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 ESTGaming: What the GTX 480M Should've Been
I don't make any effort to hide my disappointment with NVIDIA's misbegotten GeForce GTX 480M: trying to cram a chip that was already hot and inefficient by desktop standards into a notebook was ludicrous. Thankfully the era of the 480M has passed, and the era of the 485M is upon us. On paper the 485M is promising, with only AMD's Radeon HD 6970M to really oppose it. We'll be looking at a laptop with that chip soon enough, but it's unlikely to bridge the gap between HD 5870 and the GTX 485M.
At our "high" preset, the GeForce GTX 485M is able to handle all of our games at up to the P170HM's native resolution of 1080p with power to spare, often dwarfing the Mobility Radeon HD 5850 and 5870. The 480M also remains largely outclassed here: this is the chip we wanted the 480M to be.
At 1080p the difference is only more pronounced. Keep in mind that the Quadro 5000M in the HP EliteBook 8740w is the workstation equivalent of the GeForce GTX 480M, and is basically run roughshod over by the new chip. In fact the only instance where the 480M SLI solution makes a major difference in playability is in our grueling Call of Pripyat test: the 485M is otherwise the king of the hill.
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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.