ATI yesterday unveiled its latest mobile graphics chip, the Mobility Radeon X1600, the first notebook-oriented GPU to support the company's Avivo video capture and playback enhancement technology.

The X1600 also incorporates the latest generation of ATI's power-conservation system, PowerPlay, the company said. PowerPlay 6.0 features "back-bias technology", ATI said, to minimise power consumption when the host notebook's is running on batteries. The use of TSMC's 90nm fabrication process helps too, it said.

Like other X1xxx GPUs, the new chip supports DirectX 9's Shader Model 3.0. The X1600 contains 157m transistors, used in part for the 12 pixel shaders and five vertex shaders. The chip supports DDR, DDR 2, GDDR 3 and GDDR 4 memory across a 128-bit, quad-channel interface.

Avivo enables 40-bit colour - 10-bit per red, blue, green and alpha channel - but requires an appropriate LCD to show images in their full glory. ATI said the X1600 is ready for Windows Vista.

ATI said the X1600 "will drive" notebooks from the likes of Asus, Acer, Alienware, HP, Medion, Packard Bell, Samsung, Rock, FIC and ECS, among others. Note the use of the future tense - ATI wasn't able to say the chip is available now and shipping immediately.

That said, Asus separately claimed its A7G multimedia notebook is shipping, and it uses the X1600, so the ATI part shouldn't be far off. ®