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NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX Preview

NVIDIA is announcing the world’s fastest mobile gaming graphics processing unit. We explore the technology behind the GeForce Go 7950 GTX and break down the associated technologies.

Introduction

Mobile computing platforms are a fast growing and evolving technology. There are many types of users with many different types of needs in this world. You can find a laptop or notebook from any price range and in any configuration to fit those needs. At the very low-end of the spectrum lie the thin and light notebooks. These are geared for the individual whom must have complete ease of mobility; this means a very light and thin notebook for the on-the-go person. Typically, these notebooks sport very low-end graphics in terms of gaming ability. You will find such options as Intel’s GMA900 and 950 or NVIDIA’s GeForce Go 7200, 7300 and 7400 or ATI’s Radeon Xpress 200M and Mobility X1300. While these GPUs are technically capable of DirectX 9, there is a lot to be desired for gaming performance.

Stepping up a notch from the thin and light notebooks are the performance laptops. These laptops strike a balance between performance and mobility. They are thicker, heavier and larger, but they do offer more display real-estate and more powerful CPUs and graphics systems. In this range you will find the likes of NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 and ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 level graphics. If you want to carry your laptop around but yet impress your friends with some gaming goodness these laptops can suit your needs. They aren’t exactly what you would call the perfect “LANning” laptops however.

Stepping up another notch we enter the enthusiast level laptops. These laptops are also sometimes called desktop replacements or DTRs. They can get quite heavy and hot and thus are not the most travel friendly laptops. However, they pack a punch with much faster desktop level GPU performance. You will find among them the GeForce Go 7800 GTX, Go 7900 GS, and Go 7900 GTX and ATI Radeon Mobility X1700 and X1800. Believe it or not there is even a step beyond these laptops, known very uniquely as the Enthusiast/SLI laptops.

As the name implies these laptops sport the latest NVIDIA GeForce Go GPUs in an SLI configuration, that’s right, two GPUs in a laptop. As you might imagine these laptops are extremely power hungry and do not lend well to gaming using battery power. They also produce much more heat. These are truly the perfect “LANning” desktop replacement laptops; more portable than a desktop, but with just as much gaming power behind them. It is the Enthusiast and Enthusiast/SLI level of laptops we are talking about here today.

NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX

NVIDIA is announcing their fastest mobile GPU yet for laptops, the GeForce Go 7950 GTX. To understand the GeForce Go 7950 GTX one must only understand the previous high-end mobile GPU, the GeForce Go 7900 GTX. The GeForce Go 7900 GTX was the first high-end mobile GPU from NVIDIA to enjoy a die shrink down to 90nm from 110nm that the GeForce Go 7800 GTX was based on. The GeForce Go 7950 GTX also uses the 90nm process technology. For mobile GPUs process technology is very important. You want the best process technology used in order to reduce power leakage and to lower voltages. The GeForce Go 7950 GTX contains 278 million transistors, same as the GeForce Go 7900 GTX.

As you can gather from the name the GeForce Go 7800 GTX, GeForce Go 7900 GTX and GeForce Go 7950 GTX are all based off of the GeForce 7 family technology. This means they support DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 3.0, can utilize Transparency Multisampling and Supersampling and support FP16 HDR.