Nvidia reveals its Geforce GT 500M range

INTEL SANDY BRIDGE chips are rubbish for playing games without a discrete graphics processing unit (GPU) inside your notebook according to Nvidia, which is unveiling its Geforce GT 500M range today.

While Intel might take issue with that claim, Nvidia has declared that 43 per cent of games will either not play or are unplayable on Chipzilla's Sandy Bridge CPUs. If you own games such as Fall Out 3 or Deadrising 2 and want to play them on your 2011 Intel Sandy Bridge powered notebook don't even think about it, is the Green Goblin's advice.

Nvidia's Geforce GT 500M GPUs are designed for notebooks with 13, 14 and 15-inch displays that have a starting price of $599. The range consists of the 520M and 525M, which both have 64-bit SDDR3 RAM, and the 540M, 555M and 550M, which all have 128-bit SDDR3 RAM. The 500M models are HD 720p and 1080p, 3D gaming and 3D telly capable.

Nvidia says of the 520M that it is, "1.5X to 2X faster than Sandy Bridge [for playing games]," using Far Cry 2, Final Fantasy IV, Starcraft and The Sims as examples. It says the 540M is "2.5 to 4X faster" with the same range of games. But really all we want to know about games is when is Half Life Episode 3 coming out.

Also boasting 200 Sandy Bridge design wins, a figure that might be a bitter pill for Intel, the Green Goblin is confident that if you're buying a Samsung, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo or Sony or Asus laptop this year it will have a Geforce 500M GPU in it. µ