NVIDIA Introduces GeForce 9M Series of Mobile GPUs

Wait long enough and something new always comes along that's better than what you have. Sure, I have a Dell XPS M1730 with dual 8800M GTX cards in SLI - but along comes another announcement. On Wednesday at Computex in Taipei, NVIDIA introduced the GeForce 9M series of GPUs.

Anyway, the 9M series is the first set of mobile GPUs which support Hybrid SLI, which was first introduced by NVIDIA in January. As I described in my earlier post,

Hybrid SLI provides two new technologies— GeForce Boost and HybridPower—that allow the PC to deliver graphics performance for today’s applications and games when 3D graphics horsepower is required, or transition to a lower-powered operating state when not.

The 9M series runs the gamut from the 9100M G targeted at thin and light notebooks, to the 9650M GS. The top-of-the-line 9650M GS has 32 processors, a 625 MHz core clock, a 1250 MHz shader clock, 800 MHz memory clock and up to 512 MB of memory. The product map is:

Performance: GeForce 9600M GT; GeForce 9600M GS; GeForce 9500M G
Mainstream: GeForce 9400M; GeForce 9300M GS; GeForce 9200M GS
Value: GeForce 9100M G

In their press release, Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of the GPU business at NVIDIA, said:

"Beginning this summer, GeForce 9M GPUs and Hybrid SLI, paired with AMD and Intel CPUs, will enable a new breed of notebooks. 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."

Dang, if you wait long enough ... you'll never buy anything, right? In addition to Hybrid SLI, the 9M series features:

• 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

Rene Haas, general manager of the notebook business at NVIDIA said:

"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. The new GeForce 9M series meets this need while also delivering processing muscle beyond gaming and graphics."

As they said, summer. But summer's right around the corner! Whoa!