Nvidia announces new high-end mobile GPU

Santa Clara (CA) - Nvidia today announced a new flagship graphics processor for notebooks. The GeForce Go 7950 GTX GPU promises joins the current 90 nm chip lineup of the company and promises more speed for performance-tuned mobile computers.

The 7950 GTX represents a slight update from the existing 7900 model and comes in the same 278-million-transistor package and uses the same 400 MHz RAMDAC. However a core clock speed increase from 500 MHz to 575 MHz and a memory clock that jumps from 600/1200 MHz to 700/1400 MHz allow the GPU to post better performance numbers. According to Nvidia, memory bandwidth climbs from 38.4 GB/s to 44.8 GB/s, while the pixel fill rate increases from 12.0 billion pixels/s to 13.8 billion.

Power consumption remains at 45 watts.

The feature set is unchanged and includes DirectX 9.0, Shader Model 3.0, high-dynamic range lighting, H.264 acceleration, power management and Windows Vista compatibility.

According to Nvidia, several high-performance notebook builders are already offering the new processor, including Dell, Sager, ABS, Falcon Northwest, Hypersonic, Pro Star and Voodoo. Interestingly, Dell has reserved the GPU for its XPS M1710 notebook for now, while its enthusiast subsidiary Alienware apparently has to wait. Dell's website was not update with the new GPU offering at the time of this writing. However, a notebook with the previous flagship GP 7900 GTX is currently priced at just under $3000.