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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my_body_is_ready - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Any news on what ASUS will be doing with this chip? I hear they are refreshing their G series and adding 3D VisionJarredWalton - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
If ASUS doesn't someone else will. I suspect we'll see that sort of notebook come fall.drfelip - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
IIRC the Asus G73JW is going to sport a GTX 480M, but probably a downclocked one...LtGoonRush - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Given the very tiny lead of the GTX 480M, I'm very much looking forward to the next enthusiast mobile graphics products from AMD. Given that the Mobility 5870 has a 50TDP and is essentially a desktop R5770, they may be able to cram an underclocked desktop R5870 into a 100W TDP like the GTX 480M, maybe call it the Mobility 5970? Ah well, it will be exciting to see what the Mobility 6870 brings to the table, I'm assuming we'll see a Southern Islands-derived mobile GPU lineup.blyndy - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Isn't ATI supposed to release some new mobile parts about now?james.jwb - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
Sorry to bring this up here, but the front page carousel is killing the front page performance. I've heard lot's mention this over time, and it's now started happening to me. I think some random update, possibly to Flash or Firefox has caused this for me.Is this problem being acknowledge or ignored? I kinda expect more form a site like this, with this much traffic.
Using Firefox.
JarredWalton - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
If you're not at native size (i.e. no magnification), performance is okay. I'm on a quad-core 3.2GHz Kentsfield system, and the main page is fine normally but if I magnify suddenly it's super slow. Like, peg a core of my CPU at 100% for a couple seconds slow. If you were on a slower system, I imagine it would be terrible.FWIW, I believe we're talking about killing the carousel. I thought it sounded like a good idea in the design phase, but in practice I don't like it that much.
tommy2q - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
the carousel is a cpu hog and makes the front page harder/slower to browse for information because it takes up way too much space...B3an - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
It would be better to keep it, but make it Flash. For any sort of animations Flash runs much better with less CPU usage - if done right.I make stuff like this all the time, you're looking at around 2 - 4% CPU usage with Flash on a average quadcore. Even an Atom CPU would easily cope.
But Anand seems to be a big crApple supporter, so i cant see that happening.
strikeback03 - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link
I just tried on my work computer (3GHz Q6600) and I get processor usage spiking to about 28% spread across 2-3 cores when the carousel shifts. Using the keyboard buttons to magnify doesn't change the processor usage any.I never look at it though, without any defined beginning and end I find myself having to watch the whole thing to see what might be new, it is far easier to just look at the static listing.