Nvidia ships GeForce 8700M GT for high-end notebooks

Nvidia on Wednesday announced its highest-performance DirectX 10 GPU for notebooks. The new GeForce 8700M GT graphics processing unit (GPU) for notebook PCs extends its GeForce 8M Series product line to include high-performance notebooks. As with the GeForce 8M Series notebook GPU lineup, the GeForce 8700M GT delivers the fastest DirectX 10 gaming performance as well as compatibility with Windows Vista and high-quality HD DVD and Blu-ray video playback. The GPU delivers support for Microsoft DirectX 10 games and a more efficient, unified architecture that delivers up to a 70 percent performance improvement compared to previous generation GPUs.

The company also touted its NVIDIA PureVideo HD video processing engine for high-quality playback of HD DVD, Blu-ray and HD movie downloads and its NVIDIA PowerMizer technology that balances the user's need for longer battery life and performance. As with its other mobile 8M chips, the new 8700M GT can accelerate the entire H.264 video process, making it easy to play Blu-Ray, HD DVD, and other 1080p-native movies on a notebook without siphoning away CPU and memory resources.

"Playing HD video on a notebook is a technical challenge alleviated by NVIDIA PureVideo HD technology. This technology leverages the revolutionary video processing engine in the GeForce 8M Series GPUs for home-theater-quality playback of HD movie formats, including HD DVD, Blu-ray, and HD video downloads," the company said. "The new video-processing engine performs 100 percent of the H.264 HD video decoding, freeing the CPU for other tasks and significantly reducing power consumption, heat and noise."

The GeForce 8700M GT GPU will be available in notebooks from leading partners in North America, Europe, and Asia, including Toshiba, Sager, Prostar, Eurocom, Biohazard, Connoiseur, Cybersystem, Hypersonic, Voodoo PC, and others.