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NVIDIA Launches Mobile Maxwell GeForce GTX 980M and GTX 970M Notebook Graphics
MojoKid writes: When Nvidia launched their new GeForce GTX 980 and 970 last month, it was obvious that these cards would be coming to mobile sooner rather than later. The significant increase that Maxwell offers in performance-per-watt means that these GPUs should shine in mobile contexts, maybe even more-so than in desktop. Today, Nvidia is unveiling two new mobile GPUs — the GeForce GTX 980M and 970M. Both notebook graphics engines are based on Maxwell's 28nm architecture, and both are trimmed slightly from the full desktop implementation. The GTX 980M is a 1536-core chip (just like the GTX 680 / 680M) while the GTX 970 will pack 1280 cores. Clock speeds are 1038MHz base for the GTX 980M and 924MHz for the GTX 970M, which is significantly faster than the previous gen GTX 680M's launch speeds. The 980M will carry up to 4GB of RAM, while the 970M will offer 3GB and a smaller memory bus.
From eyeballing relative performance expectations, the GTX 970M should be well-suited to 1080p or below at high detail levels, while the GTX 980M should be capable of ultra detail at 1080p or higher resolutions. Maxwell's better efficiency means that it should offer a significant performance improvement over mobile Kepler, even with the same number of cores. Also with this launch Nvidia is introducing "Battery Boost" as a solution for games with less demanding graphics, where battery life can be extended by governing clock speeds to maintain playable frames, without overpower the GPU at higher than needed frame rates.
From eyeballing relative performance expectations, the GTX 970M should be well-suited to 1080p or below at high detail levels, while the GTX 980M should be capable of ultra detail at 1080p or higher resolutions. Maxwell's better efficiency means that it should offer a significant performance improvement over mobile Kepler, even with the same number of cores. Also with this launch Nvidia is introducing "Battery Boost" as a solution for games with less demanding graphics, where battery life can be extended by governing clock speeds to maintain playable frames, without overpower the GPU at higher than needed frame rates.
Graphics card news has been virtually the same since 1999 with the exception of not seeing games that meet future gen card specs on launch. The incentive to run your current gen games at faster than eyeballs speed on a laptop has to have lost its charm when people who purchase high end laptops would prefer portability of ultra books and anyone who demands the performance and travels can ship their desktops to the competitions they are in to need them.
The launches of the laptops that actually support these just felt flat to me from what I saw. Honestly who wants that big a hunk of appliance on their lap at this age? The audience for laptops as big as early 2000 era laptops has to be getting slim. With laptop sales being so flat and performance gamers being what they are it doesn't make any sense for the people who have bought $600 cards every six months to want to be behind again on a $3000 lappy.
Maybe I'm just getting crotchety and I have a 670M.