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NVIDIA announces GeForce 9M series of laptop GPUs

NVIDIA wants your summertime notebook to take a look at Adobe CS4, yawn, and ask, "please sir, can I have another?"The company reportedly announced its GeForce 9M series of laptop GPUs alongside a new graphics innovation named "Hybrid SLI" today at Computex.
Written by Andrew Nusca, Contributor

NVIDIA wants your summertime notebook to take a look at Adobe CS4, yawn, and ask, "please sir, can I have another?"

The company reportedly announced its GeForce 9M series of laptop GPUs alongside a new graphics innovation named "Hybrid SLI" today at Computex. Set to launch this summer in Intel- and AMD-based rigs, the chips boast multi-core architecture, PureVideo HD, full support for Blu-ray Profile 2.0 / BD-Live and a graphics engine that delivers "up to 40% faster performance than the previous generation of GeForce notebook GPUs."

The Hybrid SLI technology, on the other hand, enables a pair of NVIDIA GPUs -- one tortoise, one hare, so to speak -- to work together, save power and deliver maximum performance when needed.

In the company's own words, below:

NVIDIA Optimizes Notebook PCs With New Lineup Of GPUs

NVIDIA Addresses Global Demand for Better Visual Experiences on the Notebook PC

COMPUTEX 2008, TAIPEI-JUNE 3, 2008-As the global demand for better visual experiences makes its way into the notebook market, NVIDIA Corporation continues to address that demand with the introduction of a new line-up of notebook GPUs, the NVIDIA® GeForce® 9M Series of graphics processors, and a new graphics innovation, NVIDIA Hybrid SLI® technology. These new technologies enable customers to optimize their notebooks to power today's visual applications, such as: the latest operating systems, photo editing, mapping software, games, and HD movies. Considered one of the most important processors inside the notebook PC, and perhaps the most important, an NVIDIA GPU enables a completely flexible, scalable, and high-definition entertainment platform.

"Beginning this summer, GeForce 9M GPUs and Hybrid SLI, paired with AMD and Intel CPUs, will enable a new breed of notebooks," said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of the GPU business at NVIDIA. "These new notebooks will be optimized to deliver a visual experience and raw computing performance that traditional cookie-cutter notebooks with integrated graphics simply can't touch."

With the launch of the GeForce 9M Series of notebook GPUs, NVIDIA has once again engineered the world's fastest notebook GPUs, designed for running today's graphically intensive games, 3D applications and HD movies at extreme resolutions. In addition, this new GPU features a multi-core architecture which will not only speed up entertainment applications, but will also speed up today's lifestyle applications, like video encoding from a PC to a small personal media device, where the speed up in the video conversion is up to 5x faster with the GeForce 9M family GPUs."

In addition, the new GeForce 9M notebook GPUs enable the world's first notebooks with Hybrid SLI technology. The new technology enables two NVIDIA GPUs, one low-power and one high-performance, to work cooperatively in the same PC to deliver two features-GeForce Boost and HybridPower™. These features deliver more performance from both GPUs for visual computing when needed, or save power by switching to the low-power GPU when not. Hybrid SLI gives users the quality and performance benefits of a high-performance GPU without sacrificing battery life.

The NVIDIA GeForce 9M family of GPUs also feature:

+ New graphics engine that delivers up to 40% faster performance than the previous generation of GeForce notebook GPUs and up to 10x faster than generic integrated graphics solutions + New PureVideo® HD video processing for improved color and contrast + Full support for the latest Blu-ray Profile 2.0 features and Blu-ray Live + Extensive multi-display connectivity with support for all the latest display standards including DVI, HDMI 1.3, Display Port 1.1, and VGA + Support for the new MXM version 3.0 graphics module specification

"With the recent addition of advanced features to Blu-ray Live and complexity of DirectX 10 games like Crysis, PC users need more graphics processing performance than today's generic integrated graphics can deliver," said Rene Haas, general manager of the notebook business at NVIDIA. "The new GeForce 9M series meets this need while also delivering processing muscle beyond gaming and graphics."

The new GeForce 9M GPUs will power the visual computing experience in over a hundred notebook models beginning this summer. For more information, please visit www.nvidia.com.

Keep crossing your fingers for a little NVIDIA love for your Macbook Pro.

UPDATE: Fellow ZDNet blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes offers his take and a gallery of pictures. Check it out.

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