Nvidia has announced two new mobile graphics chips, including a successor to last year's flagship, the GeForce GTX 480M. The GeForce GTX 580M represents the company's fastest consumer notebook GPU to date and pledges to deliver the "best [mobile] gaming performance available anywhere." Meanwhile, the GTX 570M isn't prepared to make such silver-tongued claims, but still offers a healthy 20% speed boost over the GTX 470M.

As you're undoubtedly aware, while the GTX 580M and 570M may bear similar branding to their desktop counterparts, they aren't packing the same silicon. Unfortunately, Nvidia hasn't revealed precisely what GPU architecture is inside its new parts, but judging by their core configuration, the GF114 seems a likely candidate. That's the same chip behind Nvidia's mainstream GTX 560 Ti and 560 (non-Titanium) desktop cards.

So, "can they play Crysis?" Probably. Although their core specs are closest to the recent GTX 560 desktop cards, their diluted frequencies will probably put them more in line with last summer's GTX 460 1GB. Based on our review last year, the GTX 460 1GB managed to yield 37 frames per second when playing Crysis Warhead with max quality at 1920x1200, and 46 frames at 1680x1050 -- hardly perfect but playable nonetheless.

It's worth mentioning that Nvidia released a video yesterday showing a dual-GPU notebook fetching over 30 frames in Crysis 2 at 1920x1080 with DirectX 11 and high-res textures enabled. The company didn't say what GPUs were powering the system, but considering today's announcement, two SLIed GTX 580Ms seems highly probable. The new parts should be available immediately via the 18-inch Alienware M18x and MSI's GT780R.