Apple recently released its new MacBook Pro featuring NIVDIA's newest mobile chipsets, allowing a switch between the integrated 9400M graphics and the discrete 9600M GT GPU for better efficiency or performance as needed. However, Apple's current implementation requires users to log in and out for the change to take affect. According to NVIDIA, however, the chipset is capable of on-the-fly GPU switching and a lot more.

In a demo given to Gizmodo, NVIDIA representatives confirmed that the 9400M chipset used in Apple's latest notebooks is capable of instantly switching from the integrated GPU to an external GPU. Additionally, it can work with two GPUs separately, as is the case currently, or can use both GPUs simultaneously for even greater performance gains. The only requirement now is if Apple to enable the features and get them working with Mac OS X.

The other interesting tidbit is that the chipset supports up to 8GB of RAM—currently the notebooks are limited to 4GB of RAM.

It's possible that Apple may have to wait for architectural changes in Snow Leopard to enable the additional graphics capabilities, as it is suspected that the login and logout is required to reset OS X's Window Manager. However, it's unknown whether adding 8GB of RAM to a MacBook simply requires 4GB SO-DIMMs or further changes in board design or software. Either way, there's even more impressive performance lurking under the hood than what we have already seen, and I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping Apple unlocks these capabilities soon.