The Future of Mobile Gaming: New Chips from ATI and NVIDIA

Intel created quite a buzz in the computer world yesterday with the launch of its latest processor and chipset solution for the mobile market. Unlike other Intel mobile solutions, the Pentium M processor, 855PM chipset, and PRO/Wireless 2100 network card are pieces of hardware designed from the ground up to be mobile-only solutions. The products run at a fraction of the power required to run their desktop equivalents and provide additional speed to boot.

Intel's new mobile technology was quickly adopted by major OEMs to produce notebooks with form factors and battery life previously not possible. Yesterday we examined new notebook solutions from Dell, IBM, and FIC, each of which brings to the table at least three hours and forty five minutes of battery life in systems that weigh, at the most, 7 pounds and go down in weight to 4.5 pounds. The Pentium M processor is ushering in a new era in mobile computing and Intel is to thank.

The rest of the mobile market did not sit quiet and let Intel receive all the praise given to the direction mobile computing is headed. Leveraging off the launch of the Intel Pentium M processor and the attention that the mobile market has gotten because of it, both ATI and NVIDIA are announcing new mobile graphics processors today. The solutions that the companies are offering range from a new integrated chipset solution for the Pentium 4 and Pentium 4-M processor to ultra high performance DX9 mobile parts.

Today, only one day after Intel's Centrino/Pentium M launch, we will be taking a brief look at 4 new mobile solutions from ATI and 2 new solutions from NVIDIA. This review is more of a technology preview than a full mobile chip review due to the fact that no notebook solutions available currently use any of these products. You may notice that some other sites are supplying benchmark numbers for the ATI and NVIDIA products. These numbers were recorded off a desktop system with a desktop version of the mobile graphics chip at the helm and are thus not necessarily representative of final notebook performance. Expect to see full reviews of these 6 chips in a month or two as production scales up and vendors begin incorporating the new solutions.