News - Nvidia intros Maxwell-based GeForce 980M and 970M GPUs

[HEXUS]

Promises 40 per cent performance improvement and better battery life.

Read more.

[lumireleon]

WOW this is powerful

[RT-XD]

I might consider upgrading my 680m to a 980m!

[watercooled]

It's this slide that irks me:
http://www.extremetech.com/wp-conten...ttery-life.jpg

Are we not trusted with some 980M performance numbers and the 680M battery life numbers to make comparisons??

Is it another one of the infamous Nvidia x percent better performance, x percent better efficiency* claims?
*Just not at the same time.

Not saying anything about the product, just the marketing is laughable as usual.

Edit: On that subject, and not being one to jump aboard the hype train based on marketing slides, it would be nice if Hexus could run some power and efficiency comparisons, as I suspect Maxwell will run into just the same thermal/power wall around 100W as other mobile GPUs, and therefore offer pretty much the same battery life, all else being the same. Excluding the 30fps cap mode OFC, but you could easily apply that to other platforms too with something like MSI Afterburner/RivaTuner (framerate limiters are nothing new).

[mtcn77]

Nvidia does make fantastic mobile gpus.
Frame rate limitation offers a great benefit in efficiency, so "Battery Boost" is indeed quite a sober agenda for marketing.

[b0redom]

WOW this is powerful

How do you know? There are no numbers given. Typical marketing junk.

[rpjkw11]

My i7 4700MQ and 770M are all I need. But already the "Hmmmmmmms" are starting. These GPUs are quite intriguing.

[kompukare]

Nvidia does make fantastic mobile gpus.

Would this be the same Nvidia company which sold a couple of million mobile graphic cards with inherently faulty solder and then ran away when fault developed a few years ago?

Actually, while that was of course a major blunder (mostly covered up), I would still stay clear of any laptop with a dedicated GPUs as I think they are never a good idea. A 100W GPU in a laptops is always going to be trouble. Pity external ExpressCard GPUs never became commercial.

[mtcn77]

Would this be the same Nvidia company which sold a couple of million mobile graphic cards with inherently faulty solder and then ran away when fault developed a few years ago?

Actually, while that was of course a major blunder (mostly covered up), I would still stay clear of any laptop with a dedicated GPUs as I think they are never a good idea. A 100W GPU in a laptops is always going to be trouble. Pity external ExpressCard GPUs never became commercial.

Haha, you caught my irony. Well done! I wouldn't buy Nvidia for as long as I can remember, they are following on AMD/ATi's tracks in standards.
Back to the topic, I consider laptops are only useful for people with constraints. They are not nice to lug around in any shape, or form. Even desktops are shaking after the implosion of tablets into mobile space. Let's accept it: Their rise is inevitable. Every beginning for the procession of technological advance is slow from the get go and it is even more feasible in hardware manufacturers' perspective to opt for smaller devices. Regardless, slow starts can be leaps and bounds ahead of the contemporaries like the LTPS panel on my Google(+Asus+Qualcomm) Nexus 7. They will always be smaller and by the looks of it, the developers and major vendors aren't wisening up to flourish 3D into a venue as big as 2D video(let us all accept that the quality of games are still not in direct competition with the esthetics of youtube). So... I don't need the big & powerful mobile gpu's of Nvidia(yes, for a moment I felt the challenge, though) as long as that premonition is still true and I will keep onto Nexus 7 2013, living every moment with unabated surprise.

[anselhelm]

I like to think of myself as generally agnostic towards the whole Nvidia and AMD debate, as I'll always go with whichever tech (including software) gives me the best performance for my money.

That said, I'm more interested in the (hopefully) upcoming 960M than the 970M/980M, based on the performance of the Maxwell-V1-based 860M.

I'm also hopeful that AMD might actually do something good in the mobile arena soon, as it has gone shamefully quiet of late on all fronts. (As for the products they have "released", I have yet to find a laptop with a Kaveri-based mobile APU in the UK several months after the initial articles on them.)

[krazy_olie]

Hmm, will be interesting to look at performance.
Thinking about an SFF PC but if the performance is sufficient a high end laptop, albeit for higher cost may be a worthwhile consideration

[Tarinder]

I'm waiting for Gigabyte to stick two GTX 980M GPUs in a Brix.

[MrJim]

I'm waiting for Gigabyte to stick two GTX 980M GPUs in a Brix.

I've never liked the name 'Brix'. For me it has similar connotations as the term 'coaster' when burning disks