The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M SLI is a high-end graphics solution for laptops based on two GTX 480M graphics cards in SLI mode. Each card usually renders a single frame in an alternating manner. Therefore, it may suffer from micro stuttering in low fps ranges of 30fps. This happens because of different timespans between two frames (e.g. Irregular delays between sequential frames).
The GeForce GTX480M SLI supports the same features as a single GTX 480M card. A single card is based on the Fermi architecture. Therefore, it supports DirectX 11 and is produced in 40nm at TSMC. Featuring 352 cores, the GTX480M is similar to the desktop GTX 465 but features a lower clock rate. The GeForce GTX 480M is combined with 2 GB of fast GDDR5 graphics memory (dedicated) and the overall performance should be superior to the Mobility Radeon HD 5870.
The GF100 aka. Fermi chip was redesigned from scratch and features 3 billion transistors (with all 512 shaders). Compared to the desktop Radeon HD 5870 with 2.13 billion transistors or the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 (RV870) with 1.04 billion transistors, the GTX480M chipset is quite large.
The mobile Fermi chip is stripped down to 352 shader cores (1-dimensional) with 32 ROPs and 44 Texture Units. The memory bus is 256 bit wide, but due to the fast GDDR5 memory, this should not be a bottleneck. The power consumption is specified with 100 Watt TDP including the MXM board and the 2 GB GDDR5. AMD usually specifies the TDP of the chip alone, therefore this value is not directly comparable. Still, the GTX 480M is only suited for very large DTR laptops with a good cooling system. Originally, only Clevo sold 17" (D901F) and 18" (X8100) barebone systems.
The fast performance of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M SLI is marginally better than two ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 in Crossfire Mode (CF), partly because of the superior driver support from Nvidia. This means the GTX 480M SLI was the fastest graphics solution for laptops at the time of arrival (2010-06). It allows the user to play all current games in high resolutions and detail settings with Antialiasing activated. Only Metro 2033 and Crysis have to run at lower settings (see below).
Still, in some games the performance gain from SLI may be very small or sometimes a single card may be even a bit faster (due to no SLI support and overhead). You can still disable SLI through the drivers in this case. In our gaming tests, a single 480M was about 16% (Starcraft 2) to 48% (Far Cry 2) slower than the SLI combination. Otherwise, most modern games run about 40% slower on the single card compared to the SLI setup. (see expandable gaming charts below). Due to the fast tessellation unit, upcoming DirectX 11 games may have an advantage over the AMD 5000 series.
Similar to the GeForce 300M series, the GeForce GTX 480M supports PureVideo HD with VideoProcessor 4 (VP4 with Feature Set C). As a result, the GPU is able to fully decode HD videos in H.254, VC-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 ASP. By using Flash 10.1 or later, the graphics card can also accelerate Flash videos, thus taking workload off of the CPU.
The rendering cores of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M can be used for general calculations by means of CUDA or DirectCompute. E.g., the encoding for HD videos can be done significantly faster by using the shader cores of the GPUs rather than using most modern CPUs. PhysX is also supported by the mobile Fermi to calculate physics effects in supported games. Furthermore, a single GTX480M can be used to calculate PhysX while the other card renders the game.
Compared to desktop GPUs, the Geforce GTX 480M is comparable to an underclocked Nvidia GeForce GTX 465 SLI combination (607/1200 clock speed).
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M is a high-end graphics card for laptops based on the Fermi architecture. As a result, it supports DirectX 11 and is produced in 40nm at TSMC. Featuring 352 cores, the GTX480M is similar to the desktop GTX 465 but with a lower clock rate. The GeForce GTX 480M is combined with 2 GB of fast dedicated GDDR5 graphics memory and the overall performance should be generally superior to the Mobility Radeon HD 5870.
The GF100 (aka. Fermi) chip was redesigned from scratch and features 3 billion transistors, assuming all 512 shaders are present. Compared to the desktop HD 5870 with 2.13 billion transistors or the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 (RV870) with 1.04 billion transistors, the GTX 480M die is physically quite large.
The mobile Fermi chip is stripped down to 352 shader cores (1-dimensional) with 32 ROPs and 44 Texture Units. The memory bus is 256 bit wide, but due to the fast GDDR5 memory, this should not be a bottleneck. The power consumption has been specified to 100 Watt TDP when taking into account the MXM board and the 2 GB GDDR5. AMD usually specifies the TDP of the chip alone, therefore this value is not directly comparable with competing Radeon cards. Still, the GTX 480M is only suited for very large desktop replacement (DTR) laptops with an excellent cooling solution. Originally, only Clevo was offering the GTX 480M in its 17" (D901F) and 18" (X8100) barebones.
The performance of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M is about 10% better on average than the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870. In demanding DirectX 11 games and benchmarks (that make use of the Tessellation engine), the GTX 480M is even faster. That means the GTX480M is the fastest single GPU graphics solution for laptops as of early to mid 2010. Modern DirectX 10 games should run fluently in high resolutions and details with antialiasing. Only very demanding games like Crysis or Metro 2033 may need some reduced settings (see list below). Due to the DirectX 11 hardware support (and the good tessellation implementation), the Fermi based laptop graphics card should be well suited for upcoming DirectX 11 games.
As the GeForce 300M series, the GeForce GTX 480M supports PureVideo HD with VideoProcessor 4 (VP4 with Feature Set C). This means the GPU is able to fully decode HD videos in H.254, VC-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 ASP. The graphics card can also accelerate Flash videos by using Flash 10.1 or greater.
The rendering cores of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M can be used for general calculations with CUDA or DirectCompute. For example, the encoding of HD videos can be done significantly faster than most modern CPUs by using the shader cores of the GPU instead. PhysX is also supported by the mobile Fermi chip to calculate physics effects in supported games.
Compared to desktop GPUs, the Geforce GTX 480M is comparable to a nunderclocked Nvidia GeForce GTX 465 (607/1200 clock speed) and is therefore on par with a desktop Radeon HD 5770.
Average Benchmarks NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M SLI → 100%n=12
Average Benchmarks NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M → 70%n=12
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
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 detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.
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- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
