NVIDIA’s New GeForce 400M 3D Vision and Optimus Notebooks

NVIDIA’s New Graphics Processors

NVIDIA is going to make a few waves today with the release of their latest mobile graphics engines. The graphics processors that NVIDIA is releasing today fall into two categories: performance and enthusiast. The performance line-up is getting five new graphics engines, and the enthusiast is gaining an additional two.

All of the processors being released today will support NVIDIA’s Optimus Technology. If you aren’t familiar with the Optimus technology you can find our article on it here. In a nutshell, NVIDIA’s Optimus technology aims to improve battery life and performance of notebooks. It does this by automatically switching between integrated graphics and discrete graphics. Integrated graphics will give you the best battery life but the lowest performance. After all, who likes to game on integrated graphics? A discrete graphics card will give you increased performance over the integrated graphics, but at the cost of battery life. Many times though, discrete graphics are overkill if you are doing the typical word processing, browsing the web, or checking email. Tasks like these don’t need the power and capabilities of a discrete graphics card so NVIDIA’s Optimus will automatically switch to the integrated graphics. Fire up the latest game like Starcraft II or any 3D game and you will be back running on the discrete graphics engine.

The first of the new processors that we are going to look at are the “enthusiast” level chips, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460m and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470m. Both of these graphics chips support the latest features from NVIDIA including Optimus and 3DVision. Primary differences include the number of processor cores. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470M has 288 processor cores while the GeForce GTX 460M is limited to 192 processor cores. Both feature PhysX, Verde Drivers, Cuda, 3D Vision, SLI and of course Optimus. The GeForce GTX 470 does have lower Graphics and Processor clocks, although the increased core count should perform significantly better.

	GeForce GTX 470M	GeForce GTX 460M
Process	40nm	40nm
Processor Cores	288	192
Features	PhysX, Verde Drivers, CUDA, 3D Vision, SLI, Optimus	PhysX, Verde Drivers, CUDA, 3D Vision, SLI, Optimus
Graphics Clock	535 MHz	675 MHz
Processor Clock	1100 MHz	1350 MHz
Memory Clock	1250 MHz	1250Mhz
Memory	Up to 1Gb	Up to 1Gb
Memory Width	192	192
DirectX version	DX11	DX11
Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5

The graphics cards being released by NIVIDIA for the “performance” buyer pretty much cover the spectrum from mild to… well, maybe not wild as that is what the GeForce GTX 460M and GeForce GTX 470M are for. Although, the upper end of the GeForce GT M series is quite similar to the GTX series above. The GeForce GT 425M, GeForce GT 435M and the GeForce GT 445M all have the same features as the above Geforce GTX M Series above, albeit slightly lower performance. The GeForce GT 415M and the GeForce GT420M are more of an entry level performance card. The primary difference (aside from performance) between the GeForce GT415M, GeForce GT 420M and the others, is the lack of 3D Vision support.

	GeForce GT 415M	GeForce GT 420M	GeForce GT 425M	GeForce GT 435M	GeForce GT 445M
Process	40nm	40nm	40nm	40nm	40nm
Processor Cores	48	96	96	96	144
Features	PhysX, Verde Drivers, CUDA, Blu Ray 3D, Optimus	PhysX, Verde Drivers, CUDA, Blu Ray 3D, Optimus	PhysX, Verde Drivers, CUDA, 3D Vision, Optimus	PhysX, Verde Drivers, CUDA, 3D Vision, Optimus	PhysX, Verde Drivers, CUDA, 3D Vision, Optimus
Graphics Clock	500	500	560	650	590
Processor Clock	1000	1000	1120	1300	1180
Memory Clock	Up to 800Mhz	Up to 800Mhz	Up to 800Mhz	Up to 800Mhz	800/1250 MHz
Memory	Up to 512Mb	Up to 512Mb	Up to 1GB	Up to 1GB	Up to 1GB
Memory Width	128	128	128	128	128/192
DirectX version	DX11	DX11	DX11	DX11	DX11
Memory type	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3	GDDR3/GDDR5

Now that we have taken a look at the specifications of the new GeForce GTX and GeForce GT mobile series graphic processors, let’s take a peek at what they will do for you!