Brace yourself: NEW MAXWELL CARDS INCOMING!

I don't know about that I suspect people buying the 9xx gpu series will be very happy with them for many years, but next probably comes 20nm maxwell. I don't know the kinds of gains it will get in mobile, I suspect desktop will nearly double since its not restricted much by heat or power. Mobile could easily see another 30-50% jump though just depends on how good the chips are. If I had a laptop that I was happy with playing all my games I might wait. Might get Skylake too then which may or may not be good, but has a chance of seriously reducing CPU TDP/heat and improving performance.

If these 9xxm chips are as good as those benchmarks make them out to be, they will be really epic though, and I suspect most people will be happy gaming on a 980m for at least 2-4 years.

Noone has been saying this; people have been saying there are no 17.3" or larger 3k/4k laptops. There are at least 15-30 15.6" or smaller options out there. The problem is none of them have powerful enough GPUs to actually game at those resolutions, and the small screens normally make the resolution be overkill. The 17.3" or 18.4" Laptops that have an 880m SLI (soon to be 980m SLI) which actually might be able to handle the resolution don't have the screens. Plus the larger screens need the resolution more since viewing range does not vary much on laptops regardless of size.

 

I actually think they will skip 20nm, and do 16nm FinFET Pascal in early 2016. Maxwell might be only in 28nm

In 2014 we will get GTX 980M and GTX 970M. Maybe GTX 960M too. On the desktop side we will get GTX 980, GTX 970 and GTX 960.
Looking at my calculated specs for the GTX 980M, it got 2SMM (256 cores) disabled from the full GM204.

The mobile card that will have a full GM204 will arrive in Q2/Q3 2015 and will stick with us until Pascal is here in 2016. Thats when we will see 16nm FinFET.
Desktop will get high end GM200 and midrange GM206 (we too) in 2015 and they will all be in 28nm.

That is my take on it.

But should they release Maxwell on 20nm, you are absolutely right that we will get more gains from that process than 28nm. In that case, there should be some performance increases from 980M for sure.

 

Werent there also rumors that only the 980m series were using 20nm? I agree with cloud. They will most likely wait for new arch and new fab process before announcing a new top model. Specially if AMD can't catch the fab process to shrink their higher end GPUs to be competitive.

 

Soooooo I bought an 880m laptop right when it came out. I had to use a credit card and still owe 1,600 US dollars on the laptop and now these leaks are getting too good. I'm amazed by also just in shock and don't even know what to do. I want a 980m soo bad.... Plus apparently the 880m prices are dropping like crazy so my laptop is losing value as every day goes by =(

HEEEEELLLLPPPPPPP

 

I wouldn't even worry about it. You will still be able to play games on Ultra. Wait for Pascal. Hopefully by then you'll have paid it off.

 

Will i have to sell my shiney XMG P724 laptop if i want GTX980m? i was hoping i would just be able to remove my GTX880m and sell it on ebay and get schenker to send me out a GTX980m?

Hope its upgradeable! lol

 

It should be upgradeable. Nothing has changed in that regard.

 

Now that I think more about it, I actually feel like holding off on 980 until late December or even Jan 2015 might be the best way to go, and then I'll only be buying an EVGA card eligible for the step up program. I suspect there will be a 250W 980 Ti based on GM200/210/whatever they decide to call the successor to GK110, and it will stomp all over this 980.

 

It's a Clevo so it should be (*subject to them caring enough to release new bios), however it's unlikely to be cost effective. I've been buying Clevo's for the upgradeability for years, and guess what? Never upgraded more than RAM/HDD. CPU has never been a bottle neck even after 3-4 years, and paying $800 for a GPU to go into a 3 year old system makes little sense.

Also - what GOOD games can tax a 780M at the moment? All the stuff I replay the most runs maxed out on a 280M lol!

 

The list of games GTX 780M can`t max out is getting a bit long...

Watch Dogs
Wolfenstein
TES Online
Thief
X-Plane
Need for Speed Rivals
COD Ghosts
Battlefield 4
Total War Rome
Saints Row 4
XCOM
Splinter Cell Blacklist
Company of Heroes
Metro Last Light
Bioshock Infinite
SimCity 2013
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
Assassin Creed 3
Hitman
Guild Wars 2
Sleeping Dogs

 

Anyone know the TDP of the new 980m? I think that's the only limiting factor now for me

 

Well TDP of GTX 980 is rumored 160W.
My estimated specs for GTX 980M is that its a full GTX 970. GTX 970 got 2 less SMM than GTX 980, so around 140W I think.

But performance of a GTX 980M is very close to a GTX 970, so it should be around 100W I think. Same TDP as GTX 680M

 

Wow! If that's correct, then that's really quite amazing. We'll be able to pull off really cool temps and at the same time, near desktop performance. I may hold back until 20nm or even 16nm though

 

I edited my post a little bit. Sorry about that.

The comparisons between GTX 670 and GTX 680M against GTX 980M and GTX 970 is a bit wrong since 670 and 680M was a bit apart in performance while GTX 980M and GTX 970 is very close.
They shaved off 70W with the GTX 600 cards, now they only shaved off around 40W with the GTX 900 cards since 970 only have around 140W TDP.

But 980M should atleast run as cool as GTX 680M I`m sure

 

And that also suggests it will have a lot of room for overclocking, just like the 680M. I hope they are true.

 

Yeah, GTX 780 Ti ++ performance here we come

 

Fingers crossed Nvidia doesn't screw up the vBIOS again!

 

Don't be so cruel Cloud! 780m is still very much capable of running those games at high fps with a setting or two disabled hahaha

 

It gives me pain when I have to turn down settings for the first time.

 

hehehe, gotta have all the candies you know. Cant settle for anything less although I`m sure a couple things disabled isnt so bad anyway

That said, 20 games+ with less than 60FPS maxed out is a bit much. Maxwell is needed for sure

Nah, 880M was more of a last resort to get some income while GTX 900 series will probably get their fully attention. Overclocking and such probably needs custom vbios like always though. Atleast over that +135MHz limit.

 

+1

The 780M can still max those at 30+ FPS. Turn off AA for more.

 

AA is one of the more taxing graphics options. (But there will always be the thought at the back of your head saying: your card is no longer superior)

 

If you have a 3k or 4k display you won't need AA.

 

I`ve heard that before but it was in context with downsampling. Does it look just as good with 3K without AA as with 1080p and say 4xAA?

 

When I was researching 4k screens to see if I wanted one (come on >60 hz 17.3"+ display please) everything I found said either; you can drop AA entirely, or you can divide it by 4x (so 4x to none, or 16x to 4x) without losing any quality. This is just 2nd hand though, not getting one myself till they put a decent one in a laptop.

 

Thanks. Thats very interesting.

Wonder how much more demanding say 3K with no AA is vs 1080p +4MSAA.

 

Darn it, if I had the 3k screen option in my laptop (which wasn't available upon early release) I would gladly tell you the difference. Well, what the difference with a GTX 860m at least. I myself would be curious about this.

 

3840x2160 is better than 4x MSAA but it renders 4 TIMES more pixels and therefore is super demanding, including of Memory bus.

As for 3K... I downsampled Left4Dead 2 from 2880x1620 and it was better than 2xMSAA + 2x Transparency SSAA but I had to lowest all settings to be able to play at constant 60 fps on my overclocked GT 650M/GTX 660M

 

Found 1 benchmark that shows both with 4x and no AA on a 3k monitor: MSI GT60 2PE Dominator Pro - Gaming Performance and Battery Life | bit-tech.net

Battlefield 4: MSI GT60 2PE Dominator Pro
3k no AA: average 28 / min 21
3k x4 AA: average 19 / min 16
1080p no AA: average 38 / min 32

hmm looked further and pretty sure BF4 uses a rather brutal form of MSAA not a hundred% certain though. These might be around the best improvement you can hope for if thats true though.

 

Remember MSAA only samples edges of solid geometry so it's faster and lower quality than FSAA and high resolution.

 

BF4 High preset has no MSAA.

 

Well im very surprised if the 980m is infact 50% faster than the 880m that would be an amazing leap but sadly not big enough for me to purchase a new laptop. I purchased my clevo p170sm laptop last year and so far its been able to handle everything i have chucked at it with some graphics tweaks and setting adjustments running a gtx 770m.

I do run a overclock on the 770m temperatures drift between 70-80c but im getting performance of an 860m so cant complain. I feel that if the 980m can match the performance of a gtx 970, mobile computing will be very competitive in the future if we can somewhat stay tuned with desktop GPU's.

I felt the 680m,780m,880m where all garbage IMHO but the new 980m thats one hell of a beast if its 50% faster but i still wont upgrade as im waiting for pascal.

 

880M might be garbage, but 680M and 780M most certainly aren't.

 

I'm sorry but how are people making up these 50% faster statistics?
http://videocardz.com/52166/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-gtx-970-gtx-980m-gtx-970m-3dmark-performance

We don't even know if these are real and we'll have to wait until Nvidia officially announce anything. (Probably Game 24 event on the 18th September-gtx970/980 desktop variants most likely).

I don't particularly believe those performance jumps, but we shall see.

 

*high five* yay for someone else not buying into the hype lol

 

33% slower == 50% faster.

150 = 50% more than 100.
100 = 33% less than 150.

It's all about perspective. If you have a 880M, then a 980M (at stock, before we fix it with a modded vBIOS as we probably will need to do) WILL be 50% stronger than a 880M.

 

I thought most of them are just rebranded garbage ?.

 

680M = GK 104 kepler based on 670, though with slower memory and stock clocks (stock clocks easily fixable, memory not as easily). 780M = full GK104 based on GTX 680, bumped clocks and massively bumped memory, well oc-able to desktop 680 levels. 880M = rebranded 780M with + 200 or so core clock, +4GB vRAM and a serious overheating issue. The rest of the GTX 8xxM series are very good; 870M is like a OC'd, better 680M instead based off the 660Ti but with better memory clocks potential and the 860M 4GB is based off the GTX 760, which is a pretty nice midrange card.

 

It seems like the same argument is presented in this thread over and over again, each time in an attempt to persuade a different individual one way or another.

Use the search function. Put search criteria in quotes to focus the search.

 

Search function police detected.

:hi2:

I was mearly just saying that they are rebrands. I shall use the search function though and post in month old threads cheers!.

 

I wasn't trying to be rude or anything. If it seemed that way, I apologize. I've just been helping people a lot over the past couple of years on this forum, and I'd say about 80% of the concerns or questions I come across can be answered through a simple search. :thumbsup: I think people try to search but don't understand how to use the search feature properly, which is completely understandable. This is one of my concerns about switching over to XenForo (see the announcement section).

Anyway, yeah, the 880M is basically an exact re-brand of the 780M with more vRAM and a boost in clock speed. Ironically, the 780M outperforms the 880M is almost everything it does. The 780M is not a re-brand of the 680M, they just come from the "same family," so to speak.

 

I fully appreciate and understand you, thank you for clearing that up. I was being a bit of a jerk though, so apologies for the search function police comment.

Yes i am fully aware of the rebranding market strategy by nvidia. Add another 4gb to the 880m this makes it like 50% better than the 780m because it has 4gb more memory ... :hi2: yeah hi nvidia not working on me i have autism and im extremely intelligent but nice try.

Also the hilarious thing is that i expect the 980m to have 12gb or something with the latter being its better somehow ... not that 8gb was enough previously lol.

 

I still don't believe it can be that much more powerful, providing the desktop GTX980 and GTX970 scores are correct.

I really don't think Nvidia would ignore the opportunity to produce much faster desktop cards considering they are easier to cool and cheaper to produce. It doesn't make sense that the GTX970 is only a little faster than the GTX980m.

I think these scores are complete and utter BS. We know that the desktop GTX970 will be faster than the GTX780. And the GTX980 will have to be faster than the 780 ti since it's is 15% faster than the GTX780. Else it wouldn't really justify a price upgrade. However the mobile GPU scores look a little too high. Or the desktop ones too low.

We just have to wait until the 18th to find out more for definite. But really people, don't get your hopes up about these mobile cards, at least not to these extreme high level jumps.

 

I feel that 10% of this thread is worth reading. The other 90% is people saying " Yeah, 900m? Nah, I have my 780m, which is great, I've been doing that, oc this, playing that, what a great gpu 780m is...I love my notebook, I love my life. It's all roses and sunshines".

What interest me the most is how do people is certain about 900m performance if Nvidia haven't showed anything yet, and we don't have leaks, only rumor. It may not even be released this year.

 

The thing you are missing in your reasoning is that desktop and mobile processors are restricted in very different ways. Essentially desktop processors are limited by power to area ratio, and architectural bottlenecks (ROPs, memory bandwidth, l2 cache, etc...)
Mobile processors on the other hand are almost entirely limited by power per watt. Its not that they can't be limited in other ways, but they almost always hit that limit first due to the systems max power draw, and cooling potential.

Maxwell, going off 850m/860m however is very efficient power/watt compared to size on chip. So the desktop chips are using all the available space while only being at around an expected 170w TDP, unlike previous generations in the 230w+ TDP range. This means the Mobile version can come far closer to the desktop.

We may see the gap either widen again, or close with 20nm or 14nm or such in the future though, Maxwell 28nm just seems to really favor low TDP mobile GPUs.

 

The GM104 and GM204 chips should be fully transferrable into mobile. The 780M and GK104 was proof of that. GF114 was also properly usable. Thing is, with Kepler, GK100/GK110 took a long time to come out, even with the 780 and Titan cards still having core clusters disabled. Only the 780Ti and Titan Black which came out fairly late in Kepler's lifespan isn't transferrable.

If the GM104/204 series are 970/980's architecture, I fully believe that at least 90% of their power can be transferred into mobile chips. What I DON'T believe will reach is the eventual GM100/GM200 series chips, in something like the rumored "Titan 2" that may come out later on.

But yes, we will have to wait. In my case though, I have a lot of desire to run games on single GPU sometimes, or play games which do not use SLI, and with the recent unoptimizations of new games and such, I would think that 980Ms would do me quite well. Especially if I need to run a game fullscreen on single-GPU so I can stream it properly, etc. I mean 780Ms are not really any kind of pushover in power, but power means nothing if a game can't use it well, and games are not using them well >_>. If I was just a gamer (and if my PC would work properly all the bloody time) I would not even consider the 900M series, as SLI 780Ms fullscreen gaming is perfectly fine, especially for 120Hz.

 

On a quarter-related note, just bought a 2 month old EVGA superclocked 750 Ti for $110. Can't wait to fire it up and see what baby Maxwell can do. Sadly I may have to stick with this card for a while, since I've now decided to wait until there are rumors of a 980 Ti.

 

Not using your laptop much? Or just swapping to desktop for now with an extreme CPU?

 

Well the original plan was to switch over to a 4930K + 980 SLI desktop setup, but thanks to a few people here as well as some other forums I've now decided to wait for 980 Ti. I have reasons to believe it's a thing but even if it isn't I still don't feel like being an early adopter for 980.

So I'll use the laptop for heavy-duty gaming as 780M SLI still has plenty of horsepower. The desktop I'll probably have equally as much fun (or frustration) tweaking the 4930K. Originally wanted to throw in a bottom of the barrel GT610 to get it up and running and switch to 980 as soon as it launched, but now since I'll be waiting for much longer I decided to go with something with a bit more ooomph. Plus it just didn't seem right to pair a 4930K with a throwaway Fermi card lol

 

Where did you get this? I see it has half the memory bus and ROP's.

Wasn't it the other day that someone was saying what a joke the crippled Kepler 860M is? Like how it performs worse than the Maxwell 860M at almost twice the TDP...