It's going to be a busy couple of weeks with both AMD and NVIDIA planning major desktop graphics launches, but the latter GPU giant is today extending its reach in the mobile market with the subdued launch of the GeForce GT 540M.
NVIDIA states that the new part - the first from the mobile 500-series range - is based on "an already proven architecture" and uses a matured manufacturing process to introduce higher clock speeds. Despite the jump in product number, what that means is the GeForce GT 540M is essentially a higher-clocked GeForce GT 435M.
Both GPUs offer 96 processor cores and a frame buffer hooked up to a 128-bit bus, but the new 500-series part features a core clocked at 672MHz, a shader clock of 1,344MHz and up to 1.5GB of memory running at a swift 900MHz. That's an increase of 22MHz, 44MHz and 100MHz, respectively.
The chip manages to keep within the same power envelope and is available immediately in China as part of an Acer notebook. Similar machines are scheduled to launch across the globe next month at what NVIDIA calls "mainstream price points".
