Hardcore mobile gaming fans have a powerful new graphics processing option in the form of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580M. Billed as the world's fastest notebook GPU and capable of playing the latest games at 1080p in 3D, the new chip can be found under the bonnet of the Alienware M18x and is soon to be featured in the Alienware M17x.
The card features 384 CUDA cores with a processor clocked at 1240MHz and up to 2GB GDDR5 memory clocked at 1500MHz. NVIDIA says that Alienware M17x equipped with GTX 580M using NVIDIA Optimus technology can deliver up to 100fps in Call of Duty: Black Ops and up to 5 hours of battery life while internet browsing, while the Alienware M18x offers the option of doubling gaming performance by having two SLI-paired GTX 580M GPUs on board.
Running on PCI-E 2.0 bus, the GTX 580M is DirectX 11-enabled and supports many NVIDIA's technologies such as:
NVIDIA 3D Vision technology - a system which automatically converts 2D content (games, movies) into stereoscopic 3D;
NVIDIA 3DTV Play software - allows for connecting 3D Vision-based notebooks to 3D TVs;
NVIDIA SLI - links two GTX GPUs which work simultaneously;
NVIDIA PhysX engine - a system for realistic, GPU-accelerated in-game physics;
NVIDIA Optimus - enables switching the GPU on and off for longer battery life;
NVIDIA CUDA architecture - used for GPU-accelerated general purpose computing.
NVIDIA also introduced GeForce GTX 570M laptop GPU, running at 1150MHz with 336 CUDA cores and GDDR5 memory on a 192-bit bus running at 1500MHz.
The company has published a 3DMark Vantage performance diagram which shows the comparison of its high-end laptop GPUs as well as 3DMark scores of the newest arrivals.
