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The days of lugging around awkward, cumbersome gaming notebooks are soon to be a thing of the past. Through its new Max-Q initiative, Nvidia has announced design specifications to allow gaming notebooks to be slimmed down. In fact, the latest technology allows for future notebooks to be a third as thick as their predecessors, and weigh half as much.
And while the hardware will be slimmed down, the perfomance have been bulked up. The GeForce GTX with Max-Q design runs three times as fast as the current GPUs. Based on Nvidia’s current Pascal architecture, the initiative allows for greater performance to be packed into thinner devices. “The results: a high-performance gaming platform, that is as small as 18mm thick—as thin as a MacBook Air —with up to 70 per cent more gaming performance than what is currently available,” the company said in a release.
Unveiling the new specifications at Computex 2017, Nvidia’s new approach appears to be packing a massive amount of gaming performance into ever shrinking devices. And while AI and new technologies were talked up, Nvidia was staying true to its core principles, with graphics and performance being the main focus.
The main design specifications include the most powerful GPUs running at peak efficiency, optimal game settings based on specific PCs, advanced thermal solutions that maintain a GPU’s ability to run at peak efficiency, and next-generation voltage regulators.
In order to ensure the ultra thin devices can handle the performance without making a racket, Nvidia has added a new WhisperMode feature to keep the peace. “WhisperMode intelligently paces the game’s frame rate while simultaneously configuring the graphics settings for optimal power efficiency,” the company said. Max-Q laptops will be available from June 27 from vendors including Acer, Alienware, Asus, Gigabyte, HP, Lenovo, Maingear, MSI, and Origin PC.
How the GeForce GTX with Max-Q goes down remains to be seen. But making devices easier to transport and lighter to carry around, combined with even greater performance, sounds like a gamer’s paradise. Too good to be true? We’ll have to wait and see.
