480M Single or 280M SLI

My friend is willing to buy a laptop and want the Nvidia GPU. So, he was asking me either to get Clevo 480m single or M17x R1 280M SLI. I can see that in notebookcheck.com, 280M SLI is faster than 480M single but I really don't know the real comparision between then. So, anyone who have compared the benchmark between them?

 

470M/460M SLI is what your friend needs, IMHO
480M is way too overpriced and 280M's are the older tech and less future proof.

 

Until they completely fix microstuttering and driver issues with SLI/XF configs I'd just go with the single card. Tell him to get something with a 460m if he's deadset on NV.

On the other hand SLI stays decently powerful for far longer than any single card once the issues are fixed - people are still using 8800 SLI's to play modern games on decent settings.

 

If its a single GPU, then won't it have some trouble with Physx? Since, most of the time, secondary gpu is dedicated to Physx.

 

Hmz, no......

 

Not really. And Physx is a pretty useless piece of technology. Gaming graphics/the wider experience will be more enjoyable with increased settings than if physx was turned on. Also go through the games he wants to play and check they actually support physx, if I recall few games do.

I would go with the best 400M card he can afford.

 

Performance wise, is 480m Single better or 280m SLI?
Any real time benchmarks?

 

You would have to go back to some M17x 280SLI benches compared to the Clevo with the single 480m benches... They are out there but you will have to do some digging as i have not seen anything where they had a head to head with what your looking for ...

 

Technically speaking, the 280M SLI should be leagues better, but since in most cases, cards rarely have 100% efficiency when scaling, they'd probably be about the same. I'm guessing they would trade blows in a lot of games.

Go for the GTX 480M. It has DX11.

 

Hmm...well I think I should tell him to wait for 4XX SLI.

 

460 SLI.

/10char

 

I'd say the 480M since it's got 2 gb vram, which can come in handy in memory intensive games (gta 4 comes to mind). Plus the shader count of the 480 is more than the 2 gtx 280's combined, but I don't know what the clocks of the 480 is (likely lower than the 280). More future proof, though.

 

Is 480 SLI out yet or coming out?
I heard of X7200 but doesn't know about it specifically as Im not into Clevo.

 

The stock is already at Sager, so it's probably going to be on sale this month.

 

Fermi CUDA cores and 200m CUDA cores are not directly comparable. Gamingwise, the previous 200m cores were better, which is why a single 280m with 128 cores is on par on DX9 and DX10 with a 460m which has 192 cores. 480m has a huge amount of cores too, but very low clock speed and shader speed.

2GBs of ram would only be helpful at super highresolutions with AA and AF. Something neither the 480m nor sli 280m are usually capable of handling, nor laptop screens tend to reach at anyways.

My recommendation is to wait a bit until more 460m laptops appear. A 460m sli machine will be a better choice than a single 480m, offer much better performance than it, while being cheaper and better than 280m sli with DX11 support.

Ignore both 480m and 280m, go for sli 460m.

 

This is not true. The memory really has more to do increase in resolution and textures. You won't need more than 1GB of vRam unless you are trying to play across 3 screens. Even with GTA 4, 1 GB is more than enough.

But for OP, you have an Alienware. Why don't you check the Alienware thread about the HD5870M XF. From the few benchmarks I've seen, it's nearly the same performance as a HD5870 Desktop card. 5150Joker seems to know his stuff. Go ask him and the benchmarks and temps I saw from the M17X are very nice!

But even though 480M is based on GF100 and may run very hot and tons of power... I'd still prefer it over 460M SLI. I just think single card is better than dual. Wouldn't want the hassle. Even with the latest drivers, there are a lot of complaints over at Guru...

 

i know it's a desktop, but GTA4 on my PC can be run at superhigh with AA etc. but can only reach 45-50 draw distance because anymore and it goes over 1gb usage