NVIDIA GeForce 500M Series Launches @ CES

[CES 2011] NVIDIA has made its GeForce 500M Series official, and partners/customers are already announcing laptops using the new graphics processors (GPUs). At the moment, the new 500M Series will cater to entry-level and mid-range laptops ($599 to $999) and focuses on performance/Watt. NVIDIA’s main message to their mainstream customers is that everyone needs a GPU, because now even web browsers can benefit from a graphics hardware acceleration. The company also wants to make sure that people understand that its discrete graphics are also faster than the (improved) integrated graphics that Intel has in Sandy Bridge. At the very least, NVIDIA expects to be 1.5X faster than Intel, and up to 4X faster with the mainstream products, according to internal benchmarks. Interestingly, one of the best feature of the GeForce 500M is invisible: it’s Optimus, the automatic switching technology that turns the graphics processor OFF when using only plain graphics, thus saving power.