Nvidia Releases new MX200 Series Mobile GPUs
Notebookcheck and others have spotted that Nvidia published specifications for the not-yet-officially-announced MX200 series of mobile GPUs. These new MX200 series GPUs are the successors to the last-gen MX100 GPUs that found popularity in the thin and light category of laptops due to their superior graphical performance over Intel and even AMD's integrated solutions.
However, compared to the previous MX100 series, the MX200 series isn't likely to provide much of an upgrade.
According to Nvidia's specifications, the only new features the MX200 series supports over the MX100 series are GPU Boost 3.0 instead of 2.0, OpenGL 4.6 instead of 4.5, and OpenCL 1.2. The MX200 series is also not Turing-based, instead utilizing the Pascal architecture, making this a generational refresh.
Additionally, according to Nvidia's own testing, the MX230 is almost as fast as the MX130, but the MX250 is actually slower than the MX150, though not by much. This could be due to Nvidia's GPU Boost 3.0 throttling clocks down to increase power efficiency or a change in Nvidia's testing methodology. In either case, these new GPUs won't change the face of thin and light gaming, but they are a welcome incremental step.
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Matthew Connatser is a freelancing writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes articles about CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and computers in general.