Console gaming experience may soon come to Ultrabooks

Chipmaker NVIDIA® has introduced its new GeForce® GT 640M graphics processing unit (GPU) with the aim of bringing a console-type gaming experience to Ultrabooks and other laptop computers. NVIDIA officially announced the release of the platform on March 22.

The new offering is twice as fast as its predecessor, which will be key to providing the rich gaming experience that many are used to on traditional consoles.

"GeForce 600M Series GPUs deliver excellent performance per watt, performance per millimeter and overall performance and power efficiency," Brian Choi writes in a company blog post. "By any measure, NVIDIA is raising the performance bar for all notebooks --  from the thin-and-light Ultrabook™ segment to ultra-powerful GeForce GTX gaming notebooks."

Furthermore, Choi notes, combining NVIDIA's Optimus technology with the GeForce 600M Series will further boost the battery life of an Ultrabook. Consumers will get to experience these benefits to their fullest extent once Intel® releases its new Ivy Bridge chipset, Choi adds.

Ultrabooks are the wave of the future for the PC market. Research firm IDC reports that PC sales should rebound in the second half of 2012, thanks mainly to the strength of the next-generation laptop computers.