AVADirect's Clevo P170HM with GeForce GTX 485M: High-End You've Been Waiting For
by Dustin Sklavos on February 28, 2011 7:15 PM ESTSandy Bridge: Breaking Hearts and Records
We've had a chance to look at some faster Sandy Bridge kit previously, but the Intel Core i7-2720QM we requested in our review unit promises to supplant the commonly seen older i7-720QM and i7-740QM floating around in the marketplace today. Those chips sport Turbo clocks that peak on a single core below what the 2720QM is capable of on all four cores, so our application testing is liable to be a bloodbath for last generation's gaming notebooks.
Even ignoring the way PCMark tends to skew in favor of SSD-equipped notebooks, it's still impressive to see the Core i7-2720QM take nearly every chip on the block to task. Only the Clevo X7200, with its hex-core, 130-watt i7-980X is able to best it: last generation's i7-820QM can't catch up.
Futuremark's 3DMark suite bears out the equally improved performance of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 485M: it trounces the 480M and Mobility Radeon HD 5870 by extension, and is only eclipsed by the X7200 with its pair of 480Ms in SLI. Of course, if you were completely insane you could always order the X7200 with two 485Ms and get in the mobile space what was, at least for a time (and arguably may still be), one of the best desktop GPU pairings available. Sure it'll cost you an extra $1,400 for the upgrade over the stock 460M, but that's still an awful lot of performance to be able to pick up and move.
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7Enigma - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
Possibly because this is a gaming notebook?SteelCity1981 - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
ver impressive especially when it goes head to head with the 980x and even beats the 980x in some benchmarks.FXi - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
I can live with some glossy - don't mind the screen being that way if "some" antiglare coating was applied to the glossy part (sort of like camera lenses). But the lack of displayport is a major oversight these days. I bet longer term owners will end up a bit disappointed in this oversight.And why send a "test" notebook without the 2920 in it? /sigh Well guess it wasn't needed, judging from the scores, but it's what should have happened anyway.
2920 and 485m sli would be incredible.
mczak - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
then it'll look much less impressive. Just marginally (if at all) faster, and (afaik) much more expensive.JarredWalton - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
That's coming as soon as we can test it....Lunyone - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
Is it me, or is ther mobile 5870 GPU missing in over 1/2 of the graphs?? Is this by design or is this because the 5870 wasn't tested on the given games listed?? One could consider this a marketing plot or something like that, but just would like some clarification on it before I label this as a marketing stunt.JarredWalton - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
The last time we had a 5870 was before we added Mafia II, Metro 2033, and (I think) StarCraft II to the benchmarking suite. Anyway, we'll have the 6970M reviewed soon enough....PlasmaBomb - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
We patiently look forward to that review...carage - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
Once again, no Express Card slot...jcandle - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
It would be nice to see this nvidia card inside more notebooks that seem less cheaply made. With the move to a single graphics option I was surprised the new Alienware M17x R3 didn't include an option for the 485m. Its certainly not an issue with cooling. I have a M6500 and it already has a 100W graphics adapter in a similar cooling configuration.And slightly OT... anyone else see the notebook and think they could slap together a better product with a shorty 1U with a notebook keyboard and monitor slapped on top. Honestly, if you moved the PSU outside, added a battery in its place, and were willing to sacrifice your eardrums, it could be a workable solution in similar brick sized form factor and tonnage.