My Nvidia GTX 880M Test Run Review

There's times where I think you're talking about the 880M, and times I think your talking about the 18/Haswell debacle.

For the record, I'm not waiting 6 weeks let alone 6 months. If I am trying to run a game on a SLI 880 rig with 32 gigs of ram, and 500MB/Sec read speeds and I'm having performance issues, its not because of my machine. It's because the shaders were coded by a Junior at Berkley's CIS department that reads poetry between classes to impress girls at Starbucks.

 

More like get a driver crash and you are stuck in 2d mod speeds. And no amount of reflashing/vbios'ing/os reinstalling or system restoring is going to fix it sort of thing. You will need to jump through hoops and in a certain order and a certain way to get it back working.

This is suppose to be a 880M review thread, but just like most threads. It always seems to run off course with other tech.

 

could you please kindly check and verify that autoCAD performance is just as gimped as any other kepler geforce currently are

 

Define gimped.

I was able to run autocad 2012 and 3d modeling using a 780m though

 

Need to use the right tool for the job. If you're wanting a machine that is designed as a professional workstation you should be looking at something with a Quadro card rather than a gaming GeForce system. These are not designed for that, just like Quadro and FirePro systems are not designed for gaming. You can certainly play games with a workstation or do workstation tasks with a gaming machine, but neither one will provide ideal performance for a purpose they were never intended. The days of getting a free ride by flashing firmware and driver mods are over now. NVIDIA figured out how that racket was going and put a stop to it a couple of years ago.

 

Hey guys, so what's the word on the 880M availability? I think I read Nvidia announced it a couple weeks ago. Johnksss is our current concern mostly Nvidia giving us an adequate driver? It seems based on your testing it will be a better GPU then the 780 for over clocking assuming voltage is present.


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Voltage is present, but then so is the heat so we shall see. Drivers are going to be a real problem as of late And no one has a real answer for it yet...

 

I'm sure we'll see a driver update from NVidia soon as the cards seem to be getting ready to hit units in the next few weeks. I actually know someone over there that writes/tests drivers on a different team (workstation stuff). Maybe I can get him to poke around for us...he and I used to hit a place for a beer lunch at a Philly Cheese Steak place in San Jose called St Johns. Might be time for another beer lunch

 

This is a mid and low size kepler chip issue. Only the GK110 is designed for compute.

 

So is anyone planning on moving to 880m once prices get abit more realistic ?
Is it just me, but I can't imagine an 880m successor coming out too soon if 880m is only just coming out now.

 

Got some info from my friend. 800 series is dropping March 12th apparently, with Sager and MSI leading the charge and Alienware is believed to be either launching as well or right behind.


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Sounds about right. That's what I heard last month. Just waiting to see if it's true.

 

Thanks for the info Thrawn. I can only hope. I have a p375sm on pre order at Mythlogic. Btw: Johnksss, thanks for your hard work on the review. Excellent job.

 

Thank you jzang3!

 

I'm wondering if that's perhaps why we are suddenly seeing Alienware machine orders getting canceled. Upgrades next week...have we ever seen Dell/ALienware do that? Cancel orders right before an update?

 

Alienware is cancelling orders without customer request? Interesting... I did notice that they now offer 10% back with Dell Financial and they are starting to remove certain components from the website locking people into whatever they have in stock to blow it out, I'd imagine... Updates are surely coming in the next 2 weeks.

 

Yes, this has been known to happen in the past.

 

Have anyone mention the spec on the 880MX? My 680M SLi Alienware might be broken (SLi dont work) and I need a new laptop and I wonder if I should go for the 780M SLi (no point to wait for the 880M SLi as far as I could see in this test) or if I should just pull myself and keep the Singel 680 and wait for the 880MX.

 

There has been not even a rumour on a "880MX" it's just a name people have assumed due to earlier naming conventions.

 

No wait, there is a gtx 1080. Im waiting for that!!
j/k

 

John and meaker, You seem like experts in the field, would I rather buy a card with higher or lower TDP in Watts..A GTX 680 draws 100W of power with proper cooling this could result in reaching more than expected performance but an 860 draws only 45W of power which means although running very cool, it is limited by its ability to draw power so it does not reach its full potential at stock clocks. I am not an over clocker or a vbios changer so in my case if I found both 680 and 860 at similar laptop prices which one should I go for?

 

In that scenario...The 860M (Newer tech and lower tdp and performance boost would be reasons why). Why? Because at the end of the day, that gpu can be made to run a higher tdp and allowed to run faster if need be. Now as to it's performance rating....I would wait till some "in the field" testing has been established. Paper stats get people all rallied up and the cards pretty much do not perform as they say it's suppose to. Sending mixed feelings across the boards. At the end of the day, the 680M will still be faster because it was a top tier card when it came out. Maybe one more generation of gpus in that class might out do the 680M.

 

Great work

 

MSI re branding.

More than likely it's just a mistake in product listing and updating.

 

One problem is that smaller chips will escalate their power much more quickly than larger chips due to the frequencies they push.

Consider chips of sizes x and 2x.

Chip X consumes 45W of power at 1.1ghz (it's stock speed)
Chip 2x consumes 100W of power at 750mhz

Chip 2x is already 50% faster at stock as it's a larger chip.

So chip X can match 2x if we add 50% of the frequency which comes out to..... 1.65ghz (the point we would need a series liquid nitrogen cooling setup to even think of getting to).

Since frequency scales with voltage and the power goes up with the square of the voltage the small chip quickly passes the larger chip past it's designed sweet spot.

 

Thanks for the revew JohnKiss. I was considering upgrading to this card but i see with the cost its not feasible at this point. I have the 780m in sli so thats basically an 880m.:thumbsup:

 

Looks like my friend at NVidia was right. March 12th, and NVidia just announced their GeForce 800 series on their Laptops page. Looks like the biggest changes are actually to the 860m (Which is true Maxwell) and the major boost they gave to the 870m. 880m is just a 12 percent faster core clock boost and 8 gigs of vram per card.

Sager and MSI both just changed all the systems on their front page to 800 series as well. Alienware not yet. Info was right on.

 

Yup, they have an ETA of 3/21 so I'm guessing AW will be changing their website at or around that time, if not earlier.

I've seen some benchmarks released already on a few different websites and they do show a significant boost in performance already... which isn't bad considering the card isn't fully optimized yet with drivers just yet, which indicates that performance numbers will increase as drivers are released.

 

Just glad my GPU wont be outdated for at least another year until the 900m series come.
8GB makes no sense. Demanding games dont even use more than 2GB, and My heavly modded Skyrim barely uses more than 3GB.
The funny thing is that a 780 Ti have only 3GB.

 

I don't really see where having the extra video memory is a problem. When it comes to resources (or performance) having excess is always better than not enough or barely enough. With 4K displays on the horizon, it might end up being more useful than expected at the moment. Gimmick? Maybe... but better than gimped any day of the week.

 

I've read that a lot of VRAM hinders overclocking. Not sure if that's true, but that's what I read somewhere. Other than that, I don't see why it would be a bad thing. As Mr. Fox said, it would be beneficial for high resolution gaming or multiple display setups, or both. 8GB is definitely more than enough for an Alienware, and may be overkill for 1080p, but there are benefits to having it, and plenty of uses for it.

I'm hoping they release a Maxwell version of the 880M soon. Oddly enough, it's kind of concerning we haven't seen anything about it from other parts of the world which always get things at least 3-6 months in advance. So, will they wait until 2015 for 20nm Maxwell? Hopefully not. I've still got my mind set on a late summer or early fall release.

By the way, great review, John.

 

Well, it's a bad thing actually cuz the price is higher and they could have put their effort and resources in something more usefull.
As for higher resolutions or multi diplay, 4GB is already enough, and either way it doesn't make much sense, since not even a 780Ti can play demanding games in 4k with acceptable FPS. Btw, even the 780Ti have only 3Gb...

 

I don't think more is necessarily a bad thing... I don't think the 880m will be upgrade worthy for those who already have a 780m or similar cards, as the performance difference is negligible... what will be interesting to see though, is since Nvidia is also releasing a 4gb version of the 880m, if it will be possible to re-flash the 780m into an 880m... any thoughts on this yet?

 

Depends on the chips used really, so long as cheaper brands are not employed it won't make much of a difference.

 

Same question/different thread. I suspect you would be courting disaster. I won't have my surprised look on my face if someone tries it and then lies to Dell/Sager/Clevo/Eurocom and pretend they have no idea what happened to try to get it covered under warranty.

 

I really wish Nvidia stopped with 8 gig gimmick memory. Memory takes power. The 4 extra gig takes upward 10% of the total power envelope.

Especially since the hardest core 4K game use less then 3gig memory today. One year ago every single game had max 2gig graphic memory (32bit graphic limit). Love how people shelled out 1000 of dollars on 4 gig cards and there were no 64bit games. Only thanks to next gen consoles we are starting to see 64bit games.

 

I doubt the extra die on each package will use 10-12w lol.

 

8 GB is not a gimmick and really has nothing to do with gaming. There are other programs that take advantage of video memory.

 

Very true. NVIDIA is launching a lot of new software, and the 800M series are all compatible.

 

Not to mention higher vRam quantity is a requirement of the Maxwell Arch as discussed by nvidia already, so users might as well get used to higher vram amounts. It's a motivator for upgrading from 780m to 880m as well.

 

As far as gaming goes, 4GB is more than enough even for 4k. So... unless u have an 580m or older, don't even bother upgrading.

 

If you are upgrading keep an eye out for cheap 870M cards in that case.

 

The 870m is an interesting card, especially if the cost is lower. Near-680m performance for a much better price ($400?). I predict it's going to be nV's "clearing house" card to get rid of remaining g104 chips. Now if someone could just figure out how to unlock those masked shaders a la 6800 to 6800 gt (although I suspect theyre laser-cut)

In my view, the 870m is also an indication of how exceptional performance will be on the 880mx since nV normally keeps the gap between their top and next-to-top cards substantial (and we all know 880m is just a stop gap).

 

They will be laser cut, nvidia learned their mistake

 

Damn, just after I get a brand new GS70 notebook they come up with a "pro" model sporting the new 870m, which overall is pretty better than mine.
I just wonder how are they managing to cool it on the same chassis, since my 765m already hits 75 while gaming @ 99% load...

 

Oh so the 880M is literally a 780M with higher clocks. Hmm... seems legit.

Then again, looks like it overclocks waaaay better on the memory, unless I'm just seeing things.

 

Well technically, it's a re-branded 680M.
That's technically speaking.

 

The 780M and 680M were different cards. Same GPU core, but one had more shaders. So technically the only rebrand is the 880M here.

 

Laser cut shaders does not make it a different core. So technically you are still wrong.

 

goshdarn technicalities