[Retired Tech]

Laptop owners can finally take advantage of Windows Vista's DirectX 10 graphics engine - thanks to a new range of mobile graphics chips from Nvidia .

The new Nvidia GeForce 8 chips comes in two different guises: The first is the performance-orientated 8600M, which comes in GT and GS versions. The second is the mainstream 8400M which is offered in GT, GS and G trim. The most powerful chip in the line-up is the Nvidia GeForce 8600GT which has 32 stream processors along with 512MB of memory.

Avid Nvidia watchers will also notice that the company has dropped the GoForce name from its mobile laptop graphics chips. The new GeForce 8 line also promises a new start for Nvidia when it comes to laptop graphics.

http://www.nvidia.co...t/IO_42284.html

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Should be interesting as its 65nm, though I'm curious how power hunger they are, considering their older cousins arn't very energy efficient. I know that these are mobile graphics cards thus will of course require less power, but I wonder how much they suck compared to the Geforcego 7600...... Can't wait till ATI and Intel release thier mobile graphics platforms, they should be appearing in the near future.
James

[james_8970]

Should be interesting as its 65nm, though I'm curious how power hunger they are, considering their older cousins arn't very energy efficient. I know that these are mobile graphics cards thus will of course require less power, but I wonder how much they suck compared to the Geforcego 7600...... Can't wait till ATI and Intel release thier mobile graphics platforms, they should be appearing in the near future.
James

[Retired Tech]

A couple of power related things which should be about

Turbo Memory / NAND flash memory hard disk enhancement technology vastly improves performance. It also promises to extend both the battery life and the life of the hard disk itself as it reduces the amount of read/write activity on the platters.

Turbo Memory is a fundamental change to data storage and the bottom line is that you will want it, especially as it will only add at most around £15 to the cost of a new Centrino laptop.

A new processor sleep state, known as DC4, shuts down large portions of the CPU during idle periods with occasional interrupt request sweeps to see if it needs to wake up. A new lower active state allows for a change in bus clock frequency, so battery life is longer when playing DVDs and music.

A DC4-enabled machine managed an extra 16 minutes life over its otherwise identical brother.

[james_8970]

Yup, the life of batteries in laptops have increase dramatically over the past year or two without the hit of performance. Can hardly wait till SSD (solid state disk) becomes mainstream and larger capacities become available. The current 500$ price tag for 32GB is out of the question.
James