480M SLI Available Soon

I agree about the Clevo cooling to a degree but i have seen the Alienware machines run the 5870s as cool if not even cooler then the Clevos so that ones a tough call...

Having owned the cards in both machines myself i can say they are about equal even though the Clevo is packed with copper so im sure the Alienware can manage the heat equally if they want to and so can other OEMs...

The 480m is a huge scam in the pricing but at the same time i certainly dont want to see Nvidia fail on any level because then we get $900 ATI cards since there is no competition ..

I have basically no intention of buying a 480m as you can see from my sigs of all ATI stuff but they do deserve some credit for atleast cramming all that stuff into a notebook that runs pretty darn cool even if it is priced into the stratosphere ...

It just bugs me when i keep reading how hot they run over and over yet nothing to back it up other then Oh its 100w so it must run hot... Atleast if your going to say that have something to back it up other then pure speculation on your part...

 

Lol this might be worse than my laptop in that my CPU cannot run stock clocks on battery due to taking too much current Lucky it downclocks to 1ghz

Should be a beast though. The desktop 480GTX is only bested by the 5890 and that only in a number of games

 

Power Consumption and Heat go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly. Nothing wrong with that thinking, just understanding that a good cooling solution can keep almost anything in the cool. However, in the gaming laptop community, running hot seems to be the trend.

 

480m in clevo laptop run much cooler than your 5870 in asus g73 or even in alienware m17x

 

you're not alone, it bugs me too.. espically when people type on their 50W 90-100C 5870s. The refub card I have pingged 105C on Furmark *with* a cryo LX.

 

Do you see the irony in what your saying to what you have quoted? Pics or it didn't happen.

 

LOL yeah I do, that was half the meaning of the post! XD!!!!!
I however, don't complain about the 480M temps.. so I'm exempt. I'll definitally get that 105C temp on the cryo if you really want it though.

 

I get tired of people saying 5870's operate at 105*C when it's only on poorly assembled machines and thermal paste.

 

Water cooling i think is the next step... either that or not being THAT obsessed with having the BEST card in a laptop...

 

With all the early benchmarks scores, I really don't think it's worth the money. Hell, even the GTX 285m costs a hell lot more than a 5870m. If they were evenly priced, or the GTX 480m costs just just slightly higher, I guess it'd be fine, but that's not the case here. Even if I think Nvidia has better driver support and require less tinkering with, the price gap is just too large. And the performance difference, minimal.

I'd be skipping this generation entirely, I guess, and see what comes next. No hurry, as my 9800m GTS is still quite capable,surprisingly.

 

regardless, the average person is not going to disassemble their computer and replace gap pads and thermal paste. Nor at they even going to be apart of this community to know that it's that simpe of a problem(just btw, to see any noticeable difference you have to do more than that to the M17X, the only mod that's proven to significantly reduce temps involes pasting the ram chips and modifying the way the HSF puts tension on the GPU die), Dell has used the Same HSF solution in all their MXM cards in the M17x, and the same gap pads in a dozen other computers. So for all purposes, they run @ 105C. I'm sure if you whipped out the soldering gun you could cure a lot more problems with the design in the G73 and M17x, but we're talking about stock HSF's on stock paste, which is what 70% of these laptops will see their entire life. Clevo manages to get it right out of the box, It's a pretty weak argument (although a valid one to an enthusiast) to say that you only need to open up the laptop and rip the HSF units off the GPU's to replace the paste and gap pads, and modify it slightly to get decent temps. Review sites don't take this into consideration, and I don't think we should either if we're comparing stock to stock.

 

I like this laptop alot and I want one. Adding the 480s tho adds an axtra 1200 from the ati 5870s. Is that justifiable? Granit im the type of person that would do something like this just because there is really no ryme or reason to the world but Im sure there are alot of people that wouldnt go for that and that 5650 benchmark with the battery life is calling out to me like chimes in the wind.

 

This sounds like a system builder & OEM problem, not a GPU manufacturer problem that we can compare apples to apples.

 

I think you missed my point, if the DF900 480M ran 10C cooler than the 5870 in the G73, no one besides people like me and you will conclude 'oh man, if you just change the paste and pads, you can lower that 5870s temps!'
they'll just think the fermi card runs cooler.

 

For one, Speedy used his own thermal paste, for two I think we all know the D900F has a naturally better cooling system then the G73h. Clevo always has, and probably always will have the best cooling system on the planet for laptops.

 

I don't get why people are being so skeptic and speculative with this machine. I would like to point a few things out before people yell out even more about cooling and price.

1 - Dual GPU + Desktop CPU combinations are nothing new. Clevo has already done this in the past with their D901C, which ran pretty cool. Does nobody remember?
2 - It has been proved by benched W880CU's that the GTX 480 wont run any hotter than the 5870. Granted, the 880CU has improved cooling over the 870CU, but I assume the same improvements have been done on the x7200.
3 - You are not forced to pick SLi 480m. You will be able to pick Crossfire 5870s, which should reduce price by about 500$.
4 - Eurocom sucks. Wait for other Clevo OEM's/Retailers for true pricing.

I would say that a i7 920 + Crossfire 5870 shouldn't exceed 2500$.

 

I'm going to remind that a couple pages ago, truth was spoken. The 480M is not the first 100W chip. And in the real world it can run as cool as the 5870. All cooling is not made equal. So we must wait and see how things turn out. It won't take more than a few owners (and a few billion benchmarks) before the truth will all be out there.

What's funny is the hottest thing in the notebook is the CPU, and not a soul has complained about that or the price thereof (referring to the Xeon premium pricing).

Anyway in a bit we'll see what they can do. And if they can run a 130W desktop CPU and SLI, on a 300W power budget and on a 3 fan cooling budget, then Alienware and HP are likely to follow with at least single 480M models in the future. AW will probably eventually use SLI, just because they can.

Some of these model changes may be getting saved for a Sandy Bridge model refresh, but they may also be waiting for inventories of parts to build up enough to handle the mass supplies needed. Some have speculated that the drop in notebook sales of late indicates some market anticipation for NV notebook chips forthcoming.

We'll have to see. But I'm positive heat, power, and capability will all be tested as soon as folks can get the machines. And if I recall Anand did some testing that showed longer battery life with the 480M so I have a guess that it powers down very well too, something the 5870 doesn't seem to do with much grace.

 

that's the whole point of the argument. These are not desktop cards where we can just swap Heatsinks. The heatsink and OEM determines whether or not the card is going to run hot or not. The DF900 has a massive heatsink, so it's going to run just fine, but even though the 5870 in the G73 is half the TDP, the HS isn't nearly as big, and runs hot as such. People come in and complain about the Fermi cards having high TDP and running hot when their own cards will probally run hotter or just as hot. In a hypothetical situation, you could honestly still argue the 100W TDP of a fermi chip even if OEM's manage to fix their HSF design and make it run cooler than a 5870? That doesn't make sense to me, technically it needs to dissapate more heat yes, but ultimately it's the OEM's job to do that, not the card. It sounds like a fairly weak argument to say that using the same 50W HSF a fermi chip would run hotter.. of course it would, but I don't think *any* OEM is going to do that, and it's crazy to think they would.

 

more like liquid nitrogen cooling..

you have to also understand the D900F has more fans and better heatsink than the G73.. the G73 is built to be silent as possible while the noise requirement for D900F sigh.. anyways , i wish ppl had more brains before they bought laptops.. but i was one of the brainless one tills now when i bought the stupid Dv5t.

 

Just because some ppl don't get annoyed by extra fan noise, weight and size of D900F and/or prioritize more cash to be spent on a laptop - doesn't necessarily make them brainless

 

that sounds like an excuse rather than addressing what I was saying previously. I find it ironic to complain about a 100W TDP card that runs cooler than the one in the person's laptop that is complaining about it. It's boarderline hypocritical.

 

ROFL WIN!!!!!!!

 

Not me! I want to toss these 5870s in a trash bin and put Fermi in my system, heat and power consumption be damned. I need nVidia's awesome drivers + SLi efficiency. ATi blows..

 

Nvidia's awesome drivers.... That I'd like to see
Another unicorn I'd gladly meet is a price drop to 110-120% of the 5870's price to equalize the performance/price ratio.

 

Aikimox,

The fermi architecture is relatively "new", especially compared to the 5800 series yet in Crossfire vs SLi scaling (esp. when triple monitors are used), they absolutely annihilate ATi. It's not because ATi's hardware sucks but rather that they have extremely flawed drivers. This has always been the case with that company and will continue to be for a long long time. Don't believe me? Take a look here: Conclusion - NVIDIA Surround Technology Performance Review | [H]ard|OCP

I imagine 480M SLi will scale just as well as it's desktop counterpart and completely destroy ATi.

 

What are your opinions on each of their drivers assuming we're comparing two single GPU systems?

 

Single GPU I'd still say nVidia is slightly better because of their physx and cuda support. But even in games they tend be optimized better and that may be in part because of nVidia's TWIMTBP program.

 

While I agree with the desktop SLI vs CF statement, 'm not too optimistic regarding Nvidia drivers in general. Maybe it's because of the amount of issues I faced with GTX 280M's.
Still, I am not inclined to jump to conclusions yet.
First, let that mysterious 480M SLI appear, get benched and reviewed, - then I might or might not agree with the "Nvidia's awesome drivers" statement.
Not long ago there was a huge number of M17X owners cursing Nvidia drivers and kneeling before the mighty REDs.

On a side note, I'll be among the first to adopt a SLI config if it proves to be half as good as many wish it to be.

 

The R1 or the Clevo equivalent can't really be brought up, those systems had their own issues. I know they said DPC latency was due to nvidia drivers at the time but I don't see that happening with fermi. Plus I bet even with G92b, the SLi scaling was better than Crossfire. But you're right, a thorough review + end user testing will tell us all we need to know. But just consider what nVidia has to do: Put out a working SLi setup that scales as efficiently as it's desktop counterpart and lets the notebook start on battery, sleep/hibernate without driver hacks and not have degraded performance with every driver release. If they can manage that, they'll have ATi soundly beat.

 

I'd like to buy an Nvidia system right now, but I feel somewhat stuck. I have an M15x, which (under the Dell warranty anyways) has the 5850M and GTX260M available. If I keep the M15x, I'll definitely go with the 5850M, since it's nearly twice as fast and doesn't throttle. If I sell the M15x, I'd be looking to get a 17", 16:10, WUXGA, Nvidia graphics, and a Core i7-620M or Core i7-740QM.

The Dell precision M6500 fits most of this, except the GPU. The widely available FX2800 is slightly worse than a GTX260M I believe, and the FX3800 is very hard to come by on the outlet store, and would still only be approximately as good as a lightly overclocked GTX280M.

I'm going to go start a "What notebook should I buy" thread, since this is getting pretty far off topic now.

I also can't wait to see some X7200 benches! (my guess is over 20k Vantage GPU once they're overclocked) Are you going to get the i7-980X with it?

 

I'm still waiting to see if Alienware will put out 460M SLi. Based on a PM I sent to their AW Quality guy on the forum, he didn't confirm or deny it but rather gave a cryptic, "we like to give our customers the latest hardware" reply. That tells me it's likely in the pipeline and if so, then I'll either sell this R2 and order another with the nVidia cards or consider the X7200. I'd rather stick to Alienware if I can though, the Clevo is just one hell of an ugly machine and I don't like the LCD + materials Clevo uses to build it. Plus dell warranty is hard to beat.

 

^^ totally agree

 

not saying that they're brainless but its counter-productive.. but on the other hand , u have to be brainless to buy a cheap crappy Macbook.. and free heater oven together with it.

 

^^ Don't be fast to judging others and you won't be judged fast