NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M reviewed: fastest mobile GPU to date
By Darren Murph 
posted June 17th 2010 1:03PM
posted June 17th 2010 1:03PM
It's one thing to have a product called the world's fastest on paper, but it's another thing entirely to have the benchmarks confirm it. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480M has been swooned over for months now, but it just recently hit the hardcore review sites in a big way. Frankly, there's not a whole lot to say about the thing at this point: it's simply the fastest mobile GPU to date, with Hot Hardware finding it to be "significantly faster in nearly all gaming benchmarks," with just one title showing the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 as the champ by only a few frames. If you've been searching for the fastest mobile GPU in town, you're wasting your time looking any harder; 'course, all of that power consumes an insane level of energy, so true road warriors will certainly want to look elsewhere. Critics pointed out that energy consumption and excess heat were real issues, though both of those are easily overlooked when you're able to take a beastly laptop to a LAN party rather than your desktop. Give those links below a visit if you still need proof.
More like warmest mobile GPU to date
There's an error on "with just one title showing the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 as the champ by only a few frames"... the article says that the NVIDIA gpu beated the 5870 just by a few frames, not the other way around.
Wow, nearly double the power consumption for such paltry gains over the Mobility HD 5870? GG.
@Leindurstit
Actually the power consumption numbers for the 5870 are considering JUST the graphics core, not the entire board that it is on unlike the nVidia cards which state the entire power consumption of every part of the graphics card. So comparing it is quite difficult and it is probably more like 20% more power, not double.
Soooo... can it run Crysis?
@manezinho
Comeon, stop using this as an excuse. That's so 2008.
I skimmed over it and this is what I saw:
Its not only 10-30% faster in benchmarks but also empties its 33% larger battery 14% faster than the competition.
Bravo nvidia.
Considering that no MBP can run Adobe Premiere CS5 right now because of the lack of GPU power, Apple needs to get on the ball.
@NaJaKwa Say buh-ybe to your battery life...
@Bahumbug
Say hi to productivity.
@Paul Elmy I'm being most productive on a real computer, i.e. a desktop, when it comes to power hungry applications. Not everything needs to be done on a laptop with a extension cord...
@Bahumbug
Sometimes you can't lug a huge desktop to a shoot. Just a little issue I have with desktops, but I think you're real intention is to turn into a flame fest.
*your
@manezinho
What do you think?
I have to really wonder how thick one of those laptops are to accommodate a 100W GPU.
When and in what products will we see this GPU from laptop manufacturers?
Gaming laptops aren't the best idea. Thermaltake makes a desktop "LAN box" that fits everything into a cube with a giant carrying handle on the top. This way you can upgrade on demand.
Hothardware's review is garbage! The laptop he tested the Geforce GTX 480M has an Intel Core i7-940, which is a DESKTOP PROCESSOR running at 2.93ghz! The Mobility 5870 laptop (Asus G73) has a freakin' MOBILE PROCESSOR; the which runs at 1.6ghz! And yes I know about turbo mode which only takes you to 2.8ghz when one core is in use.
@sheltem
I agree, how has no one noticed this yet? Of course a 480M + top of the line DESKTOP i7 will beat an older GPU. The pitiful thing is that it actually doesn't win every test. ATI is bringing back the mid-2000 era of dominance.
@Koshinn
I also forgot to mention but an enterprising user over at notebookreview forums modded a Mobility 5870 to fit within his Clevo 900F (the same machine from HotHardware). So when you do an apples to apples 3dmark Vantage comparison between the Mobility 5870 and the 480m, there is little to no performance difference!
Here's the forum thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/491999-first-benchmarks-d900f-running-mobility-radeon-5870-a.html
@sheltem I'd give the review a little more credibility if they posted the GPU scores for the Vantage benchmarks, not the overall scores. The overall score takes into account both the CPU and the GPU, which means that the vast differences in the CPUs used will skew the scores.
I'm also surprised that they didn't bother making a comparison with dual-5870 laptops, such as the Alienware M17x or the Eurocom x8100. I know that the Alienware system can easily get over P11000 (up to around P16700) on the Vantage tests, and I'd be shocked if the Eurocom system doesn't get similar numbers
Wow... My thighs are blistering just thinking about it...
That's what should have been in the new Mac Mini.
@robogobo I agree, then Apple would have saved me from buying a new hotplate.
Double the power consumption allows double the pork shoulder consumption!
What's the point of such a monster anyway? All lanparty games are still: counter strike, quake, unreal tournament and various versions of the call if duty. All of which are running on mediocre three years old notebook.
This is just a battery killer, which will decompose itself due to overheating combined with insufficient cooling.
I wonder what will happen if ATI makes a 100W version of its MR5870...
i thought every x80 is fastest ever.