GTX 580m becomes the fastest mobile GPU

Nvidia has announced that it will be now be selling the fastest graphics processing unit available to the laptop and netbook market. The GTX 580m will be the best they have to offer, supporting top end, high resolution and high performance gaming equivalent in desktop terms to an overclocked GTX 560Ti.

The first two laptops to offer this fantastic new GPU will be two Alienware laptops, the M18x and the M17x. The M18x will also offer SLI GTX 580m's for superior gaming performance. Nvidia claims up to six times the tesselation performance of any other notebook GPU on the market and 20% better performance per watt than previous generation Nvidia notebook GPU's.

Nvidia also launched the GTX 570m alongside this card (which is roughly equivalent to a GTX 560 non-Ti) but this has been overshadowed by the launch of the GTX 580m. Lets take a quick look at the specifications of both of these new GPU's:

GTX 580m:

384 CUDA cores
1240MHz Core Clock
2480MHz Shader Clock
1.5GB GDDR5 256 bit Memory
2 Way SLI Support
DX11 Support

GTX 570m:
336 CUDA cores
1150MHz Core Clock
2300MHz Shader Clock
1.5GB GDDR5 192 bit Memory
2 Way SLI Support
DX11 Support

Nvidia also picks out some other key features of these new GPU's such as:

• Support for NVIDIA 3D Vision technology, the #1 3D experience for notebooks, which automatically converts over 525 titles into immersive 3D.
• Support for NVIDIA 3DTV Play software, for connecting 3D Vision-based notebooks to 3D TVs.
• NVIDIA SLI technology, which links two GTX GPUs for up to double your gaming performance.
• NVIDIA Optimus technology, which enables extra-long battery life by automatically switching on and off the GPU so that it runs only when needed.
• NVIDIA PhysX engine support, which brings games to life with realistic physics.
• NVIDIA CUDA architecture support, for GPU computing applications.
• NVIDIA Verde notebook drivers, for frequent performance improvements and rock-solid stability.