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NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 580M and 570M, availability in the Alienware M18x and MSI GT780R (updated: MSI says no)
We know you're going to be shocked -- shocked! -- to hear this, but NVIDIA's gone and refreshed its high-end line of GeForce GTX cards. The GTX 580M takes the place of the GTX 485M, and NVIDIA's bragging that it's the "fastest notebook GPU ever," capable, we're told, of besting the Radeon HD 6970M's tesselation performance by a factor of six. The new GTX 570M, meanwhile, promises a 20 percent speed boost over the last-generation 470M. Both 40-nanometer cards support DirectX11, OpenCL, PhysX, CUDA, 3D Vision, Verde drivers, Optimus, SLI, and 3DTV Play. As for battery life, NVIDIA's saying that when coupled with its Optimus graphics switching technology, the 580M can last through five hours of Facebook, but last we checked, that's not why y'all are shelling out thousands for beastly gaming rigs. You can find the 580M in the Alienware M17X and M18X (pictured) starting today, though you might have to wait a week or so for them to ship. Meanwhile, the 570M is shipping in the MSI GT780R as you read this, and you'll also find the 580M in a pair of 3D-capable Clevo laptops: the P170HM3 and the SLI-equipped P270WN. Handy chart full 'o technical details after the break. Update: An MSI rep has let us know that contrary to earlier reports, the GT780R is not currently available with the 570M graphics card. The company added that it will offer some unspecified laptop with the 570M sometime in the "near" future. It's unclear if that laptop will, in fact, be the GT780R.
System 76 brings Sandy Bridge to Ubuntu with Gazelle and Serval laptops
System 76 has been doing open source right for quite some time now, and it's just unleashed what it claims is the "most powerfull Ubuntu laptop in the world" -- so powerful it needs that extra L. It's the Serval Professional, offering your choice of Intel Core i7 processors ranging from the 2GHz 2630QM to the 2.5GHz 2920XM. Graphics are handled by a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 485M GPU that pumps 1080p worth of pixel dust to a 15.6-inch, LED-backlit display. Prices for that machine start at $1,379 but you're only a few mouse clicks away from three times that. On the slightly lower-end scale is the Gazelle Professional, with a more limited range of processors and graphics options, but the same 15.6-inch display and a price that starts at $1,239. Both come with any operating system you like -- so long as it's Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. %Gallery-115027%
