GeForce 9300M 9500M Slip

NVIDIA today has prematurely posted details of two of its next-generation mobile graphics chipsets. The GeForce 9300M G and 9500M GS are expected to ramp up performance for both low- and mid-range notebooks without significantly adding to power use. As with the existing 8M series, the two chipsets will fit into notebooks by reducing the clock speed and number of shader (pixel and vertex) processors versus larger, hotter chips: the 9300M model offers 16 shaders at a 400MHz core speed, while the 9500M offers 32 shaders at 475MHz.

Whether the chipsets will be as large an improvement as the 8M chips were is uncertain, however. NVIDIA's current pages list both devices as capable only of standard Direct X 10.0 and OpenGL 2 graphics, rather than the DirectX 10.1 and enhanced OpenGL of the anticipated GeForce 9600 and 9800 desktop cards. Clock speeds also are not significantly different from the 8400M G and 8600M GS available today. Regardless, both chipsets are capable of 16X antialiasing and full Blu-ray/HD DVD hardware decoding and should be announced for new notebooks very soon due in part to early announcements by ASUS.

By Electronista Staff