NVIDIA Launches Five New Mobile GPUs

Engadget is reporting that NVIDIA has released five new mobile GPUs to fill some imagined gap in the 200M series lineup. These new chips supposedly double the performance and halve the power consumption of the older chips, but still no word on why they think we need eight different GPU options. "The cards are SLI, HybridPower, CUDA, Windows 7 and DirectX 10.1 compatible, and all support PhysX other than the low-end G210M. Of course, with integrated graphics like the 9400M starting to obviate discrete graphics in the mid range -- even including Apple's latest low-end 15-inch MacBook Pro -- we're not sure what we'll do with eight different GPU options, but we suppose NVIDIA's yet-to-be-announced price sheet for these cards will make it all clear in time."

Comments

Finally

[Yvan256]

Finally, news about low-power GPUs with decent capabilities.

I'm sure hardcore gamers prefer bleeding edge hardware news, but for the rest of us, heat dissipation and power requirements are beginning to be a nuisance more than anything else. I'm sure 99% of computer users would be fine with a dual-core Atom CPU and one of those new GPUs.

Re:Finally

[MBGMorden]

I think there's some misunderstanding between "hardcore gamers" and people who the Atom CPU is viable for. The Atom is a wonderfully efficient chip, and I'll concede that it's probably good enough for most "mundane" computing tasks. However, it's not good for ANY level of traditional (and by traditional I mean something that uses some level of 3d acceleration) PC gaming. I'd also question it's usefulness for things like video encoding. That's not a high end or odd application anymore. My mother (who is FAR from a technophile) is looking into video encoding and editing now after having gotten a digital video camera last Christmas. The bare reality is the Atom is a SLOW chip. We've come to the realization lately that we can and do get useful work done on slow chips, but I have to be given a good situational reason to saddle myself with one.

Overall I think that there is some room for compromise between "bleeding edge" and "so efficient it hurts", but the Atom isn't it. It's a great mobile chip for netbooks where the difference between a 5w chip and a 15w chip is incredible (because even though both are virtually unnoticeable blips on a power bill, when running wireless everyone notices the extra battery life). For standard usage there are better choices. Low power/laptop versions of standard offerings such as the Core 2 Duo I think have a better future there.

Re:Finally

[Hurricane78]

The Atom is a wonderfully efficient chip

No, it's not. It's a wonderfully feature-less chip, with everything possible off-loaded into the northbridge. Which is why the NB looks like the real CPU, when you look at the board.

If you want wonderful efficiency, look at those new smartbooks that were show in a recent /. article. They take 1-2 watts, and play full-hd and hardware accelerated flash.
I rather stack 10 of those, than buying one Atom chip (with the same power usage).

I just wish someone would offer bare-bones ARM modules that you could take as much as you wanted of, and stick them together to form a desktop computer. maybe even have a special module that you could take out as a smartbook. Throw in some GPUs, and maybe an SPU (sound), or whatever you like.
Of course Windows would -- as usual -- just choke and die, but Windows and Smartbooks do not fit anyway (yet). It's all Linux in its many forms (including Android).

I for one, would love to have a desktop system, that is essentially a more tightly integrated blade rack with a fast backbone bus.

Re:Finally

[AmiMoJo]

Let's just hope they fixed the manufacturing problems that are still dogging them.

I work fixing PCs for business and the public, and we have seen over 120 HP laptops with nVidia chipsets that have failed in the past six months. Usual symptoms are no video output (but otherwise boots), wifi card dropping out or just completely dead and not POSTing.

HP will do anything to get out of fixing the problem, which they won't even admit exists on most affected models. There is a website (http://www.hplies.com/) organising people in the US, but so far nothing similar for the UK.

Re:Finally

[Arthur Grumbine]

I have a duel core atom, and it sucks for flash

Probably cuz it's tired from fighting in one-on-one combat with the GPU all the time. I recommend getting an Atom that works with its GPU.

These are actually a new architecture of sorts

[Vigile]

This piece has more commentary on the release as opposed to regurgitating specs: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=732

It looks like this new architecture is going to be quite different than the desktop counterpart.

Suicidal NVIDIA GPUs

[madnis]

So has NVIDIA fixed their bump-material problem, or can I expect one of these GPUs to croak after 6 months like the my laptop's 8400M did?

Re:Suicidal NVIDIA GPUs

[ledow]

Oh, wow. Thanks. I've never heard of this and just had my new laptop repaired with what appears to be an identical problem.

It was a Clevo with a 9300M on it and the symptoms sound exactly the same - 6 months in, the graphics starting playing up to the point that the computer just hung if you touched the keyboard or moved it in any way, always with graphical corruption, and sometimes Linux/Windows would just carry on regardless, but with corrupt graphics. Sometimes there'd be a kernel panic or freeze, but the graphics were the main culprit all the time.

I've just had the mainboard replaced - let's hope that they replaced it with one of the "newer" designs.

Re:Suicidal NVIDIA GPUs

[Hurricane78]

Well... they already killed themselves with their naming scheme changes. Re-labeling things so that you are pretty much guaranteed to feel ripped off when buying one of their cards, because it is just the same old shit with a new name, does not essentially make them trustworthy, or me wanting to buy anything from them.

Unfortunately, ATi's current generation is completely incompatible with Linux, (Not compatible to current kernel interfaces [>=2.6.29], massive tons of things that make it crash, composite and xinerama blocking each other, needs band-aids here, and helper tools there, to just get it working for a short time, extremely crappy video rendering [imagine HDR going wild]) so they are the only real choice. :/