NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 580M and 570M, availability in the Alienware M18x and MSI GT780R

We know you're going to be shocked -- shocked! -- to hear this, but NVIDIA's gone and refreshed its high-end line of GeForce GTX cards. The GTX 580M takes the place of the GTX 485M, and NVIDIA's bragging that it's the "fastest notebook GPU ever," capable of besting the Radeon HD 6970M'stesselation performance by a factor of six. The new GTX 570M, meanwhile, promises a 20 percent speed boost over the last-generation 470M. Both 40-nanometer cards support DirectX11, OpenCL, PhysX, CUDA, 3D Vision, Verde drivers, Optimus, SLI, and 3DTV Play. As for battery life, NVIDIA's saying that when coupled with its Optimus graphics switching technology, the 580M can last through five hours of Facebook, but last we checked, that's not why y'all are shelling out thousands for beastly gaming rigs. You can find the 580M in the Alienware M17X and M18X (pictured) starting today, though you might have to wait a week or so for them to ship. Meanwhile, the 570M is shipping in the MSI GT780R as you read this, and you'll also find the 580M in a pair of 3D-capable Clevo laptops: the P170HM3 and the SLI-equipped P270WN. Handy chart full 'o technical details after the break.

	GeForce GTX 570M	GeForce GTX 580M
Processor cores	Up to 336	Up to 384
Support for	PhysX, Verde drivers, CUDA, 3D Vision, 3DTV Play, Optimus, SLI, DirectX11	PhysX, Verde drivers, CUDA, 3D Vision, 3DTV Play, Optimus, SLI, DirectX11
Processor clock speed	Up to 1150MHz	Up to 1240MHz
Memory clock speed	Up to 1500MHz	Up to 1500MHz
Memory	Up to 1.5GB or 3GB	Up to 2GB GDDR5
Memory width	Up to 192-bit	Up to 256-bit
Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5