'm assuming that NVIDIA and ATI have maybe a better idea than the rest of us as to when Microsoft will go RTM with Windows 7 (I'm really hoping that OEMs aren't being spun the "early 2010" line), and so it's possible that both vendors are getting some of the last DirectX10/10.1 pieces out of the door before moving on.
Note: Also worth noting is that NVIDIA released GeForce version 181.71 graphics drivers for Windows 7 beta. From the testing I've carried out these add support for advanced features, and seem to improve recovery from sleep.
Anyone out there feeling the need for faster graphics on a notebook?