NVidia chips in hundreds of new notebooks

Next year will once again see the battle lines drawn between arch rivals NVidia and AMD and the former is making an early play for the upper hand with the announcement that its chips will feature in considerably more notebook designs in 2011.

According to a report from Reuters, NVidia's chief executive Jen Hsun-Huang has told analysts that he expects to take his company's share of the notebook market to an all-time high. This is backed by the assertion by the company that its graphics chips will appear in 200 new notebook designs in 2011, including some featuring Intel's Sandy Bridge processor microarchitecture. Compared with the 125 design wins with laptop manufacturers in 2010, this obviously marks a huge leap for the company and, if correct, suggests that it will significantly grow its own share of the market throughout the course of next year.

Machines featuring Intel's Sandy Bridge processor will be able to take advantage of its integrated graphics. However, it's thought that notebook manufacturers would want the opportunity to offer models with separate graphics chips also.

AMD, meanwhile, has announced three new processors in its Phenom II and Athlon II lines. All three processors – the 3.3GHz Phenom II X6 1100TT Black Edition, the dual-core Phenom II X2 565 Black Edition, and the Athlon II X3 455 – are designed to work in AMD's AM3 and AM2+ sockets. The flagship AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition offers a high-end, six-core processor that replaces the Phenom II X6 1090T and the company will be hoping it attracts attention from consumers looking for powerful performance at an affordable price point.