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 ESTConclusion: A Win for NVIDIA, a Mixed Bag for Clevo
At CES I had the opportunity to express to NVIDIA personnel both my enthusiasm for the GeForce GTX 460 and my stunning lack thereof for the GeForce GTX 480M. The GF100 really never should've been shoehorned into notebooks, and mercifully NVIDIA finally obsoleted it in the mobile sector in favor of the vastly more streamlined GF104.
It took us until GF114 to see what a GF104 with all of its cores might look like, but now it looks like NVIDIA may have been harvesting those fully functional GF104 chips for the 485M. Speculation isn't necessary here, though, only the bottom line: the GeForce GTX 485M is the leap in mobile graphics performance we've sorely needed. The 480M was incrementally faster than the Mobility Radeon HD 5870, which was incrementally faster than the 285M, which was incrementally faster than the 280M, ad nauseam. This is real progress, and it's easy to recommend...if you have the cash for it.
Clevo's P170HM is more difficult to recommend. This is definitely a better built, better feeling chassis from Clevo, so we can be thankful that they're not shipping notebooks in candy shells anymore. Unfortunately complaints old and new still loom over this machine: Clevo's keyboards remain both punishingly cheap and badly designed, and the 1080p screen would be perfectly serviceable except were it not for having such a finicky sweet spot.
I'd be remiss in not mentioning the Intel Core i7-2720QM beating at the heart of the P170HM, however briefly. Unless you've missed all the coverage, it should be plainly obvious by now that Sandy Bridge is another massive jump in processor performance. If you're going to shell out this kind of cash for a notebook, Sandy Bridge is absolutely worth waiting for. AVADirect offers a preorder on this and other Sandy Bridge notebooks; if you're the kind of performance-oriented user a notebook like this is catering to, that's going to be a better option instead of going the Veruca Salt route: "But Daddy, I want a gaming notebook now!"
We would like to thank AVADirect for graciously sending us the P170HM despite the Sandy Bridge recall so we could get a chance to test NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 485M with Intel's best and brightest backing it up. We expect the Cougar Point issue to finally fade away later this month, with widespread availability of Sandy Bridge notebooks and desktops in April.
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TyphoidMary - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
Is it just me, or is the way nVidia maps its chips to its model names one of the universes great imponderables? Why did they pare the desktop GF104's, but not the notebook chips? This would seem to give the shaft to anyone who bought the desktop parts.JarredWalton - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
So the GF114 is a full GF104 "plus enhancements". I'm not entirely sure what the big difference is; I think it's really just a respin of GF104 with some tweaks to improve clocking and power. So in a sense, GF104 and GF114 are much closer than GF100 and GF110. Now, why a 480M or 460M are nothing at all like the desktop 480 and 460 is another matter entirely.blanarahul - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Another peculiar thing. All laptop Graphic Cards have 2-3 times more memory than they need. In this case 1 GB was more than enough but they had to give it 2 GB for marketing.Jambe - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
Is a matte plastic and/or matte paint finish prohibitively expensive? Being super-serious here.I do not want gloss on my laptop at all. The only place it is tolerable is on the screen. Seriously, the hand-rest area should be entirely matte. That thing looks gross.
JarredWalton - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
The coating (if I'm not mistaken) is a rubberized paint similar to the ASUS G73/G53 series. In person, those smudges don't show up so much, but flash photography does bad things to them. I've got the little brother P150HM and it's a matte plastic (or coated plastic) surface.Kaboose - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
The Only thing i have noticed about the finish on my G73 is that it will show white smudges if you get a little something on it and try to rub it off, I touched it with "Cheeto" fingers and once i rubbed off the cheesey goodness it left a little white smudge, besides that however I love the rubberized feel!bennyg - Thursday, March 3, 2011 - link
The rubberised finish on the palm rests on my g51j is something special, don't know if it's what's on the g53/g73 but it's great. The finish is still factory-flawless when you give it a good rub with a hard cloth and it's still comfortable after hours on end.All the glossy plastic though makes me postal. Worse though is the double-sided adhesive tape used under the grille at the top of the keyboard. I better not ever get any dandruff...
MobiusStrip - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
Glossy on the chassis is tacky, but a glossy screen is a deal-breaker. This fad is the most moronic regression in computing ever.The sham claims of "deeper blacks" and "richer colors" don't even hold up to common sense. With everything covered in a sheen of reflection, you have anything but those attributes. Even in a totally dark room you have reflections covering the screen, because the screen illuminates YOU.
So unless you're buying a computer to use as a mirror, avoid glossy screens.
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2006/10/8022....
DooDoo22 - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link
Why have you not drawn any comparisons to this unit and the MBPs that use the same processor? Is it because you have not gone through the new MBPs yet?sean.crees - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link
Not every notebook review needs an apple plug.I'm sure Anand will do a review of the new MBP's soon, and you can see all the comparisons you want then.