14 DAY TRIAL // Notebooks are generally seen as significantly more convenient than desktops, for certain market segments, because they have hardware on par with even high-end PCs, only in a portable frame. On the other hand, desktops are highly customizable and expandable, not to mention that it is quite easy to upgrade or replace any component. What end-users might not be completely aware of is another disadvantage that some notebooks have.
In the case of notebooks, the hardware often goes through certain tweaking and modifications that, while generally beneficial, can impact on driver compatibility. In the case of NVIDIA's mobile GPUs, this has led to a graphical performance inferior to what the equivalent desktop hardware can accomplish, simply because NVIDIA's drivers are not always supported by OEM machines.
Seeking to somehow resolve this issue and bring the complete range of driver-enabled performance boosts to mobile PCs, the Santa Clara GPU maker has been developing the 'Verde' drivers. Moving forward, the GPU maker will reportedly take things one step further, in a way unifying desktop and notebook drivers. This is to say that, starting with the 256 Series of drivers, both the desktop and notebook versions will be out on the same day.
In the case of laptops whose hardware did not go through significant changes at the hands of OEMs, the drivers should be compatible and, thus, will allow the discrete GPUs to work at their full potential. Of course, there is still the possibility of the drivers not working for everyone, but many users should benefit in the end. If this project evolves as it should, the graphics-solution developer's hardware for laptops may recover some of the appeal it lost in the wake of DirectX 11 mobile graphics from ATI (and AMD's one-per-month driver updates). All that remains is for mobile Fermi GPUs to show up, in which case the competition should reach a whole-new level.