Digital Home Thoughts: nVidia MXM Mobile Graphics Solution

"With PCI Express replacing AGP this year as the graphics card standard, nVidia has today introduced a new interface based on PCI Express for mobile graphics modules. MXM, short for Mobile PCI Express Module is a breakthrough in mobile graphics and possibly one of the most important developments for both laptop manufacturers and end users for a long time. To date, mobile graphics cards have been proprietary solutions that are custom made to fit each notebook, which is hardly the most efficient way of doing things. In a desktop PC it’s easy to change a graphics card, you just unplug the old one and plug a new one in - and this is exactly what you can do with MXM."



"There will be three different sizes of MXM cards, just to complicate things, but there is a very good reason for this. The smallest type, MXM-I has been designed for thin and light notebooks, whereas MXM-II is for your average notebook and MXM-III is for large desktop replacements. The power and cooling specifications are different for each model to suit the laptop they’re designed for. The idea is that each type of card will offer the best performance, be it for fast 3D graphics or long battery life, all depending on the target user."

However, it doesn't look like MXM based laptops are coming out any time soon though. Rumors have it that you should start seeing it in the third quarter this year as the shift over to PCI Express gains momentum.