The GeForce GTX 280M gives a 50 percent performance boost over previous Nvidia GPUs, said Brian Burke, an Nvidia spokesman. It includes 128 cores and delivers 562 gigaflops of performance, the company said. It was announced at the CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany.

The performance may have been helped by an improved manufacturing process, said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. The chip is manufactured using a 55-nanometer process, compared to the 65-nanometer process employed for other recent Nvidia chips.

The new process may also help the GPU draw less power, Peddie said. To further extend battery life, the 280M can switch between using a separate graphics card and an integrated graphics processor, Nvidia said.

The GTX 280M is aimed at gaming enthusiasts and those who use demanding multimedia applications. It supports SLI (Scalable Link Interface), which allows two GTX 280M-based cards in a laptop to work together to scale graphics performance, Burke said.

The GPU will be available in laptops through PC makers, Nvidia said. It is designed to work with Windows, Linux and Macintosh systems.