NVIDIA GTX 480M will bring Fermi to laptops this June, crazy power requirements and all

We had an inkling NVIDIA wouldn't keep the Fermi goodness just to the desktop and here's our first pseudo-official confirmation. Rushing in ahead of any announcements, Eurocom has started listing a GeForce GTX 480M part, replete with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and a $345 markup relative to ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 5870. It's not clear whether the 100W number refers to the TDP or power requirements of NVIDIA's new GPU, but it's safe to expect both to be pretty high. The MXM 3.0b interface provides a 256-bit linkup between the GPU and CPU, lending plenty of bandwidth, but it also demands plenty of PCB real estate. As a result, Eurocom is offering the GTX 480M on its 17-inch Cheetah and Panther and 18.4-inch Leopard desktop replacements, but not on its 15.6-inch Cougar. Man, no love for the Cougars. According to the listing, we're only a month or so away from release.

[Thanks, Jacob]

[Thomsonbear Posted May 2nd 2010 6:49AM]

Laps will never be safe

[TehSilentWolf Posted May 2nd 2010 6:56AM]

@Thomsonbear

Laps will never be safe with this "Laptop"

[TehSilentWolf Posted May 2nd 2010 6:58AM]

@TehSilentWolf

lol misread what ^ said xD

[r3loaded Posted May 2nd 2010 7:05AM]

@Thomsonbear Just as well that the current MBPs don't have Fermi, they can scorch your little man quite easily on their own.

[MoonWalkerCTE Posted May 2nd 2010 7:06AM]

@Thomsonbear This will beat the Macbook Pro

[Thomsonbear Posted May 2nd 2010 7:11AM]

@r3loaded When playing flash my 13" MB is hot enough, thank god for SMCfan control and noise cancelling earphones.

[MRCUR Posted May 2nd 2010 10:05AM]

@r3loaded - Don't worry, Fermi packing laptops will run quite a bit hotter than any of Apple's machines.

[DougieBear Posted May 2nd 2010 11:48AM]

@Thomsonbear

Thus the name Thermie.

[aznofazns Posted May 2nd 2010 3:08PM]

@Thomsonbear

I don't think any other laptop is capable of burning nads as badly as my Dell Studio XPS 16. CPU gets to 64C when watching hulu and nearly 90C when playing games. And that's undervolted... These 17"+ beasts will at least have excellent cooling systems.

[schultz Posted May 2nd 2010 4:41PM]

@Thomsonbear

Well.. not for the 47 seconds before the battery runs out from that video card lol

[moranlorena Posted May 2nd 2010 7:52PM]

@Thomsonbear This will set a whole new pace for laptops. Impressions about fermi. http://j.mp/tesla-fermi-tegra-review

[kthorstrejka Posted May 2nd 2010 11:56PM]

@MoonWalkerCTE obviously, idiot. A. apple is in the stone age when it comes to hardware B. this is newer.

[Adamgs Posted May 2nd 2010 6:51AM]

Do crazy powerful GPUs such as this one have any use beyond gaming? Serious question...

[nashix Posted May 2nd 2010 7:01AM]

@Adamgs Yes.

1. CAD
2. Cluster computing
3. Advanced microscopy
4. Molecular simulations (typically need more power than anything required for gaming)

[r3loaded Posted May 2nd 2010 7:03AM]

@Adamgs They have supercomputing applications. Read up on Nvidia's Tesla products for the HPC market. An example of an HPC program that a home user might run is Folding@Home.

[HoldenMccrotch Posted May 2nd 2010 7:35AM]

@nashix
would you EVER do that on a laptop?
XD
'oh sorry, were you speaking to me, i was just doing some molecular simulations on my laptop'
:P

[z0phi3l Posted May 2nd 2010 7:39AM]

@HoldenMccrotch If you notice they are referred as Desktop replacements, not as portables, that's your hint

[nashix Posted May 2nd 2010 7:52AM]

@HoldenMccrotch Yes. Sometimes, I am....depending on the complexity and the number of milliseconds in simulation time I want to do.

[Kurian Posted May 2nd 2010 8:30AM]

@Adamgs
Its not very powerful. The 480M is not even as fast as a GTX260 core 216.

[TinWard Posted May 2nd 2010 8:44AM]

@Adamgs If some boffins would hurry their asses up and build some OpenCL apps then it would be very useful. The Adobe CS Suite should already benefit with the Mercury playback engine as this is an NVidia GPU but the suite needs moar vector code.

The catch-22 is there's no point in building advanced apps to use the GPU when few people can run them so not much return on investment and there's no point buying a machine with an expensive GPU until you get software that benefits from it.

Slowly but surely, it will work its way into mainstream models as the fabrication processes improve though. It's just nice to see Fermi in a laptop so soon.

[Schmich Posted May 2nd 2010 5:06PM]

@z0phi3l I like to call them mobile desktops. It doesn't necessarily replace the desktop. Desktops are so cheap that most people also have one. But the point of this is to have close to the same power if you travel a lot, not so much during the ride from A to B, but when you've reached your destination.

I can barely watch one video on one charge but once plugged in...hours of high graphics gaming is at my disposal =D

[rescawen Posted May 2nd 2010 6:54AM]

that scares shit out of me XD

[Jimbob Posted May 2nd 2010 7:06AM]

Also coming, the first laptop with a 6" fan!

[AlienSix Posted May 2nd 2010 7:08AM]

Get your hot dogs and hamburgers ready

[F C Posted May 2nd 2010 9:10AM]

@AlienSix

You're so dirty.

[Vman Posted May 2nd 2010 10:15AM]

@F C I could have sworn he was talking about food

[BrianH Posted May 2nd 2010 11:17AM]

@AlienSix

http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/1957/gpuo.png

[shadowj0 Posted May 2nd 2010 9:11PM]

@BrianH

Mmm.... bacon... *gargles*

[nicholaelaw Posted May 2nd 2010 7:12AM]

100W on a laptop? How big is the battery?

[Hazdaz Posted May 2nd 2010 8:56AM]

@nicholaelaw

http://www.carbatteryshop.co.uk/getimage.php?image=tayna/5060westcobattery.jpg&type=prod&resizeto=350

It will come in it's own convenient carrying case...
http://www.mrgadget.com.au/catalog/images/logitech_kinetic_notebook_backpack.gif

[ineser Posted May 2nd 2010 7:14AM]

Oh wow
Get your bacon and egg ready!

[ciloteille Posted May 2nd 2010 7:17AM]

12 cell battery... with options of 14 or16 cells? Lol id like to see some form of a quick release liquid cooling system to premote the heat disapation without the need of the sound of a 747 boeing air plane fan spinning at some 20k rpm to keep it below 100c.

[Amusednow Posted May 2nd 2010 7:33AM]

It has to be liquid cooled...your lap that is. Or what's all that white stuff on your lap? Thermal paste.

[fast Posted May 2nd 2010 7:34AM]

They should stick these inside those aluminum macs that reach near 100 C just to watch stuff melt...just cause. Someone email mythbusters...

[KashmaNiaC Posted May 2nd 2010 7:54AM]

Oh perfect! It's coming up to winter in Aus, and the lecture theatres at my uni are freezing...

[Wekkel Posted May 2nd 2010 8:02AM]

Not all laptops have to run 8 hours on battery

[Jeff Kibuule Posted May 2nd 2010 10:13AM]

@Wekkel

The battery in these kinds of laptops is really just a free UPS, that's all. Consider it a gift!

[Oli D Posted May 2nd 2010 1:15PM]

@Jeff Kibuule Not really free is it...?

[KAL326 Posted May 3rd 2010 9:45AM]

@Jeff Kibuule I think a free personal nuclear reactor would be more appropriate. I mean even a 1200VA UPS would only power this thing for 10--15 minutes with the i7920 Extreme and the GTX480M going full tilt.

[HikaKao Posted May 2nd 2010 8:03AM]

Two possibilities: Either laps will burn, or your laptop will have liquid nitrogen as cooling. Neither are very pleasant thoughts.

[SSD Posted May 2nd 2010 8:08AM]

Those space heaters get smaller and smaller.

[weeman Posted May 2nd 2010 8:23AM]

Soon we'll be using external graphics cards

[bebop Posted May 2nd 2010 10:52AM]

@weeman

That was tossed about quite seriously a couple of years back, but nothing much came of it as I recall.

[weeman Posted May 2nd 2010 11:57AM]

@bebop

Damn it. I thought I was onto a revolutionary idea!!

:D

[lamester Posted May 2nd 2010 8:25AM]

judging from their desktop counterparts, they gotta solve the heat and power-sapping problems first, unless this is a massively stripped down card with last gen(desktop) specs

[Awesomesquared Posted May 2nd 2010 8:50AM]

Mmmm. Yay. I can play bioshock 2 and iron my clothes at the same time.

[Hazdaz Posted May 2nd 2010 8:57AM]

Great, so now laptop battery life will be measured in seconds, not minutes!

[F C Posted May 2nd 2010 9:24AM]

@Hazdaz

They were always measured in seconds... just a whole lot of em.

[xtian63 Posted May 2nd 2010 10:34AM]

this has "bad idea" written all over it, also 2 fried eggs and a sausage

we see the end of the word "Laptop" with this plan, unless people want to get burnt laps

[Prevacator Posted May 2nd 2010 10:38AM]

I really didn't expect mobile Fermi cards to show up until they went down to the 28nm process sometime next year.


This seems crazy. I wonder how many CUDA Cores they've cut off to achieve the necessary power and heat requirements. Interesting that they give it even more vRAM than the desktop 480 though. To make up for the fewer Cores perhaps?