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Nvidia has announced the GeForce 500M series of notebook graphics processing units (GPUs), designed to power notebooks featuring next-generation Intel Core CPUs (Sandy Bridge).

GeForce 500M GPUs are expected to power some of the industry's performance-level notebooks in 2011. The GPUs feature strong performance in media-rich HD, 3D, web, and gaming applications, as well as enhanced battery life, courtesy of Nvidia Optimus technology, said the vendor. Nvidia Optimus technology enables long battery life by switching on and off the GPU so that it runs only when needed. Nvidia Optimus is now designed into over 80% of 500M series notebooks across the notebook brand vendors.

For performance level, Nvidia offers GeForce GT 540M, GeForce GT 550M, and GeForce GT 555M with over four times the performance of integrated graphics and twice the DirectX 11 performance of the competition, the vendor said. For mainstream level, the company gives GeForce GT 520M and GeForce GT 525M offering over twice the performance of integrated graphics.

The new GPUs also features technologies such as Nvidia 3D Vision, DirectX 11, PhysX physics engine, CUDA architecture, Nvidia Verde notebook drivers and Nvidia 3DTV Play software.