Tuesday, May 25th 2010
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NVIDIA Releases GeForce GTX 480M, World's Fastest Notebook GPU
NVIDIA made its GeForce GTX 480M GPU official today. The DirectX 11 compliant GPU is based on the GF100 core and packs all the features of its desktop counterpart, such as decentralized hardware tessellation, next-generation CUDA and DirectCompute 5.0. The GF100 core has a configuration similar to the GeForce GTX 465 desktop GPU. It has three of its four graphics processing clusters (GPCs), and 11 out of 16 streaming multiprocessors (SMs) enabled, giving a CUDA core count of 352. To reduce the overall board footprint, the GPU makes do with a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, with 1 GB of memory.
To make keep up with the electrical constraints of notebooks, the GTX 480M uses much lower clock-speeds than any desktop product that uses GF100. The core is clocked at 425 MHz, shader domain at 850 MHz, and memory at 600 MHz (real) or 2.40 GHz (effective), which gives a memory bandwidth of 76.8 GB/s. As mentioned earlier, the full feature-set of its desktop counterparts is packed with the GTX 480M, including support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, PureVideo HD, PhysX, and CUDA. It can pair with up to two boards of its kind in 2-way SLI. Constraints of the notebook form-factor won't allow any more boards, anyway. The GPU is open to Notebook manufacturers to plan their designs around. NVIDIA claims the GTX 480M to be the fastest notebook GPU. It finds direct competition in the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870, which is based on the 800 stream processor-laden Juniper core.
To make keep up with the electrical constraints of notebooks, the GTX 480M uses much lower clock-speeds than any desktop product that uses GF100. The core is clocked at 425 MHz, shader domain at 850 MHz, and memory at 600 MHz (real) or 2.40 GHz (effective), which gives a memory bandwidth of 76.8 GB/s. As mentioned earlier, the full feature-set of its desktop counterparts is packed with the GTX 480M, including support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, PureVideo HD, PhysX, and CUDA. It can pair with up to two boards of its kind in 2-way SLI. Constraints of the notebook form-factor won't allow any more boards, anyway. The GPU is open to Notebook manufacturers to plan their designs around. NVIDIA claims the GTX 480M to be the fastest notebook GPU. It finds direct competition in the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870, which is based on the 800 stream processor-laden Juniper core.
55 Comments on NVIDIA Releases GeForce GTX 480M, World's Fastest Notebook GPU
I guess it's time for AMD to release a Cypress-based "Mobility HD5970" for +18" laptops. I wonder what's the point but whatever..
I think it'll be just a little bit faster than the RM 5870 but at what cost (if you take silicon size and TDP into account)?
I really wish they'd label the laptop parts with some consistency to their desktop siblings. To me, this does not appear to be the mobile equivalent of the GTX480 - it the mobile equivalent of the GTX465. Yes, it's the fastest they will (probably) produce in the mobile market, but why not just have the GTX465M as their fastest (mobile) part?
This makes me :(
Performance wise it looks much faster than both 285M and Mobility 5870, even at 425Mhz, considering that we can say that their desktop counterparts are the 9800GT and 4850 respectively. Because the 8 is for the high-end part, and this is the high-end part. The M is there to say it's the mobile part. GTX465 470 etc. etc is not the name of the chip, it's the name of the product and has to be taken like that.
For refrence, RM 5870's TDP is 50W.
The RM 5870 is directly comparable to the Radeon HD 5750.
The 285M is more like a 9800GTX with lower clocks but it's still faster than a 9800GT.
Xbit has a review of a Geforce GTX 465:
www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce-gtx-465.html
352 shaders - 608Mhz core - 1215Mhz shader - 102.7GB/s mem
If you take the GTX 465 results and take around 30% off then you'll get the idea of how the GTX 480M will perform.
Even if it's faster, at what cost did it become faster?
Double the TDP, 3x bigger silicon, more complex PCB, ...
I mean, you can have a RM 5870 CF in the same power envelope beat the crap of the GTX480M.
Btw, EUROCOM will kick ass of any GTX480M laptop with CF 5780 replacement lap's. :D
100w TDP is not that much anyway and I have yet to see a laptop where you can game when running from the battery. Most that I've seen don't last more than 0.5 to 1 hour, and honestly 1 hour or half an hour or 15 minutes who cares? In order to game you need to plug it, perdiod and 50w of max difference is not going to change anything. Most of the times the difference would be much smaller and it's even posible that the future laptops with the 480M actually last more/consumes less than with the 5870M because of Optimus technology.
here's a review on the 5870M:
www.tomshardware.com/reviews/avadirect-clevo-w860cu-mobility-radeon-hd-5870,2615-11.html
^^30 minutes of battery life. GTX285M wins hands down with 45 mins.
Regarding the silicon, PCB, etc, who the hell cares? Nvidia is the only one that needs to care and they are doing just fine financially. To make a GPGPU instead of a GPU was their choice, and only theirs, and theirs was the risk and you know what? They are doing excelently, they are selling those GPUs and Teslas like hotcakes (add the deal with IBM to that). What matters to us is how much we pay and we pay the same price/performance 99% of the times.
5870 CF would consume a lot more than the single GPU when not gaming and kill the battery in a whisper. You cannot game on the battery, period and I bet that fermi + optimus destroys the 5870M in overall battery efficiency.
Just because you can't find a use for one, does not mean that no uses exist.
What i don't understand is that you keep talking about battery life while i didn't say one word about battery life.
1- www.nordichardware.com/en/component/content/article/21856-eurocom-reveals-geforce-gtx-480m-100w-monster.html
Google?
2- 100w isn't that much? For a laptop?
Never mind the battery life of a laptop having a GTX 480M ... how is one supposed to cool one of these in a laptop. This is going to result in a very fat and loud laptop.
Consider this:
- RM 5870 = 50W
- Mobile Core i7 = 45W
- 65% of laptops are supplied with a 60W adapter
- 30% with a 90W adapter
- 4% with a 125W adapter
- and i guess 1% has a 150W adapter
Now take an i7 + 480M + rest of the system and you're way over 150W. That's just not normal for a laptop! You talk about 50W like it's nothing. Maybe not for a PC but most laptops use less than 50W in total. Even if you compare 100W vs 150W, that will result in a huge difference in the cooling system, especially in a laptop.
But i agree, Optimus is a really nice piece of technology. I like it. But ATI has similar technology already available to manufactures. It's is up to the laptop manufacturers to implement the feature, just like Optimus. www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/switchable-graphics/Pages/switchable-graphics.aspx
The thing is, a laptop is designed with the max. TDP in mind. So while Optimus will extend battery life while you're not gaming, it won't make the laptop less bulky.
3- While it's true that nVidia can charge the same amount of money for a 480M as ATI does for a 5870, it just won't. We're talking about 3x the size silicon. 480M will be more expensive period. For reference, Eurocom will charge €285 extra for the 480M over the 280M (or 5870, as it costs as much as the 280M). Do you think 10-15% extra performance is worth €285?
Concerning the PCB, that has nothing to do with nVidia. Making a board with 128-bit tracing is cheaper than a board with 256-bit tracing. Less layers = less money.
4- Well ATI has something called 'Ultra Low Power State' for Crossfire systems. This works only on the 5000 generation cards. When idling, it takes the slave card to an even lower power state than normal idling. This feature is enabled from driver 10.2 onwards. This does alleviate the problem a bit. The second chip adds <10W while idling (if i counted correctly, that puts it at around 22W for both without ATI Switchable Graphics).
But one can't argue about this: when you're in the market for one of these huge, ugly, useless and heavy gaming laptops, you're better of with a Radeon Mobility 5870 CF.
You pay the same amout, the laptop is as heavy, it's as loud, it's as bulky, will eat batteries like there's no tomorrow but it will be 30-40% faster.
I know one thing, i won't buy either.
And again, just because YOU find no use for it, does not mean that no use for it exists.