Fermi Goes Mobile: AVADirect's Clevo W880CU with GTX 480M
by Dustin Sklavos on July 7, 2010 11:45 PM EST
Closing Thoughts
The back to school season is starting to gear up, and we should see more DX11 GPUs out of NVIDIA using something besides a trimmed GF100 in the fall. We also hope to see better designs using the GTX 480M, because frankly the W870CU/W880CU chassis is not what we expect from a high-end gaming notebook. Perhaps we'll even see some ambitious company stuff a couple GTX 480M chips into a notebook, though we'll need more than a 240W power brick to make that happen. Naturally, there should be plenty of competition from the AMD camp as well, and if nothing else at least 480M has made things interesting.
At the end of the day, NVIDIA got their crown back. The GeForce GTX 480M is now officially the fastest mobile GPU available, and like the AMD camp it supports DX11. Beyond being faster than the HD 5870, you also get CUDA and PhysX support. Was it worth it? It depends on your perspective.
If NVIDIA could get the GTX 480M clocks up about 30% without increasing power, this would be a monster. But what we really need is a SKU from a vendor that doesn't milk people for every dollar. If we're aggressive on other components we can get the W880CU down to around $2300 with 4GB RAM and a Core i5-520M, and that should still be fast enough to feed the GTX 480M. Do the same for the W870CU with HD 5870 and you can get the price down to $1600... or just grab the ASUS G73Jh for $1500 and get a backpack, larger battery, 8GB RAM, and dual 500GB hard drives. Small wonder the ASUS G73Jh continues to be our pick for a DTR gaming laptop. Hopefully ASUS or someone else can do a similar treatment for the 480M, because right now the W880CU just isn't worth buying.
Now, if someone can get us close to 5870/480M performance and features and throw in Optimus Technology (or an AMD equivalent) with a reasonable chassis and battery life, we'd be far more interested. Think Alienware M11x with a slightly larger chassis and a faster CPU/GPU, ASUS U30Jc with a faster DX11 GPU, or the MSI GX640 with a better keyboard and auto-switching graphics. Is anyone crazy enough to try an Arrandale CPU with GTX 480M and Optimus for under $2000? We can only hope! (Or we can wait for Intel to get quad-core Sandy Bridge CPUs with IGPs next year.) Many laptops are coming close, but so far we haven't encountered anything that we can universally recommend. Perhaps the inevitable fall refresh will have what we're looking for.
We'd also like to thank AVADirect for providing us with our Clevo W880CU Gaming Notebook review sample.
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Dustin Sklavos - Friday, July 9, 2010 - link
Every time someone charges me with an Nvidia bias, an angel gets its wings.When I write I have to try and remove my own personal biases from the material, so the fact that my printed bias swings in the exact opposite direction as my personal one (all of my machines with dedicated GPUs are running Radeons), I feel like I've achieved something.
GamerDave20 - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Yes, I own one. It plays Fallout 3 at four to five FPS at 1280 x 800 and has developed 28 vertical lines on the screen. But, my XPS Gen 2 is still my front line pc for a few reasons:1) it's paid off,
2) it runs XP satisfactorily for general computing,
3) although it was "flashy" back in it's day, it is not nearly as terrible looking as most "gaming" laptops these days,
4) and, it HAS ports on the back!
With that said, this base chassis has to be one of the best looking laptops on the market.
It is just difficult to justify if you are also considering a desktop PC.
How about a give-away with one of these as the prize!
Ha ha, and thanks for the article Anandtech and Dustin.
Dave (GamerDave20)
iwod - Sunday, July 11, 2010 - link
The Rumors suggest GF104 would actually have the same Core as the current 465 without the wasted transistor. I am wondering if those wasted transistors will leak power as well?If so, then with the better yield and leakage improvement from GF104, we could expect an even more powerful GTX480M, or a lower power version of GTX480M with smaller die, less heat, less power, same performance.
Until then, i am waiting for a better power management, tweaked version of Fermi with 28nm LP die shrink on laptop/ Notebook.
VIDYA - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
bull shit man they are selling dinosaurs at the age of aliens......kind of funny, that a few stupids will still buy them for the ad and all....... for a laptop that performs lower than a desktop and cant play when its unplugged :)VIDYA - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
GF104 is the new born baby BTW....this one is lean mean overclocker too!maarek999 - Thursday, July 15, 2010 - link
You can definitely use different Nvidia cards accelerated on Premiere cs5. There is a very simple hack for it:http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=209116
Works on the GTX470 and GTX480 so should also work with the mobile versions. Makes A WORLD of difference and a huge boost to users of Premiere. Especially when dealing with RED material or Canons DSLR-line.