GeForce GTX 480M: AVADirect’s W880CU Is Packing The Heat

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With the launch of its GeForce GTX 480M, Nvidia’s Fermi architecture takes center stage in high-end gaming notebooks. But is the notoriously-hot GPU able to compete against AMD's Mobility Radeon HD 5870? AVADirect gives us the answer with its new W880CU.

GeForce GTX 480M Upstages The Rest

We tested several aspects of AVADirect’s latest Clevo-based W880CU notebook, but gaming is the raison d’être for so large a unit to contain so powerful a GPU. A quick recap of its performance advantages should show it justly stomping everything that came before it.

It might only have two-thirds the muscle of a moderately-priced desktop graphics card, but the GeForce GTX 480M still beats down its Mobility Radeon-based competitor by nearly 19%, once you divide out the presented results. The only problem, then, is price. The cheapest MXM module we could find costs three to four times more than the cheapest desktop card that uses similar hardware (the GeForce GTX 465).

Anyone who requires complete portability from their gaming PC really has only a handful of solutions, none of them supremely mobile, and all of them extremely expensive. The most potent of these desktop-replacement gaming machines is powered by Nvidia’s GTX 480M GPU. With so much expense providing so much gaming power, this might just be the ultimate portable gaming solution for buyers whose needs are great and whose budgets are even greater.

Now, if we could just get AMD and Nvidia to agree to name their flagship mobile GPUs after the mainstream desktop cards they most closely resemble...

And again, special thanks to AVADirect for enabling these GPU comparisons with its exceptionally-built notebooks.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
53 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bin1127
    It plays Crysis!
    Reply
  • Tamz_msc
    ....all of these notebooks must be plugged into a power outlet before gaming commences.
    I think that sums it up.
    Reply
  • Lmeow
    Portable vasectomy!
    Reply
  • Tamz_msc
    LmeowPortable vasectomy!LOL +1
    Reply
  • xyzionz
    Quite a surprise on the power consumption...
    Reply
  • sprunth
    That's a crazy heat pipe setup...

    Agree on the naming thing on the last page, that would be helpful.
    Reply
  • Maziar
    Great review.
    Before its launch,it was rumored that it will have a much higher power consumption than 5870M, but now it seems they are close
    Reply
  • "Notice that the component on the left uses both fans and has two-thirds the total number of heat pipes" Ummmmm if I'm looking at the picture correctly the GPU and the majority of the heat pipes are on the Right, you may want to retype that.
    Reply
  • are there no temperatures for gpu in article or i missed it?
    Reply
  • Plyro109
    The funny thing is, AMD actually DID use the naming scheme you like in their LAST generation of mobile GPU's. The Mobility 4850 matched the standard 4850's number of stream processors, albeit with lower clock speeds. Same with the Mobility 4870 and Mobility 4870x2.

    They changed it in response to Nvidia's naming scheme, which is a shame. I liked the matching of desktop/laptop performance to names, too. :/
    Reply