Brace yourself: NEW MAXWELL CARDS INCOMING!

I may grab a 980M and install it in my AW 17 if nobody would like to purchase it.

I think 2015 is the last upgradeable year. At least we'll go out with a bang. I'm glad Maxwell is powerful.

 

Exactly, you don't need the latest hardware to play current & future games at decent fps if you reduce settings, and often the very highest settings seem to have diminishing returns of visual quality improvements - i.e. medium or high quality can still look really good rather than choosing ultra quality. One thing I've learned though is, more often than not tuning settings to high fps (50+) is more fun than running high quality visuals at low fps (30fps). 780M is a good chip, and if you have good temperatures you could flash a modified vBIOS for some more performance - run the core at 1Ghz if you can!

 

Do correct me if I'm wrong.
I seems to remember that Maxwell GPU did a good job on 3DMark Fire Strike, but not as equal on gaming compared to Kepler.

A GTX 860M can be OCed to a 5k of 3DMark Fire Strike.
But is the OCed GTX 860M is much faster than a stock GTX 870M on gaming?

Edit :
Don't get me wrong.
The new GTX 970M and GTX 980M performance increase is super awesome.
Even if on real gaming it is not that high, still it is quite high of an improvement over the previous Generation.
Will definitely get a GTX 970M for my next laptop.

 

So now that we know these are going to be fairly epic (Even if 980m only beats 880m by 40% not 57% in real gaming performance it would be awesome and they may have tailored the driver to the test, but that can only make so big of a difference.), and since laptops are starting to be released for pre-order. Is there a good place on the forums to consolidate an overview of the new releases into single thread or do we need to start checking all the individual manufacturer forums to find information?

We are so far expecting the following very soon right?
MSI GT72 Dominator Pro : 970m / 980m
Asus g760? : 970m / 980m
Multiple Clevo options at least 1 SLI based on Firestrike scores?

how about alienware, aorus, razer, etc?

be really nice if we could get some details on the screen panels and such before buying, but probably going to bite the bullet and preorder something hoping they didn't make some horrible decision in the build, even though they nearly always seem to.

 

So I scraped through the last 20k fire strike benchmarks and here's what I found:

Code:

     GPU	Score	Core clock	Memory bus clock	CPU
GTX 970M 	5964   	 540 MHz 	 2,505 MHz	 Intel Core i7-4790S Processor  
GTX 970M 	5979   	 540 MHz 	 2,505 MHz	 Intel Core i7-4790S Processor  
GTX 970M 	6393   	 924 MHz 	 1,253 MHz	 Intel Core i7-4930MX  
GTX 970M 	6395   	 924 MHz 	 1,253 MHz	 Intel Core i7-4930MX  
GTX 970M 	6493   	 924 MHz 	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 970M 	6539   	 924 MHz 	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980 	10415  	 1,127 MH	 1,753 MHz	 Intel Core i7-3770K Processor  
GTX 980 (x2) 	11757  	 540 MHz 	 3,505 MHz	 Intel Core i7-950 Processor  
GTX 980M 	8040   	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	8046   	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	8070   	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	8077   	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	8193   	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	8236   	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M (x2)	13181  	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 

 

Yes, I agree with you, from the results I've seen Maxwell does favour Firestrike in comparison to the other benchmarks. Maybe we could knock ~5% off those benchmarks then to normalise it. From what I've seen 870M is faster than 860M when gaming, even when 860M is overclocked (don't forget you can overclock the 870M too - only fair!) (And I'd be surprised if an overclocked 860M can beat a stock 870M, and if so only by a minuscule margin).

EDIT: I take that back, by looking at the stock 860M Maxwell vs 870M Kepler on game benchmarks then it wouldn't be unthinkable that an overclocked 860M could exceed a stock 870M in some games, titles like Metro Last Light really seem to favour the Kepler 870M though (see Notebookcheck.net). But, even so, Maxwell does favour Firestrike quite heavily - that doesn't change.

 

I'd say wait with pre-ordering until you we get an actual announcement of the 900M series. Then more pre-orders and news about the GPU's will pop up most likely.
Though I'm fully waiting for an alienware 14 with a 970M.
I still don't know how many watt's the 970M consumes. But judging laptops such as a 14 inch untrabook razerblade had a 870M kepler GPU and the Gigabyte Aorus X3 also having a 870M on a 13 inch ultra thin notebook, I have high expectations of alienware.

I'm REALLY hoping for the 970M in it, and they better do it now it runs less power.

Thing is. I'm not a fan of too thin gaming laptops, as temperature will almost always be a problem. The alienware 14 is a little thick. but the size makes it actually still very portable for a gaming laptop. Then it has good audio, a brilliant IPS display, some neet keyboard and other customizable lights and also a slick design. I love those laptops.
Expected an update on april, but now I see the 970M performance, I'm glad they did not release an update. and now I will definitely get one.

And I'm hoping so bad for them to not up

 

And here's just the GPU scores for that scrape:

Code:

GPU	GPU Score	Core clock	Memory bus clock
GTX 970M 	7338 	 924 MHz 	 1,253 MHz	 Intel Core i7-4930MX  
GTX 970M 	7351 	 924 MHz 	 1,253 MHz	 Intel Core i7-4930MX  
GTX 970M 	7391 	 924 MHz 	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 970M 	7400 	 540 MHz 	 2,505 MHz	 Intel Core i7-4790S Processor  
GTX 970M 	7422 	 924 MHz 	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 970M 	7430 	 540 MHz 	 2,505 MHz	 Intel Core i7-4790S Processor  
GTX 980 	12593	 1,127 MH	 1,753 MHz	 Intel Core i7-3770K Processor  
GTX 980 (x2) 	18440	 540 MHz 	 3,505 MHz	 Intel Core i7-950 Processor  
GTX 980M 	9268 	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	9309 	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	9312 	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	9339 	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	9463 	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M 	9499 	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 
GTX 980M (x2)	18570	 1,038 MH	 1,253 MHz	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz 

and their links (unsorted)

Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz,Notebook P17SM-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz,Notebook P17SM-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4930MX,Notebook P15SM-A/SM1-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz,Notebook P15SM-A/SM1-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz,Notebook P15SM-A/SM1-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4930MX,Notebook P15SM-A/SM1-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz,Notebook P15SM-A/SM1-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz,Notebook P15SM-A/SM1-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz,Notebook P17SM-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-950 Processor,MSI MSI X58 Pro-E (MS-7522)
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3770K Processor,ZOTAC ZT-Z77Crown-U1D
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz,Notebook P370SM-A
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4790S Processor,Notebook P750ZM
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4790S Processor,Notebook P750ZM
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4940MX CPU @ 3.10GHz,Notebook P17SM-A

 

Damn, 980M SLI has nearly perfect scaling. Gotta love that.

 

Yeah, it's actually heavily dependent on what game and what kind of settings of that game. Memory related I guess.

 

All aboard!

 

I think I have figured out the specs

Spoiler

GTX 980; 1920 cores - 15SMM - 256bit
GTX 980M: 1664 cores @ 1038MHz - 13SMM - 256bit

GTX 970: 1664 cores - 13SMM - 256bit
GTX 970M: 1408 cores @ 924MHz - 12SMM - 192bit

Lets double check:

GTX 980:
1920 cores @ 1127MHz: 12328 GPU score in Firestrike
1920 * 1127 = 2163840

GTX 980M:
1792 cores @ 1038MHz: 9364 GPU score in Firestrike
1664 * 1038 = 1727232

Firestrike difference:
12328/9364 = 1.31

Does that match with core/clock difference?

2163840/1727232 = 1.25
Yes it does

GTX 980M:
1792 cores @ 1038MHz: 9364 GPU score in Firestrike
1664 * 1038 = 1727232

GTX 970M:
1408 cores @ 924MHz: 7403 GPU score in Firestrike
1408 * 924 = 1300992

Firestrike difference:
9364/7403 = 1.26

Does that match with core/clock difference?
1727232/1300992 = 1.32
Yes it does.

In conclusion:
GTX 980; 1920 cores - 15SMM - 256bit
GTX 980M: 1664 cores @ 1038MHz - 13SMM - 256bit

GTX 970: 1664 cores - 13SMM - 256bit
GTX 970M: 1408 cores - @ 924MHz - 11SMM - 192bit



:thumbsup:

 

Your graph doesn't label the y-axis so it's not clear what that's referring to, but I asssume it's percentage performance difference between 870M and 860M (mind you doesn't take a genius to assume that, so shouldn't have bothered typing it!). Personally I see the Maxwell architecture as an advantage in all areas, so sure there are differences in peaks & troughs between Kepler & Maxwell, but there's no doubt that Maxwell does a hell of a lot more with less than Kepler does - and Kepler was no slouch (Kepler was great really). I'm still amazed what they've managed to squeeze out of 28nm, especially given the minimal efficiency increase AMD have managed to achieve with their latest iteration on 28nm (can't really call it a new architecture for AMD on theirs). Maxwell FTW really!! (And to think that NVidia could just shrink this to 20nm next year for nearly double performance gains again is really astounding!)

 

Those are some great FireStrike scores. I hope you're right, Cloud. :thumbsup:

 

970m = 7403
880m = 5980
870m = 4697

Little small for my taste, and probably still be on the toasty side, but wonder how well a razer blade 14 would manage gaming in its native 3k resolution with that beast.

Almost certainly going to go either 980m or 970m/980m SLI myself though. on a 17.3"+ laptop.

 

Not really, 980M is based exactly on 970 with slightly lower clocks and much lower memory clocks (I guess memory bandwidth doesn't affect synthetics that much). My calculations(which I won't bother posting) assuming GM204 has 16SMM indicate that 870 has 14SMM which the 980M is based on also has.
Calculations also show that 970M has exactly 12SMM and the 6GB memory along with 192bit bus, and guess what those numbers perfectly match up to?

Spoiler

Exactly to leaked GM206 specs.

 

Benchmarks and games are two entirely different beasts in themselves. I'm more interested in real-world FPS results.

I have a feeling we shall see some soon!

 

i have a feeling that they will release a 985M which will have the same smm as the GTX 980 lol like they did with kepler

 

I think they'll milk Maxwell like they did with Kepler and just re-brand it, similarly to how they did from 780M to 880M.

 

Keep in mind all but one of those Fire Strike results were obtained with the secret 343.91 driver, so who knows how much of that "gain" is due to driver tweaks lol

Compare the 2 scores below:
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-950 Processor,MSI MSI X58 Pro-E (MS-7522) -- 2x 980, 18440 graphics score, 323.16 driver
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3770K Processor,ZOTAC ZT-Z77Crown-U1D -- 1x 980, 12593 graphics score, 343.91 driver

Different driver, only 46% gain going from single card to SLI. wut

 

It's something for sure since AMD is way behind and Maxwell has a good foundation.

 

@N=1 thats odd I didn't think the 323.16 driver even supported Maxwell SLI. Isn't that why laptops like the aorus x7 had the 860m kepler version, because maxwell SLI was not supported? Or was it the maxwell 860m itself that did not support SLI?

Either way SLI on that driver was certainly never optimized for 9xx maxwell so I would ignore that score entirely.

 

860M Maxwell itself didn't support SLI.

VideoCardz also reported only 66% SLI scaling. Whether that's with 343.91 or some older drivers I wouldn't know. Also, optimized for Maxwell, or optimized "just for" Maxwell? There's a difference.

 

Sorry for being OT, but If I get a 970/980 SLI for my desktop, would my CPU (2600k OC'd to 4.5Ghz) be a bottleneck or would it depend on the games I play?

 

Don't think it should be a problem, even 3960X vs 2600K running 3x 580 (yes yes it's old Fermi I get it) shows <5% difference except in Street Fighter 4, but there we're talking >250 FPS so who cares about 8.93% difference lol

And that's with 2600K at stock (3.4GHz), OC'd to 4.5GHz should be even less of a problem.

 

Na

10chars

 

You mean 980<del>M</del> right?

Also, I really hope nVidia fixes whatever scaling issues 980 has right now, whether artificial or driver related. If 980 SLI scaling is <50% in games I'm gonna go ballistic. :/

 

Sorry no I meant desktop version for my 2600k. Guess I'll wait for more info to make a better decision down the road.

 

Did you look at the 980M and 980M SLI benches?

9364 for single card
18570 for SLI

Exactly how SLI would perform under synthetic benchmarks.

The desktop benches for SLI was probably just a screw up. You are making up an issue for something that probably isnt an issue

 

He's one of those people that won't "believe it until they see it" first hand. You won't convince him.

Also, that article said 95% scaling, which is nearly perfect. Not sure where he got 66%. That sounds more like Kepler.

 

Well he was one of the:
"+50-60% is impossible."
"GTX 880M was just released. No way they would release a better GPU so early"
"GM204 will be too big for mobile"
"New cards wont arrive before 2015"
etc

A long line of doubters have pitched in on this thread since it started. Cant say I blame them, but good to see that my reasoning why the above was wrong is starting to come true. Someone gotta stay positive

 

That's true, lol.

 

all hail the great cloudfire , i might wait to see what else nvidia has up their sleeves

 

I think the GTX 960M or whatever it will be called will be also very interesting.
I think we will finally get a midrange Maxwell come on MXM boards and will be SLI friendly in comparison to Maxwell GTX 860M.

Should mean a lot for Aorus and other computers that SLI midrange chips.

 

Only a few more days to go. This month is full of new releases: mobile phones and soon to be computers.

Sent from my LG-D851 using Tapatalk

 

I'm really excited by the news and early benchmarks. Especially because I almost put a Alienware 17" with GTX860m in my shopping basket, before I decided to do some actual reading online. Hopefully the same amount of money will buy me a lot more GPU power once Dell decides to update their AW machines.

And hopefully they'll do it before the end of the year as well, as I've already sold my old Asus ROG

 

Smart move Kellhus
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyone else excited about the bandwidth of this thing?
The 128bit Maxwell GTX 860M have equal bandwidth to a 192bit card thanks to the increased L2 cache and stuff Nvidia did with the Maxwell architecture.

Wonder whats in store for a 256bit GTX 980M? Maybe it will further gain ground over our 256bit GTX 880M on high settings that require great bandwidth thanks to the L2 cache and Maxwell
After all, the 192bit GTX 970M is 20% above 256bit GTX 880M.

 

Good point, and well spotted, but perhaps the latest driver is required to fully enable sli Maxwell - rather than thinking 343.91 driver has some kind of bizarre secret sauce when applied to that single card. Would be good to see sli result with the 343.91 driver you mention to prove that point.

 

Well, 2600K is still awesome, especially if you overclock (& they overclocked well!), so that's not an issue. (But you're not putting mobile cards with 2600K desktop!)

 

You made a smart decision to hold off for a while! You'll get some more bang for your buck now with the next generation launching shortly!

 

Yeah I didn't mean the mobile chips with my 2600k. I should fix my posts.

Sent from my LG-D851 using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, no comparison between 880M and 970M in my eyes - I reckon 970M will stomp it! (As you say memory bandwidth is a moot point with Maxwell - I think you can effectively double it when it comes to Maxwell based on what we saw with the 750ti and it's L2 cache efficiency)

 

Apologies if this has already been asked, however have any manufacturers 'teased' the new 900M series in upcoming laptops?
Just seems a bit strange that the Aorus X3 and the Asus GX500 have been launched (or will be launching) with the 800M series GPU.
How long would you think before we see the 900M series in an actual laptop!? (assuming the launch will be in the coming days)

 

Cool, you still don't need to upgrade your CPU - just spank your 2600K and I think it will do fine with all the latest Maxwell desktop sli card setups! (Was the best time to buy a CPU in recent history in my eyes - one hell of a CPU!)

 

Not sure why that's a bad thing. I've seen some people in this thread that are making purchasing decisions based on nothing but unconfirmed rumors and leaks. I don't blame them because of all the hype surrounding Maxwell, but this sort of hype could easily lead people to great disappointment or screw up their existing purchase plans.

And hey if Cloudfire is here to hype it up, I'm allowed to play everything down. Plus if I'm wrong, I'd still be happy, so it's win-win for me as far as I'm concerned lol

66% was for desktop 980 SLI.

 

Ah, okay.

 

Funny thing is that I've been uncertain what to buy for a long time now (wanted to buy a Steam in-home streaming desktop initially), which ultimately delayed my decision for so long that I'm now in a position to purchase a laptop with a GTX9xx GPU

Have bought a lot of laptops the last few years (and sold them again after a year or so) and based on my experiences I really hope that there will be either a Asus ROG or Dell AW machine that get's refreshed within a month or two. I just want a good cooling system, screen and GPU.

 

If you mean me by making purchasing decisions, I need a new laptop, and am going to get a top end one this time. Still not sold on a specific model or anything though I'm more thinking things like 'If there are no new 17.3"+ options with over 1080p should I go 970/980m SLI or just stick with a single 980m since it really should be fast enough. If there is a 3k, 4k, etc... option for 17.3"+ out there will 980m SLI be fast enough to run it or should I stick with a lower resolution.'

Right now I am hoping for a 17.3" or 18.4" laptop to be announced with a WQHD (2560/1440) screen within the next month. I really think that would be optimal for high resolution but still be able to run games at very high FPS using a 980m SLI.

A couple other people I think said they were buying the new MSI gt72, or such but it sounded like they were pretty much going to get it regardless of the performance gain even if 980m was only 15% better. Might be wrong but thats how most of the posts have sounded to me.

And I think I said I will likely pre-order something, but still going to be waiting at least 2-4 weeks first to see what the different manufacturers announce, and get some solid numbers.

 

No I wasn't singling you out, it was just a general remark. You don't have to justify your purchases, if it makes you happy that's all that matters.

 

Do you like Sheryl Crow!? (obscure!)