New Mobile GeForce Go Graphics

Brent Kupras writes "NVIDIA just launched a whole bunch of GeForce Go 7xxx graphics cards for notebooks. There is a Go 7900 GTX, a Go 7900 GS, a Go 7600 and a Go 7300. The GTX version looks like just a faster copy of the old Go 7800 GTX. There are also a few benchmark results of these new chips against the older NVIDIA chips and ATI's chips."

Comments

Enough power to run Aero Glass

[Anonymous Coward]

This might just provide laptops with enough power to run Aero Glass. That is presuming that battery life and testicle health don't matter.

This is great, though. With the new Core Duo laptops and killer mobile chipsets, I'm finally seriously consider getting a laptop and dumping the desktop (more like deskunder, but whatever) all together.

Re:Enough power to run Aero Glass

[Blazeix]

I have the NVidia Quadro FX Go1400 in a Dell M70 Laptop, and I can run Windows Vista Beta fine. True, I only have a batter life of about an hour when I'm doing anything graphic-intensive, but it can still run all of the most recent games.

Dell's Latitude Line

[SlashdotOgre]

I hope Dell considers offering some of these cards in their upcoming Core Duo Latitudes. Currently the D610 & D810 are only offered with Intel's integrated card or a Radeon X300 (which uses "Hypermemory" basically borrowing RAM from the system like the Intel card). The X300 unfortunately has some lockup problems with Xgl in Linux, so having the option to go nVidia would be great.

Drivers

[dchaley]

Let's just hope that they support drivers for these new mobile cards better than they do the Go5200 series. Dell hasn't updated their drivers since 2004, and I used to be able to download the normal nVidia drivers; then sometime in mid-2005 the nVidia drivers stopped recognizing the Go5200 as supported hardware. Harrumph.

Re:Drivers

[Snover]

Problem solved.

Re:Drivers

[sloose]

You might want to add support to your card manually by editing the nv4_disp.inf file (check your setup folder), before you install the latest drivers.

You can get a preformatted inf file here.

If you want to do it yourself, in windows go into device manager and view the properties of your video card. Then go into the details tab and select hardware ids in the dropdown list. You can then use the last value displayed and add it among the other hardware id's in the nv4_disp.inf file. For most unrecognized cards, this requires adding two lines of text to the file.

Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[MojoStan]

This might just provide laptops with enough power to run Aero Glass.

I'm pretty sure you were kidding, but for those who don't know the AC was kidding, the GeForce Go 7 Series (even the low-end 7200) has WAY more than "enough power to run Aero Glass." Low-end mobile NVIDIA GPUs from two generations ago (GeForceFX Go5100) will support Aero Glass.

Aero Glass requires a DirectX 9 class GPU that supports Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM). Low-end mobile GPUs that meet this requirement include GeForceFX Go5100, Mobility Radeon 9500/X300, and Intel GMA 950. Even GMA 900 (which a lot of current Centrino users have) should work if they write WDDM drivers for it, but I doubt they will.

Here's some links for those who want to see the Aero Glass mobile GPU requirements:

• NVIDIA GPUs "Windows Vista Ready"
• ATI Vista Ready GPUs
• Current GPU Guidelines for Windows Vista Capable PCs

BTW, the "Vista Basic user experience" (formerly known as "Aero Basic") does not look like Windows XP (the GPU requirements will be similar to XP). In fact, I think many users will prefer this interface to Aero Glass. Here's some screenshots:

Windows Vista February CTP Screenshot Gallery 8: Windows Vista Home Basic

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[Anonymous Coward]

Low-end mobile NVIDIA GPUs from two generations ago (GeForceFX Go5100) will support Aero Glass.

• Aero scales the experience based upon the power of your graphics chipset
• If users get shitty performance, such that many of the "support" chips you listed provide, they will disable it post haste. That hardly qualifies as being powerful enough.

So no, I really wasn't joking. Based upon some metrics I've gotten, and a demo I was given, I stand by my original statement.

Re:Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass

[MojoStan]

Got it. Similarly, no one plays Direct X 9 games with a GeForceFX 5200 (a low-end DX9 GPU).

Vista is still in beta, though. When Vista is complete, I'd be really surprised if a GeForce Go 6200 with enough RAM couldn't run Aero Glass with acceptable performance.

No desktop comparos?

[timeOday]

It's annoying that laptop and desktop benchmarks are usually separate. Makes it hard to know how much performance penalty there really is with a laptop.

Those SLI results are quite impressive, almost double speedup. I have to wonder if a laptop might make a decent gaming rig. I could even put up with short battery life for gaming, so long as battery life for simple word processing / movie watching was decent.

Re:define "driver"

[IntergalacticWalrus]

The legality of closed kernel modules depends on whether or not you consider modules as part of the GPL's fucked up definition of "derivative works". The more sane kernel devs like Linus don't like closed modules but nevertheless don't consider them in violation of the GPL.

And for the "business-friendly" thing, the GPL really is the best suited business-oriented open source license, because if you don't force modifications to be made public like most other licenses, companies will use this as a chance to get a free ride on the open source train by not giving back anything to the community.

Anyway, what people must understand is some drivers simply cannot be open source, notably video and wireless drivers. Look at Mac OS X: all hardware drivers are open source, save for... yep, video and wireless drivers. Think about it.

External Graphics Cards?

[pranay]

I am not an expert, but I was wondering what is keeping the likes of nvidia and ati from offering an external graphics card for portable computers. I like my low-power, light-weight, sleek notebook. I am quite satisfied by its performance for daily tasks. But when it comes to serious gaming, it simply does not have enough oomph to take me through all the eye-candy I can immerse myself in on a proper gaming desktop PC.

My other option is to buy one of those desktop replacement mammoths (which, oddly, some people still call notebooks). But it is a completely ridiculous solution. I like the mobility, convenience, integration I get from my ultraportable notebook. It is definitely a step in the right direction. It is the future. Agreed, but I simply cannot give up PC gaming.

I have a usb hub which is connected to my external hard disk (300 gb), external dvd burner, optical mouse, and 7.1 speakers via audigy 2. I really use all that only when I am on my desk, at home. Why can't I also have an external graphics card (with its own power supply and cooling solution), that I can connect to when I am in a mood for some serious gaming?

I would happily pay $300-400 for an external graphics card (USB or otherwise), that I can upgrade at will and use with my other computers. Is it technically impossible to do something like this? Or is it one of those things where all the companies have mutually agreed upon to keep screwing the unsuspecting consumers.

Please don't tell me I need a desktop. I like the notebook mobility, and do not see a point in paying for another set of software and OS licenses for a gaming desktop.

Re:External Graphics Cards?

[MindPrison]

I would happily pay $300-400 for an external graphics card (USB or otherwise), that I can upgrade at will and use with my other computers. Is it technically impossible to do something like this?

Nothing is technically impossible to do really, it's always a matter of time. But at the moment it's not likely because of transfer-speeds.

Have you noticed the difference between SHARED memory and ONBOARD memory? Those laptops with onboard memory are WAY faster at handling 3D because the 3D card itself can access the memory directly without having to transfer content via bus/cpu/standard-ram. If you had an external graphics card it'd work just fine with Video-playback and such, even at pretty high speeds, heck...you could even playback HDTV 1920 without jitter - BUT 3D graphics with lots and LOTS of textures are an entirely different game. Imagine that you have several 1024 x 1024 bitmaps that are RAW (uncompressed) and imagine how many of these you need to build a real-time city. Now we're cooking. Before you know it..you realize why the graphics card-ads on the box always brag about their hefty GIGABYTE per frame transfer speeds, this speed is vital because you need to transfer such HUGE amount of textures realtime to the various polygons and you couldn't possibly fit them all on the card, so you need to do background-transfers while using the On-board memory on the GFX-card itself. Getting complicated? Well - it is! And that's why.

Then you might ask - why don't they make onboard GFX-cards interchangeable. well - that has been tried too, but you're on a laptop mate! This means you'd be dragging the thing around half the planet and anything Wiggly that can potentially move and get disconnected during transfer should be avoided at all cost, so most of them dropped that idea (very VERY wisely so!) I've had such a machine itself, it got warm...the GFX card failed on the laptop simply because it got too hot and the mini-PCI connectors got heated...and if you remember your classroom physics you KNOW that METAL EXPANDS....and vice versa when cooled down....bad idea!

Are there any future solutions for this you might ask? Of course there is, you could potentially have it today if your laptop have the bus for it, but you also need a ton of customers wanting this. So ...I don't think that will happen - after all ...you're on a LAPTOP...you bought it to be portable....and if you want to drag along a huge powerful graphics card, external Audigy and a gazillion other parts..you might as well pack it all in a desktop pc ;) seriously.

which benchmarks to believe?

[saarbruck]

ok, I'm confused. The linked article shows the Go 7800GTX beating the Mobility Radeon x1800.

This article shows the mobile x1800 with a slight lead. What gives? What's different between 3dMark05 and 3dMark06, and what does it mean in for real games? They're all pretty nice cards and would be great for a gaming laptop... now if only I could find one with a core duo and a 15" screen instead of all those 17" monsters.

Anyone have any more benchmarks or knowledge to contribute?

Re:I want a Turion + NVidia + Linux laptop

[scenestar]

You want an asus A6k or an ASUS z92k.

http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/5970.html

its a bit old, but it runs debian like a breeze.