Nvidia Unveils GeForce GT 540M Laptop GPU

Out with the old and in with the old, but with new clockspeeds and a new name. That pretty sums up Nvidia's newly unveiled GeForce GT 540M notebook GPU, which kicks off Nvidia's GeForce 500M family of mobile graphics.

The new part comes built on a 40nm manufacturing process and boasts 96 CUDA cores, up to 1.5GB of memory, a 128-bit memory bus, and of course DirectX 11 support. Sound familiar? It should, because those are the same specs as the GeForce GT 435M GPU. So what makes the GT 540M different?

"With GeForce GT 540M, we are taking an already proven architecture and using the maturity of the manufacturing process to create GPUs with higher clock settings while staying in the same power envelope," Nvidia explains. "As a result, the GeForce GT 540M delivers a significant increase in fill-rate and memory bandwidth, which ultimately translates to better overall performance."


Whereas the GeForce GT 435M's GPU comes clocked at 650MHz, the GT 540M races along at 672MHz. Nvidia also goosed the memory clockspeed from 800MHz (GT 435M) to up to 900MHz (GT 540M).

More than just a paper launch, Nvidia says its new GPU is "available immediately in China from Acer," with a worldwide release to follow next month.