Tuesday, May 25th 2010
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
1- Thanks. I DID google it up and actually spent 15 minutes googling with no match, not even close.
2- You can come up with the most stupid of the arguments. Only 1% come with 150w adapters? And how many laptops do you think will come with a 480M? Or a 5870M in single or CF configuration? Seriously what a waste of time writing all that, when its' obvious these configs are not for the 99% of people looking for a laptop. Besides, there are many GTX285 SLI laptops and that consumes way more than a 480M. Let's use your numbers: yep, we are talking about 150w just for the 2 GPUs. Two 4870's weren't much better at 65 each for a total of 130w on CF. How come? That's imposible! I mean MrMilli said it's imposible and we know that MrMilli can't be wrong...
3- It's much more than 15% performance difference. That to begin with. And what I think about that doesn't matter at all. I would never buy such a thing and I would never buy a desktop part for more than 250-300 euro either. That doesn't mean I will go on forums saying what other people should or should not get or what makes or doesn't make sense.
And again the die size doesn't matter at all and neither does the PCB cost. What matters is how much Nvidia makes thanks to Fermi, including Tesla and Quadro and fact of the matter is that Fermi is a much better all around chip to fill all those markets and that saves them a lot of money in R&D while allowing them to make tons of money. When it comes to Nvidia's strategy, GeForces are there just to ensure mass production of the chips, it's in the profesional markets where they make the real money (profits*). That doesn't mean the desktop parts are useless either. Making a chip (and then a reference card) for every one of those markets would cost much much more than risking a little bit on one chip. With G80 they did the same risk decision and it was camplete success, with GT200 they did the same and we can call that one a tie, with Fermi it didn't go very well and even then they have a killer chip that sells like hotcakes in three markets and it's much faster than the competition. Compare it to failures in the past like FX line or R600. Especially R600, was much bigger than the competition, consumed a lot more, was noisy and was 30% slower than the 8800GTX, let alone the 8800 Ultra. Fermi at least is 15% faster instead of being so much slower and it kills in those apps and features it was designed for: DX11, tesselation, GPGPU...
4- No matter the TDP, cooling down 2 GPUs inside a laptop is much more difficult than cooling one. Your statement is completely false: CF setup would consume much more, and be much hotter than a single 480M.
* Low-end/Mainstream/Performance parts make up the mayority of the revenues, but 80%++ of profits come from the profesional and high-endmarkets. In order to make any computing intesive chip you need a lot of money put into R&D and manufacturing and mainstream is there to ensure some revenue stability and ensure mass prioduction of chips (lowering the prices). They are not there to make money. It's like why Mecedes-Benz, Audi, Jaguar, Lexus, etc etc started making more mainstrem cars, but their bussiness is still luxury cars.
Just go to the Mobility HD5870 and GTX285M pages in notebookcheck and see how the HD5870 is always vastly superior to the GTX285M in game tests, even though the GTX285M is always paired with a faster CPU.
www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5870.23073.0.html
www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-285M.23822.0.html
Maybe it's that weird Clevo driver they used for the HD5870. At tomshardware, don't they know that ATI drivers are now unified for desktop and notebook parts?
The review dates from May 13th. Why didn't they just use the Catalyst 10.4?
It could also explain that seemingly huge GPU consumption while idling (note the difference in power draw between CPU load and GPU load).
It's good for a hardcore gamer who travels alot and needs portability.
See this review in the bottom: (Gaming performance - summary):
www.notebookcheck.net/Review-MSI-GX640-i5447LW7P-Notebook.30776.0.html
Performance rating
1st place: Radeon HD 5870 @ 43.75 fps
2nd place: Radeon HD 5850 @ 38.63 fps
3rd place: GeForce GTX 285M @ 35.00 fps
4th place: GeForce GTX 260M @ 32.50 fps
Mobilty HD5850 with GDDR5 also beats GeForce GTX 285M. The most important thing there is huge power consumption difference between them.
And do not talk stupid, because GeForce GTX 480M in laptop is the stupidest thing that I have ever heard!
Doubt it.
4870X2 still holds its ground very well. 2x800shaders @ 650mhz.
And is faster than GTX 470....470 is faster than 480M.....
Bypassing its price how can any gamer say no to playing BFBC2 on a WC ?
Imagine the camping realism :)
But i strongly urge you to read better. Just like you did with my first post, you misread this one again. Seems to me that you do read the words but don't get the message.
You're a CAD freelancer ... maybe that's why you have different opinion about this matter. I work for a SI and see things from a different perspective.
Anand's view: www.anandtech.com/show/3740/nvidia-announces-gtx-480m
I mean, how many of the desktop replacement users use their 'laptops' without the power cord being plugged in? I guess it's good for when the power goes out...but that's about the only reason I can think of.
They do not mention 100w being imposible or going to fry anything. 100w is high, but nowhere near anything to worry about when the laptop is plugged to the grid. 285 SLI is much harder to cool and power and many laptop designs exist with this config. Mobility Radeon 4870 X2 laptops exist too and they too consume much more than 480M...
BTW I forgot to mention this in the last post, but how much % of laptops come with 180w AC adapters according to you? You know they exist right?
And no, I will NOT buy ARM based processors for my main laptop, can't stand the "games" available on ARM.
Edit, actually, this graphics card might be teh bomb. If you see the laptop with GTX480M as a lightweight lanbox with attached screen, that is.