NVIDIA GeForce 160M

NVIDIA's turn at CeBIT on Tuesday saw the company launch four new mobile graphics chips, including new models for thin notebooks. At the top of the range are the GeForce GTX 260M and GTX 280M. Both are updated versions of the 9800M series and use manufacturing refinements to run up to 50 percent faster than the outgoing models without consuming more energy. Both also support SLI for twin graphics hardware as well as Hybrid SLI to switch to integrated graphics in battery-saving situations.

Differences between the two parts center on complexity and clock speed. The GTX 260M contains 112 shader (effects processing) cores and runs each individual core at 1,375MHz. With the GTX 280M, NVIDIA boosts the number of cores to 128 and runs them at a faster 1,463MHz. Either part is intended for large, "enthusiast" notebooks as a result.

The GeForce GTS 150M and GTS 160M are in turn built for considerably slimmer portables but are still relatively fast courtesy of 64 shader processors. NVIDIA uses their speed to dictate performance and runs each of the GTS 150M's processors at 1GHz where the GTS 160M runs them at 1.5GHz.

All of the video hardware is landing in notebooks starting today and will include systems from ASUS, Clevo, MSI and other unnamed notebook manufacturers.

By Electronista Staff