NVIDIA Announces New GeForce 200M Series GPUs

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, June 15, 2009, 09:44 AM EDT

NVIDIA has just announced a bevy of new mobile GPUs in the GeForce 200M series. Unlike some previous mobile products, however, the GPUs in this release are based on all new silicon, and not a re-branded version of the G92 that has served NVIDIA so well over the years.

The new products in the GeForce 200M Series include the GeForce GTS 260M, GeForce GTS 250M, GeForce GT 240M, GeForce GT 230M, and GeForce G210M. Although we have not tested any of them yet to confirm, NVIDIA states the chips are engineered to deliver twice the graphics performance with half the power budget in their respective market segments. As you'd probably expect the new GeForce 200M Series GPUs being announced today are Windows 7-ready and feature enhancements to improve GPU compute performance over existing products to better, in preparation for OpenCL and DX Compute, which is part of DX 100.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M and GTS 260M GPUs

Although they are not pared down versions of the same GPU used on NVIDIA's GeForce GTS/GTX 200 series desktop chips, these new mobile GPUs do borrow heavily from NVIDIA's current high-end desktop architecture. There are, however, adjustments in the micro-architecture to improve battery life and overall graphics performance compared to the previous generation according to NVIDIA, and also enhancements that come as a result of the process shrink to 40nm. We should also note that these new mobile GPUs are DirectX 10.1 compliant--a first for NVIDIA. Additional specifications and information regarding the new the GeForce GTS 260M, GeForce GTS 250M, GeForce GT 240M, GeForce GT 230M, and GeForce G210M are available in the slides below.

NVIDIA GeForce 200M Series Positioning and Specifications

NVIDIA claims that many notebook OEMs are in the process of using the GeForce 200M Series to revamp their mobile offerings and that over 100 new notebook design wins are currently in the works. Acer and Asus have already shown their new designs at Computex, but NVIDIA says that the company will be announcing the rest between now and the end of the year.

Tags: Nvidia, GeForce, PhysX, Gaming, Mobile, DirectX, graphics, GPU, Cuda, GTX, 200 series

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com