NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M SLI

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).

Manufacturer

NVIDIA

GeForce GTX 400M Series

GeForce GTX 485M SLI	768 @ 575 MHz	256 Bit @ 1500 MHz
GeForce GTX 470M SLI	576 @ 535 MHz	192 Bit @ 1250 MHz
GeForce GTX 480M SLI	704 @ 425 MHz	256 Bit @ 1200 MHz
GeForce GTX 460M SLI	384 @ 675 MHz	192 Bit @ 1250 MHz
GeForce GTX 485M	384 @ 575 MHz	256 Bit @ 1500 MHz
GeForce GTX 470M	288 @ 535 MHz	192 Bit @ 1250 MHz
GeForce GTX 480M	352 @ 425 MHz	256 Bit @ 1200 MHz
GeForce GTX 460M	192 @ 675 MHz	192 Bit @ 1250 MHz

Codename

N11E-GTX-A3

Architecture

Fermi

Pipelines

704 - unified

Core Speed

425 MHz

Shader Speed

850 MHz

Memory Speed

1200 MHz

Memory Bus Width

256 Bit

Memory Type

GDDR5

Max. Amount of Memory

4096 MB

Shared Memory

DirectX

DirectX 11, Shader 5.0

Transistor Count

6000 Million

technology

40 nm

Notebook Size

large

Date of Announcement

25.05.2010

Link to Manufacturer Page

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_gtx...

Benchmarks

3DMark 11 - 3DM11 Performance Score

4383 Points (11%)

+ 1 benchmarks and specifications + Show comparison chart

3DMark 11 - 3DM11 Performance GPU

4229 Points (7%)

+ 1 benchmarks and specifications - Hide comparison chart

AMD Radeon HD 6250 -96%

...

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX -6%

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti -5%

Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 (Ice Lake 64 EU) -5%

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470M SLI -4%

NVIDIA Quadro P520 -3%

AMD Radeon 540X -3%

NVIDIA GeForce MX150 -1%

AMD FirePro W5170M -1%

AMD Radeon HD 6870 0%

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M SLI

NVIDIA Quadro M1000M 0%

AMD Radeon RX Vega 6 (Ryzen 4000) 1%

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 2%

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M 2%

AMD Radeon Pro WX 3200 3%

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M 3%

AMD Radeon RX Vega 9 4%

NVIDIA GeForce MX250 4%

AMD Radeon Pro 450 6%

...

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 1288%

100%

3DMark Vantage
3DM Vant. Perf. total +

3DM Vant. Perf. GPU no PhysX +

3DMark 03 - 3DMark 03 - Standard

75704 Points (40%)

+ 1 benchmarks and specifications + Show comparison chart

3DMark 05 - 3DMark 05 - Standard

28423 Points (54%)

+ 1 benchmarks and specifications + Show comparison chart

3DMark 06 3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x1024 +

3DMark 06 - Standard 1280x768 +

Unigine Heaven 2.1 - Heaven 2.1 high

58.8 fps (11%)

+ 1 benchmarks and specifications + Show comparison chart

SPECviewperf 11
specvp11 snx-01 +

specvp11 lightwave-01 +

specvp11 ensight-04 +

specvp11 catia-03 +

Windows 7 Experience Index - Win7 Gaming graphics

7.8 Points (99%)

+ 1 benchmarks and specifications + Show comparison chart

Windows 7 Experience Index - Win7 Graphics

7.8 Points (99%)

+ 1 benchmarks and specifications + Show comparison chart

Cinebench R10 Cinebench R10 Shading (32bit) +

Cinebench R11.5 Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64 Bit +

- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card

- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance

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.