Notebooks see NVIDIA threesome immediately after ATI's first coupling.
Mere days after ATI announced its first notebook-based multi-GPU CrossFireX setup, NVIDIA is now one-upping it. It announces that Toshiba is launching notebooks inside of which it managed to cram an impressive three discreet NVIDIA graphics chips.
It’s actually a nifty system designed to extend battery life. Rather than a tri-SLI setup, which is what one might expect of performance machines, the notebook models sport two GeForce 9800M GTS chips in SLI with the third being a GeForce 9400M. When you’re just doing simple desktop tasks, the graphics processing can be handled solely by the lower-powered 9400M, with the other two being powered down. However, when it’s time to suit up for gaming, you can drop the 9400M in favour of the much more powerful – and power-hungry – 9800M SLI setup.
Toshiba’s pricing for the machines starts at US$2,000 for the lower end model, the sensibly-named ‘Qosmio X305-Q706’, while a demanding US$4,200 is listed for the higher-end model with an infinitely more appropriate name, the ‘Qosmio X305-Q708’.
With graphics chips, system memory, and displays being identical in both models, aside from the CPU, the other main difference lies in the non-volatile storage. The higher-end model sports a 128GB solid state drive on top of the standard 7,200rpm 320GB hard drive.
What I’m curious to know is how popular multi-GPU setups actually are in the notebook market. Considering multi-GPUs aren’t exactly efficient in terms of a performance boost, why not just create a single more powerful graphics chip?
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