NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570M

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570M is a high-end laptop graphics card introduced 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. The faster GeForce GTX 580M, in comparison, is based on the same chip, but with all shaders enabled.

GF114 architecture

The GF114 core is a power optimized version of the GF104 (used in the GTX 470M) 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. The GTX 570M offers 336 cores of the 384 in the GF114. More informations on the similar GF104 architecture can be found on the GeForce GTX 485M page.

Performance

Due to the higher clock speeds and the larger shader count, the GeForce GTX 570M is clearly faster than the old GeForce GTX 470M. Since the GPU is a high-end card, the performance is similar to the AMD Radeon HD 6970M. Compared to the other GTX 500M cards, the GTX 570M is positioned nearer to the GTX 560M (-15%) than the GTX 580M (+35%) in our gaming tests. Current games as of 2011 should therefore run fluently in Full HD resolution and high details. Only some very demanding games, such as Metro 2033 or Crysis 2, may need reduced graphical settings for smoother gameplay.

Features

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

The GTX 570M offers the 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., Blu-Ray Picture-in-Picture).

Through CUDA, OpenCL, and DirectCompute 2.1 support, the GeForce GTX 570M can be used for general calculations. For example, the stream processor can encode videos considerably faster than can many modern CPUs. Furthermore, physics calculations can be done by the GPU using PhysX if supported (e.g., in 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 built-in 3D enabled screen or an external 3D TV if supported by the laptop manufacturer.

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 570M is in the same ballpark as the old GTX 470M, which is rumored to be about 75 Watt (TDP including the MXM board and memory). Without load, the chip is clocked at 50/100 MHz (chip/shader) and 200/400 MHz in 2D and 3D mode, respectively, to save power. Furthermore, the 500M series supports Optimus to automatically switch between the integrated graphics card from Intel and the Nvidia GPU. Whether or not a laptop includes this feature is dependent on the manufacturer.

The similarly named desktop GeForce GTX 570 is based on the GF110 chip and offers 480 shader cores and faster clock speeds. As a result, it is significantly faster than the GeForce GTX 570M. Instead, the 570M is more comparable to the desktop GTX 550Ti / 560 in terms of performance.