Notebookcheck

NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M

The Nvidia GeForce GT 120M is a DirectX 10 graphics card for notebooks and  technically a slower clocked GeForce 130M GT with a lower current consumption. The performance should be on a level with the older 9600M GT. As the 9600M GT it features the PureVideo HD video processor (VP3) and HybridPower support.

In conjunction with the Nvidia 9100M G integrated graphics, the GT 120M supports Hybrid-SLI (only HybridPower). HybridPower is a technique to choose between the integrated and dedicated graphics core, if performance or battery runtime is needed. This works only in Windows Vista. Up to now the user has to use a tool to switch between the GPUs. Later Nvidia wants to switch automatically in the drivers. GeForceBoost is not supported with this card, as there would be no performance gain.

As the 130M / 9600M GT, the GT 120M features 32 stream processors that do the graphic work of the vertex- and pixel-shaders.

The performance of the GT 120M should be somewhere near the 9600M GT. Therfore, high end games like GTA 4 and Crysis wont run in high settings, but less demanding games (like Lef 4 Dead) should run fluently in high settings.

PhysX is only supported when two GeForce GT 120M are used in SLI mode (one GPU dedicated for PhysX) as the alone 120M is not powerful enough to calculate both graphics and PhysX. 

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the GT 120M is similar to the GeForce 9500GT or GT 120 (which also descend from the G96 core).  Still the desktop cards should be a bit faster.

ManufacturerNVIDIA
SeriesGeForce GT 100M
CodenameN10P-GV1
Pipelines32 - unified
Core Speed *
Shader Speed *
Memory Speed *
Memory Bus Width128 Bit
Memory TypeGDDR2, GDDR3
Max. Amount of Memory
Shared Memoryno
DirectXDirectX 10, Shader 4.0
Transistors314 Million
technology55 nm
FeaturesOpenGL 2.1, 7.1 Sound über HDMI (wenn vom Hersteller unterstützt), PCI-E 2.0, 600 MHz Speichertaktung bei GDDR2, 1066 MHz bei GDDR3, PureVideo HD Technologie (VP3), Hybrid SLI mit HybridPower (mit aktuellen nVidia Chipsätzen), PhysX (als zweite Grafikkarte im SLI Verbund), HDMI bis 1920x1200, Displayport theoretisch (wenn vom NB Hersteller unterstützt) bis 2560x1600
Notebook Sizemedium sized
Date of Announcement11.02.2009
Link to Manufacturer Page
* The specified clock rates are only guidelines for the manufacturer and can be altered by them.

benchmarks

3DMark 2001: - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
      min: 22385, avg: 22385, max: 22385 Points
... More Details

3DMark 03: - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
      min: 14290, avg: 14291, max: 14291 Points
... More Details

3DMark 05: - Standard 1024x768
0% 100%
      min: 9472, avg: 9472, max: 9472 Points
... More Details

3DMark 06:
0% 100%
      min: 5200, avg: 5285, max: 5431 Points
... More Details

Cinebench R10: - Shading
0% 100%
      min: 4267, avg: 4267, max: 4267 Points
... More Details

- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
Based on 8 benchmarks

Game Benchmarks

For more games that might be playable and a list of all games and graphics cards visit our Gaming List

Gaming Performance

The following benchmarks were conducted on a Asus F50SV-A2 with a GT 120M and a P8600 CPU.

Call of Duty 5: 1366x768, max, 2xAA: 20-25 fps -> barely playable
Left 4 Dead: 1366x768, max, 2xAA: 28-30 fps -> playable

Source: NBR Test

Notebook reviews with NVIDIA GeForce GT 120M graphics card

Asus F50Sv-A2 (Intel Core 2 Duo P8600, 16.0")
» Asus F50Sv-A2 - External Review

 

Author: Klaus Hinum (Update: 2009-11-19)