Nvidia Launches World’s Fastest Notebook GPU – GTX 580M

If you live on the bleeding edge of technology, then you might want to take another look at Alienware’s new M18x which is the first notebook infused with Nvidia’s latest GTX 580M graphics card. Oh wait, make that two GTX 580M’s in SLI, how’s that for high end? While we wont be seeing this in India anytime soon (come on Dell, prove me wrong), the good news is that the M17x will also be refreshed with a single GTX 580M along with Nvidia's Optimus technology which claims 5 hours of battery life.

Update: We've got word from Nvidia that Dell's M17x will be getting this refresh somewhere around mid-July, so I'd say hold off your purchace till then. Sadly, the M18x won't be arriving any time soon.

Bring it on!

The GTX 580M officially claims the title of world’s fastest notebook GPU which is capable of running even the most demanding DX11 games. Crysis 2 with the DX11 patch should be a real treat on this monster. Along with this, Nvidia launched the GTX 570M which should make it to the smaller M15x very soon. The following are the features offered by the latest Fermi GPU:

•    Support for NVIDIA 3D Vision technology.
•    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.
•    NVIDIA CUDA architecture support, for GPU computing applications.
•    NVIDIA Verde notebook drivers, for frequent performance improvements and stability.

What's unfortunate is that the M18x won't be getting the Optimus treatment, which means battery life is going to suffer badly. Even if Nvidia manages to underclock the cards to a great extent, there's still two of them so I would estimate a backup time of not more than 2 hours even with a 9-cell battery.