Nvidia launches its GTX560M mobile GPU for laptops

CHIP DESIGNER Nvidia has launched a mobile version of its Geforce GTX560 graphics chip for notebook gaming.

Not quite a dedicated gaming chip, the Geforce GTX560M is for laptop designers who want a wider feature set in a GPU, so it's not cranked up to full power but it does have some decent additions.

The GTX560M has Nvidia's Optimus power switching technology, a first for notebook makers wanting to save on power to extend battery life. With a 1550Mhz processor clock speed and 192 CUDA cores, the GTX560M also offers DX11 gaming at full HD 1080p resolution. The Green Goblin even goes so far as to claim that it will be powerful enough to run Duke Nukem Forever at 50FPS.

"The GeForce GTX560M and Nvidia Optimus mean gamers get 50 frames per second in Duke Nukem Forever and five hours of battery life in Microsoft Office," said Nvidia laptops general manager Rene Haas.

The graphics chip will also support other standard Nvidia technology that you'd expect to see. That means support for Nvidia's 3D Vision technology, Physx real time physics rendering and CUDA GPGPU computing applications support.

The release comes just two weeks after Nvidia announced the GTX560 desktop version of its GPU, which is based on the GF114 but with higher clock speeds and better thermal characteristics.

A few vendors including Alienware, Asus and MSI said they'd offer the GPU soon, but Toshiba didn't waste any time hanging about. The Japanese giant announced today that its Qosmio X770 17.3in gaming laptop will have the 1.5GB version of Nvidia's GTX560M mobile GPU. µ