NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M

Similar to the GeForce 9800M GT, the GTS 360M features 96 stream processors that do the graphics work of the former dedicated pixel- and vertex-shaders. The unified shaders of Nvidia are 1-dimensional (AMD has 5-dimensional shaders which lead to the higher number of shaders). The shaders of the GT215 core are based on the GTX 200 desktop architecture and are therefore improved compared to the G92 based cards (e.g., 9800M GT).

The GeForce GPU also supports CUDA, DirectX Compute, OpenCL, and PhysX to use the shaders for other tasks than rendering images (for example, encoding videos or calculating physics of a game or mathematical tasks). For these special tasks, the GPU can be noticeably faster than current CPUs.

The mobile graphics card has a built in video decoder called PureVideo HD with VP4. The Video Processor 4 (VP4) supports the full decoding of H.264, VC-1, and now also MPEG-4 ASP (e.g. DivX or XviD). MPEG-1 is still not supported, but the decoding of this codec is quite trivial on a CPU.

In conjunction with an Nvidia integrated graphics (e.g. 9400M), the GTS 360M supports Hybrid-SLI in the form of HybridPower. HybridPower is a Windows Vista-only technique for switching between the integrated and dedicated graphics core for power-saving purposes. Up to now, the user had to use a tool to switch between the GPUs. Later, HybridPower was succeeded by Optimus, which can automatically switch between GPUs directly through drivers. GeForceBoost is not supported by the GTS 360M as the SLI combination with the integrated GPU would provide no significant performance boosts.

The performance of the mid- to high-class GeForce GTS 360M should be slightly above the GTS 260M because of the higher clock speed. Demanding DirectX 10 games like Crysis should run fluently in medium to high details and lower resolutions. Older or less demanding games should run in high detail settings and high resolutions fluently. More details about the gaming performance can be found in our benchmarks below.

Depending on the type of graphics memory used (GDDR5 or GDDR3), the performance of the GTS 360M may differ. The maximum clock rate can also differ according to the used graphics RAM. For models equipped with GDDR5 VRAM, the maximum supported clock rate is 2000 MHz.

The power consumption should be similar to the slightly slower clocked GTS 260M, which is rated at 38 Watt TDP. Therefore, the GTS 360M is intended for larger laptops with powerful cooling solutions.