NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M is the fastest laptop graphics card as of this writing and was presented in June 2011. It is based on the GF114 core, which is related to the Fermi architecture. Therefore, it supports DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.0. Compared to the previous GeForce GTX 485M, the 580M offers higher clock rates at the same power consumption levels.

GF114 architecture

The GF114 core is a power optimized version of the GF104 (used in the GTX 485M) but with no architectural changes. Therefore, the performance per MHz stays the same, but Nvidia was able to clock the shaders higher while still remaining in the same power envelope. In fact, all 384 shader cores of the GF114 architecture are enabled in the GTX 580M. More information on the similar GF104 architecture can be found on the GeForce GTX 485M page.

Performance

Due to higher clock speeds, the GeForce GTX 580M is faster than the GTX 485M which was the fastest mobile graphics card at the time. As of 2011, only Metro 2033 cannot run fluently at highest settings and full HD resolution. All other demanding games (like Crysis 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Withcer 2, Dirt 3, BF: Bad Company 2 or Bulletstorm) can be played fluently in highest settings and 1080p resolution.

Features

Similarly to the older GF104 chip, the GF114 supports Bitstream HD Audio (Blu-Ray) output via HDMI. That means it can transfer for example Dolby True HD or DTS-HD bitstream-wise without quality loss to a HiFi receiver.

The GTX 580M offers PureVideo HD technology for video decoding. The included Video Processor 4 (VP4) supports feature set C and therefore the GPU is able to fully decode MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2 (MPEG-4 ASP - e.g., DivX or Xvid), VC-1/WMV9, and H.264 (VLD, IDCT, Motion Compensation, and Deblocking). 

Furthermore, the GPU is able to decode two 1080p streams simultaneously (e.g. for Blu-Ray Picture-in-Picture).

Through CUDA, OpenCL, and DirectCompute 2.1 support, the GeForce GTX 580M can assist in general calculations. For example, the stream processor can encode videos considerably faster than many modern CPUs. Furthermore, physics calculations can be done by the GPU using PhysX (e.g. supported by Mafia 2 or Metro 2033).

3D Vision enables the laptop to send 3D content (3D games, 3D Web Streaming, 3D photos, 3D Blu-Rays) to a supported 3D enabled screen or an external 3D TV if compatible.

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 580M is in the same region as the old GTX 485M which is supposedly about 100 Watt (TDP including the MXM board and memory). If idle, the chip is clocked at 50/100 MHz and 200/400 MHz (chip/shader) in 2D mode and 3D mode, respectively, to save power. Furthermore, the 500M series supports Optimus for automatic switching between the Intel integrated graphics card and the Nvidia GPU. However, implementation of Optimus is dependent upon the manufacturer of the notebook.

The related desktop GeForce GTX 580 is based on the GF110 chip and is much faster than the GeForce GTX 580M. Therefore, in terms of general performance, the 580M is more closely related to the GeForce GTX 560Ti. Even then, the 580M performs slightly slower due to the higher clock speeds of the desktop 560Ti.