Nvidia Goes Mobile With Five New GeForce 200M Chips

The GeForce G210M (16 processing cores, 512 MB of GDDR3 memory), GT230M (48 cores, 1 GB of GDDR3), GT240M (48 cores, 1 GB of GDDR3), GTS250M (96 cores, 1 GB of GDDR5) and GTS260M (96 cores, 1 GB of GDDR5) round out Nvidia's existing GeForce GTS160M, GTX260M and GTX280M graphics products for mobile PCs, the company said Monday.

The new lineup's improved performance-per-watt numbers are the result of some serious tweaking to the GeForce 200M's CUDA computing architecture, according to Nvidia, as well as the move to the 40-nanometer fabrication process, which produces more circuitry on the same amount of surface area than Nvidia's current 55 nm and 65 nm process technology for its GPUs.

The upshot is a more efficient GPU that promises to do its part for longer laptop battery life. In fact, Nvidia claims that the GTS260M is nearly as powerful as the older GTX260M, despite the latter's faster clock speed. All five new GPUs support Nvidia's HybridPower technology, which shuts down discrete graphics in favor of on-board or integrated graphics in a notebook to save on power when the more powerful graphics engine isn't needed.

All of the new GPUs feature and all but the GeForce G210M support the company's PhysX video game accelerator, while the GeForce GTS 250M and GTS260M also come loaded with support for Nvidia's SLI technology for linking two or more graphics cards.

Nvidia claims computer makers are planning 100 new products built around the new GeForce 200M series, but has yet to detail pricing or specify a release date.