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New Mobile GeForce Go Graphics 94

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the laptops-hotter-than-1000-suns dept.
Brent Kupras writes "NVIDIA just launched a whole bunch of GeForce Go 7xxx graphics cards for notebooks. There is a Go 7900 GTX, a Go 7900 GS, a Go 7600 and a Go 7300. The GTX version looks like just a faster copy of the old Go 7800 GTX. There are also a few benchmark results of these new chips against the older NVIDIA chips and ATI's chips."
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New Mobile GeForce Go Graphics More

New Mobile GeForce Go Graphics

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  • Enough power to run Aero Glass (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24, 2006 @09:44PM (#14992188)
    This might just provide laptops with enough power to run Aero Glass [microsoft.com]. That is presuming that battery life and testicle health don't matter [yafla.com].

    This is great, though. With the new Core Duo laptops and killer mobile chipsets, I'm finally seriously consider getting a laptop and dumping the desktop (more like deskunder, but whatever) all together.
    • I have the NVidia Quadro FX Go1400 in a Dell M70 Laptop, and I can run Windows Vista Beta fine. True, I only have a batter life of about an hour when I'm doing anything graphic-intensive, but it can still run all of the most recent games.
    • I have the random nerd assortment of desktops required to maintain my dork union status and my laptop which is almost four years old and has literally survived two trips to a war zone. The laptop is nice to have and extremely convenient - especially for me being in a situation where a desktop is just plain not workable.

      The biggest problem that I have with laptops - and the one that's not getting solved any time soon - is the ability to be easily upgradable. It's just not there yet, because there's no r
    • who care's about Aero-Glass...
      i just wanna get the totl model to install in my state of the art RH7.2 gaming machine
      oh boy.. the fun i am gonna have!!!

    • Kidding? Way more than enough for Aero Glass (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MojoStan ( 776183 ) on Friday March 24, 2006 @10:47PM (#14992357)
      This might just provide laptops with enough power to run Aero Glass.
      I'm pretty sure you were kidding, but for those who don't know the AC was kidding, the GeForce Go 7 Series (even the low-end 7200) has WAY more than "enough power to run Aero Glass." Low-end mobile NVIDIA GPUs from two generations ago (GeForceFX Go5100) will support Aero Glass.

      Aero Glass requires a DirectX 9 class GPU that supports Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM). Low-end mobile GPUs that meet this requirement include GeForceFX Go5100, Mobility Radeon 9500/X300, and Intel GMA 950. Even GMA 900 (which a lot of current Centrino users have) should work if they write WDDM drivers for it, but I doubt they will.

      Here's some links for those who want to see the Aero Glass mobile GPU requirements:

      BTW, the "Vista Basic user experience" (formerly known as "Aero Basic") does not look like Windows XP (the GPU requirements will be similar to XP). In fact, I think many users will prefer this interface to Aero Glass. Here's some screenshots:

    • This might just provide laptops with enough power to run Aero Glass .
      This is Slashdot. We wanna know if it has enough power to run a 1600x1200 XGL desktop. And from here [gentoo-wiki.com], it the older chip 7800 Go is supported. Presumably, these faster version work with XGL.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yeah it's enough processing power; here's my question though: Will the video card run at full speed to render in 3D? My experience has been that once you initialize a 3D game on any computer, the video card will want to run at 100% GPU speed. I've never really seen a GPU adjust speed and run slower, it's always optimized to run at the fastest FPS it possibly can. This is going to be a serious noise/power issue unless Microsoft and the video card vendors can work on some sort of 3D mode that doesn't require
    • Interesting link, especially this bit in the conclusion:

      Windows Vista

      Which brings me to Windows Vista (previously Windows Longhorn).

      One of the major new features of Windows Vista is the Aero Glass experience (both as an API for applications, and the shell itself). Aero Glass in essence turns your desktop into a video game: Instead of the current model where the GDI draws on a 2D palette, updating the video card memory (making use of acceleration routines that the video card supports) only when changes occu

  • Dell's Latitude Line (Score:3, Informative)

    by SlashdotOgre ( 739181 ) on Friday March 24, 2006 @09:51PM (#14992210) Journal
    I hope Dell considers offering some of these cards in their upcoming Core Duo Latitudes. Currently the D610 & D810 are only offered with Intel's integrated card or a Radeon X300 (which uses "Hypermemory" basically borrowing RAM from the system like the Intel card). The X300 unfortunately has some lockup problems with Xgl in Linux, so having the option to go nVidia would be great.
    • I've been looking for a Turion 64MT laptop with a nice NVidia card which doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I've not been able to find much. The ATI drivers suck badly for Linux. ATI pisses on Linux users and smile the entire time they do so. So, simply rule of thumb. If you want string 3d graphics performance and a reliable box, you must use Nvidia. If you want crashes, incompatibility, graphics artifacts, broken features, use ATI.

      Long story short, ATI + Linux is not a viable solution unless you enjoy hi

  • Drivers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dchaley ( 949272 ) on Friday March 24, 2006 @09:52PM (#14992213) Homepage
    Let's just hope that they support drivers for these new mobile cards better than they do the Go5200 series. Dell hasn't updated their drivers since 2004, and I used to be able to download the normal nVidia drivers; then sometime in mid-2005 the nVidia drivers stopped recognizing the Go5200 as supported hardware. Harrumph.

    • Re:Drivers (Score:5, Informative)

      by Snover ( 469130 ) on Friday March 24, 2006 @10:11PM (#14992267) Homepage
      Problem solved. [laptopvideo2go.com]
      • Thanks for that; good to know. Given how simple the fix appears to be, it's unfortunate that nVidia chose to cut the support. I guess that they don't want to be responsible for doing the vendor's support for them, and instead choose to make me think that it's all Dell's fault. :-)

    • Re:Drivers (Score:2, Informative)

      by sloose ( 864787 )
      You might want to add support to your card manually by editing the nv4_disp.inf file (check your setup folder), before you install the latest drivers.

      You can get a preformatted inf file here [guru3d.com].

      If you want to do it yourself, in windows go into device manager and view the properties of your video card. Then go into the details tab and select hardware ids in the dropdown list. You can then use the last value displayed and add it among the other hardware id's in the nv4_disp.inf file. For most unrecognized ca

      • nVidia advertises a UNIFIED DRIVER ARCHITECTURE. That means that drivers for a 7900 should still recognize a GeForce 2 card. The need for some pre-formatted or manually-edited .inf file means SOMETHING IS WRONG AND NVIDIA IS AT FAULT. If you have to MANUALLY EDIT A FILE that should by all means automatically say "Look, here's the card!" then you've GOT A PROBLEM. That Unified-across-the-board driver suddenly isn't so unified, is it? Betcha they start cutting out support for slightly older cards to make room
        • Settle down, Sparky.

          There's nothing new in the current drivers that will do ANYTHING for cards that aren't on the official list. 70 Series Forceware drivers are the best for those OUTDATED cards, because the new features for CURRENT cards don't apply. You're not going to get those features for free. The OUTDATED card doesn't have the hardware to support it.

          The text override is there so that ANAL RETENTIVE FUCKWITS like yourself can force the new driver to run on the old hardware (at a lower performance leve
          • I wouldn't say that he's trying to get the new drivers to run for speed, it's mostly for bug fixes. I had to do the same with an old Dell laptop. The Dell drivers were from early 2003, and had a large number of bugs related to Twinview. By screwing with the inf files, I was able to get current drivers to work on my laptop, and the old bugs were gone. Of course, there are probably new bugs, but I've yet to notice any.

    • Re:Drivers (Score:2, Informative)

      by LEgregius ( 550408 )
      Starting with the 7800 GO, nvidia is directly supporting the GO chipsets with their drivers, which is good given that Dell like to never update them.
    • Don't count on it. Their drivers don't work for the Go6800 series either.
    • Heh. You think you're in a bad shape? I have a GeForce 4200Go. The only thing that's GOne was the support.
      • What's broken with the drivers you're using?

        You don't need to upgrade drivers just because there's a newer version. You know that, right?

        In all likelyhood there is nothing in the newer driver that has anything at
        all to do with your 4+ year old graphics card, so you don't need to load the new version.

        If you really WANT to, there's a method (referenced elsewhere in this thread) but it's likely not going to do anythign positive for your performance.
    • nVidia always put made the mobile drivers the responsibility of the laptop maker, at least as long as I have had a nVidia Go cards in my laptop it sucks, but hacked drivers are available because the limitation is inf based, take a peek at the inf file in one of the hacked driver sites, and you can hack together your own inf file for each nVidia release.
  • let's just hope that ubuntu supports these drivers I want to install ubuntu on my laptop, but I am afraid. ahh

    • Re:ubuntu (Score:1, Funny)

      by shaedee ( 963455 )
      well there is a good chance Debian/ubuntu/knoppix will,.. but you might have ta wait til version 7
      (codenamed 'fluffy-muffburger')
    • What you have to hope is that the X Window System that you use supports these... the Linux kernel doesn't have anything to do with this.
  • Unfortunately for us in North America, these notebooks are currently only available in Europe [linuxelectrons.com]. Evesham Quest Series [evesham.com] (scroll down) look amazing but quite pricey.

    There's also a German company Wortmann [wortmann.de] that makes a much more affordable notebook at around 1000 Euros. Looks like we're holding our breath for a few months or calling up friends and relatives abroud to get them for now.

  • No desktop comparos? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Saturday March 25, 2006 @01:11AM (#14992663)
    It's annoying that laptop and desktop benchmarks are usually separate. Makes it hard to know how much performance penalty there really is with a laptop.

    Those SLI results are quite impressive, almost double speedup. I have to wonder if a laptop might make a decent gaming rig. I could even put up with short battery life for gaming, so long as battery life for simple word processing / movie watching was decent.

    • I've been pretty happy gaming with my inspiron 9300 with goforce 6800. 1024x768 or 1280x960 is playable (>30fps) for most action games (Quake IV, HL2) and 1440x900 or 1920x1200 is fine for non-action games (civ iv, wow). It's a bit heavy, more of a luggable than a laptop really, but I've used it on the airplane, at borders, etc. Battery time is about 1.5 hours of gaming, or 3.5 hours of web browsing and programming, and I carry a spare battery to double that (switchout costs me about 45 seconds of dow

  • Slightly OT (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Klowner ( 145731 )
    But, I've been looking all over for a new laptop with nvidia graphics and decent specs for around $1200, why are they such a royal pain in the ass to find? Anyone have any recommendations?

    It's cool that they're rolling out mobile GeForce chips, but they going to jack the laptop price all the way to the moon?
    • Ebay. Search for dell+9400+7800. There are some available in this price range.
    • Excuse me, but this summary/TFA is about mobile chipsets in laptops, this post is completely on topic by discussing this possibility/scenario. Mods, either go back to school and learn to infer what people mean from what they say, or leave slashdot. This moderation of offtopic is totally UNFAIR to this person. This inquiring mind raises a valid point, and you should be damned ashamed for modding this as such. DO YOU KNOW THIS PERSON'S EDUCATION?? I didn't fucking think so. So instead of modding him as offtop
      • This is classic slashdot these days. IMO, the 80/20 rule applies. 80% of the mods have their heads stuck up their asses these days. It constantly amazes me how stupid the moderators can get around here. If the moderators were worth a damn, as they were 4+ years ago, this type of crap would have already been fixed. Sadly, as /. has become more main stream, the IQ of the reader base (and thus the mods) have dropped into the toilet. As you rightly point out, most can not even infer basic facts, logic, or
        • Want to start up a site that does do real news for nerds? Forget stuff that matters, as that only serves to bring flamebait and trolls. I joined /. hoping this would be a technology discussion forum, instead, it's just a shit-slinging fest. Go check out my comment about being raped in jail and look at the tards (who've not been thru prison like I have, mind you) fall right in line to tell me I'm wrong, when I've been thru it firsthand and they've not. It's quite funny, honestly. We should just start up a pu
  • It's like Microsoft...only it's video cards. Pay the price while game makers catch up.

  • External Graphics Cards? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pranay ( 724362 ) on Saturday March 25, 2006 @03:53AM (#14992949)
    I am not an expert, but I was wondering what is keeping the likes of nvidia and ati from offering an external graphics card for portable computers. I like my low-power, light-weight, sleek notebook. I am quite satisfied by its performance for daily tasks. But when it comes to serious gaming, it simply does not have enough oomph to take me through all the eye-candy I can immerse myself in on a proper gaming desktop PC.

    My other option is to buy one of those desktop replacement mammoths (which, oddly, some people still call notebooks). But it is a completely ridiculous solution. I like the mobility, convenience, integration I get from my ultraportable notebook. It is definitely a step in the right direction. It is the future. Agreed, but I simply cannot give up PC gaming.

    I have a usb hub which is connected to my external hard disk (300 gb), external dvd burner, optical mouse, and 7.1 speakers via audigy 2. I really use all that only when I am on my desk, at home. Why can't I also have an external graphics card (with its own power supply and cooling solution), that I can connect to when I am in a mood for some serious gaming?

    I would happily pay $300-400 for an external graphics card (USB or otherwise), that I can upgrade at will and use with my other computers. Is it technically impossible to do something like this? Or is it one of those things where all the companies have mutually agreed upon to keep screwing the unsuspecting consumers.

    Please don't tell me I need a desktop. I like the notebook mobility, and do not see a point in paying for another set of software and OS licenses for a gaming desktop.

    • I would happily pay $300-400 for an external graphics card (USB or otherwise), that I can upgrade at will and use with my other computers. Is it technically impossible to do something like this?

      Nothing is technically impossible to do really, it's always a matter of time. But at the moment it's not likely because of transfer-speeds.

      Have you noticed the difference between SHARED memory and ONBOARD memory? Those laptops with onboard memory are WAY faster at handling 3D because the 3D card itself can acces

      • If you had an external graphics card it'd work just fine with Video-playback and such, even at pretty high speeds, heck...you could even playback HDTV 1920 without jitter

        Only if you're talking about onboard video decoding (which only works with select few codecs, and doesn't allow for any sort of processing). Sending 30fps uncompressed 1920x1080 over USB2/Cardbus would be a show-stopper.

        This means you'd be dragging the thing around half the planet and anything Wiggly that can potentially move and get disco

        • This makes no sense at all. Yes metal expands and contracts, but you should be more worried about the solder connnections on the mobo, rather than connectors... Your hard drive is using a similar type of connector, without problems.Either you made this little story up, or you simply don't understand why your card actually failed.

          No such luck! A 2.5" harddrive doesnt get very hot, but a 3d-graphics card however - gets incredibly hot, especially an ATI 9600 Radeon. Ok, it's an mobile edition, but it gets f
    • "Please don't tell me I need a desktop. I like the notebook mobility, and do not see a point in paying for another set of software and OS licenses for a gaming desktop."

      Read most of your EULAs. Many of them will say you can install it on one computer AND one portable computer. That cuts out some of your extra licenses.
    • Putting an external graphics card (specially a top end one) is not going to be particularly useful with current PC bus architecture unless PCIe is exposed. 3D Graphics performance is very largely determined by bandwidth and not shader performance. Many cards support bandwidth exceeding 16GB. Many at the top end is twice that. USB 2 does not deliver what a low end card demands.

    • Re:External Graphics Cards? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Bandwidth. It sounds like you just want to offload 3D acceleration to an external device, in which case you need high bandwidth to the external card and then higher bandwidth back from the card to the internal display.

      I don't know if USB has enough bandwidth for the input stream, but for output you'd probably need something like a DVI input on the laptop (which would be kinda cool anyway, but take extra space).
    • bandwidth issues can be dealt with as most laptops have a pci-e slot for the dock. Instead of docking with all accessories, it should dock with an external video card.
    • Laptop and Notebook are technical terms there is some kind of weight restriction on laptops (less than 3 kg I think).

      Hope that cleared that up!
  • ok, I'm confused. The linked article shows the Go 7800GTX beating the Mobility Radeon x1800.

    This article [hexus.net] shows the mobile x1800 with a slight lead. What gives? What's different between 3dMark05 and 3dMark06, and what does it mean in for real games? They're all pretty nice cards and would be great for a gaming laptop... now if only I could find one with a core duo and a 15" screen instead of all those 17" monsters.

    Anyone have any more benchmarks or knowledge to contribute?
  • No, it hasn't been released yet.

    Should have been released March 22, but has since been delayed. No one has said for how long.
  • But have a hard time finding one. I want 64-bit (which only AMDs Turion line has support for), and a NVidia graphics card (preferabbly one with dedicated memory) because we all know how great ATI's Linux drivers are. Any recommendations. Almost all the Turion laptops I see come with Radeon XPress GPUs. What brands sell such a configuration?
    • You want an asus A6k or an ASUS z92k.

      http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/5970.html [infosyncworld.com]

      its a bit old, but it runs debian like a breeze.
      • Do you know if the battery issue has been fixed with the MT-40 CPU's? Last I heard, because of a bios bug, the laptop would hang during post if you attempted to boot from battery and had the MT-40 CPU installed.

        I've been eyeing that sucker for a while now...but always worry about performance. How well does the GPU perform? Good enough to play games like America's Army? How long does the battery last for you? I would love to see a good Linux user's report with this laptop! Care to share?

        For those that
        • its woth buying, especially if you can find one for aroun 999-1200 euros.
          As for the acpid issues, theyre all fixed with the newer 2.6.15 kernels upward.
          The gpu is aboslutely GREAT, matter of fact, i can get more fps out of half life 2 on wine than on my desktop.
          battery life ranges from 2 hours and at max 3 (depending on brightness, sound and what you use it for.

          I have yet to test the irda or the card reader.
          wifi works with the native bcm43xx kernel module or ndiswrapper.

          its perfect.

      • the A6k is unavailable in the US, as far as i can tell, and vendors with the Z92km are few, far between, and don't stock it.

        i've been looking for something like this myself, and although the Z92km is the only thing i can actually find, i'd really prefer something smaller - like 14" or so.

        is there anything else on the US market, or am i stuck with building a Z92km myself?

  • I realize these were just released, but how do you find affordable notebooks using currently available nVidia gaming chips? They always seem to come at a ridiculous premium.

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