NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M

The NVidia GeForce GTX 280M is the high-end graphic card of the 200M series and based on the G92b core (Desktop GeForce 9800 GTX+). Therefore it can't be compared with the Desktop 280M. The chip is produced in 55nm (9800M GTX yet in 65nm). Its 128 pipelines are all enabled (for the 9800M GTX only 112). The later produced GTX 285M is based on the same core with only slightly altered clock rates. Therefore, the performance of the GeForce GTX285M is very similar to the GTX 280M.

A further innovation, compared to the 9800M GTX, are the much more accelerated switch times at Hybrid Power (lower than 1 second compared to 7 seconds at the 9800M GTX).

As all cards with DirectX 10 capabilities, the GeForce GTX 280M renders the 3D images using "Unified Shaders". There don't exist any more dedicated pixel- and vertex shaders but 128 so called stream processors make the graphic work (which has been done by pixel and vertex shaders in former days). Furthermore, the shader units are higher clocked than the chip (1250 MHz).

Due to the full amount of 128 Shader Cores, the GTX 280M is about 10-25% faster than the older 9800M GTX and faster than the 260M. Compared with the Mobility Radeon HD 4870, the GTX 280M is lightly slower or equal in synthetic benchmarks. However, it is a few faster in the most games. Therefore, the overall performance can be rated a bit better. Games with PhysX support (e.g. like Mirrors Edge) have the advantage of a considerable better performance with enabled PhysX effects. The memory equipment is up to 1024 MB GDDR3 (which are clocked with max. 800 MHz at MXM2 cards and with up to 950 MHz at MXM3 cards).

An advantage of the GeForce GTX 280M is the integrated PureVideo HD video processor. It is able to help with the decoding of H.264-, VC-1-, MPEG2- and WMV9 video material in HD quality and therefore eases the CPU.

HybridPower is a technique to choose between the integrated (only with Nvidia chipset) and dedicated graphics core, if performance or battery runtime is needed. This works only in Windows Vista. Up to now the user has to use a tool to switch between the GPUs. Later Nvidia wants to switch automatically in the drivers. GeForceBoost is not supported with this card, as there would be no performance gain to combine the integrated GPU with the video card.

The power consumption of up to 75 Watts (of the whole board) allows the use of the card only in laptops with a strong cooling system. Therefore, the GTX 200M series can be found only in heavy and big notebooks.

Compared with Desktop graphic cards, the performance is about between the 9800 GT and the 9800 GTX (which has a considerably higher clock of 675/1675/1100).

Manufacturer	NVIDIA
GeForce GTX 200M Series	GeForce GTX 285M SLI 256@576MHz GeForce GTX 280M SLI 256@585MHz GeForce GTX 260M SLI 224@550MHz GeForce GTX 285M 128@576MHz GeForce GTX 280M 128@585MHz GeForce GTX 260M 112@550MHz
Codename	N10E-GTX
Pipelines	128 - unified
Core Speed *	585 MHz
Shader Speed *	1463 MHz
Memory Speed *	950 MHz
Memory Bus Width	256 Bit
Memory Type	GDDR3
Max. Amount of Memory	1024 MB
Shared Memory	no
DirectX	DirectX 10, Shader 4.0
Transistors	754 Million
technology	55 nm
Features	HybridPower, PureVideo HD, CUDA, PhysX ready
Notebook Size	large
Date of Announcement	02.03.2009
Information	MXM 3
Link to Manufacturer Page	http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_gef...

* The specified clock rates are only guidelines for the manufacturer and can be altered by them.

Benchmarks

3DMark 2001SE - Standard 1024x768

100%

min: 36607 avg: 38713.7 (63%) max: 40754 Points

3 benchmarks and specifications

Show comparison chart

3DMark 03 - Standard 1024x768

100%

min: 34632 avg: 35748.5 (34%) max: 36865 Points

2 benchmarks and specifications

Show comparison chart

3DMark 05 - Standard 1024x768

100%

min: 16800 avg: 18413.6 (57%) max: 20713 Points

9 benchmarks and specifications

Hide comparison chart

Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 500 -99%

...

GeForce GT 550M -10%

Quadro 1000M -10%

GeForce GTS 360M -9%

Quadro FX 2800M -8%

Radeon HD 6850M -8%

FirePro M7740 -7%

Mobility Radeon HD 5870 -2%

Quadro FX 3800M -1%

GeForce GT 555M -1%

GeForce GTX 280M

Radeon HD 6950M 0%

Radeon HD 5850 0%

Quadro 5000M 3%

GeForce GTX 285M 3%

Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire 4%

GeForce GTX 280M SLI 5%

FirePro M5950 8%

GeForce GTX 460M 10%

GeForce GTX 480M 13%

...

GeForce GTX 570 75%

100%

3DMark 06

100%

min: 11767 avg: 12568.5 (49%) max: 13652 Points

8 benchmarks and specifications

Show comparison chart

PCMark Vantage - Gaming Score 1024x768

100%

min: 4740 avg: 6042 (28%) max: 6652 Points

5 benchmarks and specifications

Show comparison chart

Cinebench R10 - Shading 32Bit

100%

min: 4111 avg: 5504.8 (51%) max: 7845 Points

6 benchmarks and specifications

Show comparison chart

3DMark Vantage - P Result no PhysX 1280x1024

100%

min: 5314 avg: 6328.4 (21%) max: 6779 Points

5 benchmarks and specifications

Show comparison chart

3DMark Vantage - P GPU no PhysX 1280x1024

100%

min: 5071 avg: 5242.9 (15%) max: 5319 Points

8 benchmarks and specifications

Hide comparison chart

Radeon HD 3200 -99%

...

GeForce GT 240 -16%

GeForce GTS 360M -14%

Radeon HD 6750M -13%

GeForce GT 445M -13%

GeForce GT 555M -8%

Radeon HD 6740G2 -5%

Quadro FX 2800M -4%

Radeon HD 6850M -2%

Radeon HD 6770M -2%

GeForce GTX 280M

Radeon HD 5670 1%

Mobility Radeon HD 5850 2%

Quadro 2000M 3%

FirePro M5950 6%

GeForce GTX 285M 7%

FirePro M7740 12%

Quadro FX 3800M 13%

Quadro 3000M 27%

GeForce GTX 460M 29%

...

GeForce GTX 590 503%

100%

- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card

- Average benchmark values for this graphics card

Game Benchmarks

The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailled information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.

Anno 1404 (2009)

low:

Model	CPU	Memory	Core / Memory	GPU Memory	Value
XMG7.c	720QM	4096 MB	583 / 950MHz	1024MB Shadertakt: 1450 MHz, GDDR3-Speicher Treiberversion: 186.47	36607
	820QM	4096 MB		1024MB GDDR3	38780
M980NU	X9100	2048 MB	583 / 950MHz	1024MB GDDR3 VRAM 7.15.11.7936	40754

»	Review Lenovo B570-M58G4GE Notebook
»	Review Packard Bell EasyNote TS13HR-197GE Notebook
»	Review HP Compaq Presario CQ57-303SG Notebook
»	Review Lenovo Ideapad A1 Tablet
»	Review HP Pavilion dv7-6b02eg Notebook

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M

Benchmarks

Game Benchmarks

Notebook reviews with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M graphics card