Just ahead of Computex, E3 and Intel’s launch of its 4th generation of processors, NVIDIA has announced its GTX 700M family of graphics processors (GPUs) for laptops. This is a performance-oriented refresh that hits on nearly all important elements: core frequency, number of sub-processors memory and sometime, memory bandwidth. Individually, each element has been improved by 10%-20% but combined, they could represent an aggregate performance boost of 25% to %30 when compared to their predecessors. Of course, we will have to look at independent benchmarks to have “real world” numbers, but things should be pretty close depending on the games.
Additionally, NVIDIA is launching GPU Boost 2, a power/performance software controller that makes sure that the GPU can go as fast as possible, while remaining within a power and temperature usage that the user is comfortable with. In terms of power envelope, NVIDIA has not provided any numbers but it’s really up to the PC Maker to make that final decision. In any case, I don’t expect the power envelope to be “too” different either way.
The most interesting part of the story is that a number of thin gaming laptops are going to reach the market, starting with the new RAZER Blade, a 0.66″ thin laptop with a 14″ display (around 4lbs) which could redefine how gaming laptops look and feel. The RAZER Blade Pro is a 17″ that shares the same form factor but looks even more impressive. We can’t wait to see what kind of performance/lbs they will get in our tests.