Nvidia posts details of new laptop GPUs

It seems Nvidia has "soft-launched" its new graphics processing units (GPUs) for laptops. Though the company hasn't officially announced the GeForce 9M series, several sites including TGDaily.com noticed that the basic specs and other information now appear on Nvidia's site.

The mainstream GeForce 9300M G has 16 stream processors, a core clock of 400MHz, and up to 256MB of graphics memory (600MHz). Step up to the performance GeForce 9500M GS and you get 32 stream processors, a 475MHz core clock, and as much as 512MB of graphics memory (700MHz). Both GPUs support Microsoft DirectX 10 games and include Nvidia's PureVideoHD, which offloads the HD video decoding from the CPU to the GPU when viewing Blu-ray or HD-DVD movies. The GeForce 9M series replaces the current 8M series.

Acer is the first to offer laptops with the unannounced GPUs. The U3Sg, Acer's 13.3-inch model, includes GeForce 9300M G. And the M51Sn, a larger laptop with a 15.4-inch display, will include the GeForce 9500M GS, though the specs aren't listed on Acer's site yet.

At CES in January, Acer was quietly showing two models that it reportedly said will offer the GeForce 9500M GS, the M51 series as well as G1Sn, a gaming laptop.