AMD Introduces the First DirectX 10.1 GPUs for Laptops

Remember when I wrote about DirectX 10 hardware being obsolete because of DirectX 10.1? It's hard enough to find DirectX 10 capable GPUs for laptops - or rather, I should say, very expensive - but AMD just announced the first DirectX 10.1 GPUs for laptops.

Right after 12:00 midnight I was emailed the press release. The new product line is the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 Series. The first products are the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3600 series. And according to the press release, these GPUs are available now in ASUS laptops.

In fact, the press release quotes Alvin Chou, Senior Notebook Product Manager of ASUS, as saying:

"The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3600 series turns graphic power up a notch in the ASUS M50 and the F8 notebook series. With the innovative graphics solutions from AMD, ASUS can deliver notebooks to the market that offer visual performance for high-definition movie playback plus HD gaming as well as great battery usage."

More details about the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 Series:

• Support for Microsoft DirectX 10.1 is provided by the enhanced unified shader architecture in the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 -- the first GPU family to support DirectX 10.1 by delivering increased precision, better lighting and more advanced programmability than Direct X 10
• ATI PowerPlay(tm) Technology dynamically delivers the optimal balance between performance and power to suit performance requirements for extended battery life and superior performance-per-watt operation
• Long Battery Life through power improvements and low average energy use. Power is maximized with the advanced power management technology helping extend battery life and conserve energy
• Breakthrough Performance/Watt through exceptional performance and power saving features for low power consumption
• PCI Express 2.0 offers more than enough horsepower for the most demanding professional graphics applications by boosting 3D graphics performance while providing fast throughput resulting in an excellent overall system performance
• ATI Avivo HD Technology is the backbone for advanced video and display technologies, delivering smooth video playback and photos in high-definition format with brilliant colors and sharp images
• ATI Avivo HD features an enhanced version of AMD's Unified Video Decoder (UVD) offering full hardware acceleration of video decode for smooth playback of full 1080p content from HD DVD and Blu-ray movies and optimum power efficiency for long battery life
  
• Integrated Digital Outputs enable viewing standard and high-definition content on a variety of devices including HDMI with integrated Audio, DVI, and brand-new DisplayPort output capability delivering twice the bandwidth of DVI, providing flexibility along with seamless connectivity for brilliant display quality

I'll have to be honest though, just because it supports DirectX 10.1 doesn't mean I'm going to be able to play the most intensive games on it. After all, the NVIDIA GeForce 8700M was inferior to the 7950GT performance-wise, while supporting DX10 while the 7950 did not. It was only when the 8800M was introduced that we really saw a good performance jump.

And I've also always been partial to NVIDIA products for laptop graphics, particularly in gaming applications. However, I guess the proof will be in the benchmarking to come.