NVIDIA GeForce 8800M: Fast DX10 Mobile GPUs Finally Arrive

Closing Thoughts

While we would love to have hardware in our hands for this product launch, that is frequently not possible for the mobile market. NVIDIA is working with various manufacturers, many of whom are in the final stages of testing and validation, and we expect to see 8800M notebooks begin showing up online for pre-order shortly. If you're interested in picking up one of these systems, you might keep an eye on the websites of the following companies.


Before you take the plunge, we'd like to close things up with a few final thoughts. One of our biggest concerns with any gaming notebook continues to be driver support. We brought this up with NVIDIA, and we weren't surprised to find that the major difficulty appears to be notebook manufacturers. A lengthy series of testing and validation procedures is typical, and this is unfortunately required for every driver update. The result is that it can often be months (if ever) before you see new graphics drivers. That might not be a problem if all you want to do is run Windows Vista and surf the web, but for anyone playing games this is a serious concern. We went so far as to state bluntly, "There is absolutely no purpose in making a gaming notebook if you don't intend to provide the users with timely graphics driver updates!"

To their credit, NVIDIA seems more than willing to work with notebook manufacturers, but most of the manufacturers don't appear to understand the importance of driver updates. We encountered this problem when we reviewed the Toshiba X205 notebook a few months back. The latest Toshiba driver (which is yet to be updated!) does not function properly with several of the latest games - for example, we were forced to look for hacked drivers in order to run Bioshock. Call us crazy, but we don't think users should be required to hack their own drivers on a gaming notebook. Our advice is that before you go out and purchase any notebook with the intent to play games, first take a look at the company website and find out how frequently they have updated drivers on previous models - unless you don't mind downloading hacked drivers, of course.

Beyond the question of drivers, arguably the biggest barrier to entry for gaming notebooks is price. "Inexpensive" gaming notebooks usually start at $2500, and it's not unusual to see higher performing models selling for $4000 and more. When you can purchase a very good desktop for gaming and a more moderate notebook for other uses and still save $1000, it's going to be a tough sell for most people. While we don't expect to see notebooks sporting 8800M GPUs priced for $1500 or less anytime soon, NVIDIA did inform us that several companies are working on models starting at $2000. Many consider $2000 the sweet spot for performance notebooks, so we are definitely interested to see what manufacturers can put together targeting that price.

One other complaint that many people have with gaming notebooks is their size. Because of the higher power requirements, most gaming notebooks utilize a 17" chassis (or larger). While some people are willing to deal with a larger, heavier notebook, many would prefer something smaller. NVIDIA informed us that at least one manufacturer is working on a 15.4" chassis equipped with a GeForce 8800M GTX. Again, that is something we definitely look forward to reviewing.

In the grand scheme of things, today's launch of the GeForce 8800M may not seem particularly noteworthy. Most of us figured NVIDIA was working on a faster DX10 mobile part; others were wondering what was taking so long. The 8800M is definitely a nice improvement over the previous top-end mobile offerings, but NVIDIA really hasn't faced much competition in the mobile performance market. AMD/ATI has been content to release midrange and low-end parts, but with plateauing performance requirements and increasing notebook sales, perhaps they will once again enter the high-end gaming notebook sector. Until that happens, the 8800M GTX remains your best bet for gaming on the go - once they actually become available for purchase.