NVIDIA Announces GeForce GTX 980 GPU For High-End Gaming Notebooks 90
MojoKid writes: NVIDIA is taking things is a slightly different direction today, at the ultra-high-end of their mobile graphics offering, introducing a "new" mobile GPU implementation, that's not really a mobile part at all, the GeForce GTX 980. Notice, there's no "M" on the end of that model number. NVIDIA is betting that the enthusiasts that are most likely to buy a notebook with a GeForce GTX 980 in it are savvy enough to understand the difference. Through some careful binning and optimization of the components that accompany the GPU, including the memory, voltage regulation module, and PCB, NVIDIA was able to take the full desktop GeForce GTX 980 GPU and cram it into mobile form factors. The mobile flavor of the GeForce GTX 980 features selectively binned GPUs that are able to achieve high frequencies at lower-than-typical voltages. And those GPUs are paired to 7Gbps GDDR5 memory and a heat sink with up to 2X the capacity of typical solutions. Notebooks powered by this GPU will be unlocked, and fully overclockable.The performance of the GeForce GTX 980 will also allow notebooks powered by the GPU to push multiple screens or power VR gear. NVIDIA was demoing a GTX 980-powerd Clevo notebook at an event in New York, connected to a trio of 1080P monitors, running GTA V at smooth framerates.
Ten Gauge Power Cord (Score:1)
So does the charger for this monster have a 10 gauge cable, to prevent cable overheating?
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Actually, the power and cooling requirements might not be that bad. When the full-sized version of the 980 first appeared back in 2014, it came as a bit of a surprise. It wasn't, in some respects, the generational leap in terms of raw performance over its direct predecessor, the 780, that some had expected. But it was significantly cooler and more power efficient; startlingly so for what was, at the time, Nvidia's top-end card.
The official specs list the power requirement of the desktop-version card itself
The only Gaming Notebooks are P&P (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would anyone game on a ultra-light budget-oriented laptop that has no way to provide adequate cooling or power to game?
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Never gonna happen.
In the corporate world, physical desktop machines will stick around for a long time.
And as long as you pay a significant premium for a laptop which isn't as easily upgraded, a lot of home users will continue to buy a desktop.
With a desktop you can swap out pretty much any component, with a laptop not so much. You can pretty much have a desktop machine built to spec, whereas a laptop is always going to be a much more limited men
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I used to have a 'gaming' laptop, because I traveled a lot, and still wanted to play games. A desktop is
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That game sounds awesome.
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Most people in the corporate world use laptops not towers.
My job (UHC) and my last job (KCI) only assigned laptops to mobile personal and people that might need to work from home. Most of the other hundred thousand employees use desktops. There just isn't a need for laptops
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And as long as you pay a significant premium for a laptop which isn't as easily upgraded, a lot of home users will continue to buy a desktop.
That's pretty hilarious. Even 3 years ago, laptops made up around 70-75% of home computer sales vs desktops. And the laptop share is probably even higher today. "A lot of home users" are not doing what you claim because the people buying desktops are an ever shrinking minority.
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But that doesn't include the gamer marker this is aimed at. Any new laptop using the 980M will almost certainly be price above $1,500. For half the price you could build a comparably specked desktop.
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If desktops can be upgraded easily and are bought less often than laptops, the two statements are not contradictory at all.
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I think he meant gaming/workstation laptops.. not the garden variety macbook pro with intel video and slow cpu. The more accurate term for these is 'portables' because while they have batteries, they don't last more than an hour usually.
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Maybe, but the person they responded to was obviously talking about the market as a whole.
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Yeah, right ...
So you disagree with the sales data from computer OEMs?
Every year appears an idiot saying that the desktop is dead.
Good for them. I stated no such thing.
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Those things are irrelevant to most buyers. When laptops become more on-par with desktops as far as expense (and they're pretty damn close already), the desktop will be as good as dead.
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I've yet to see a Laptop be even close to a desktop in price. I've always seen that a laptop is at least twice the cost of a desktop that's 2 or 3 times the power.
Case in point: My wife has used several sites to try to design her dream gaming laptop. Every time she's come up with a system that's no less than $4,000 and usually closer to $5,000 in price. For ~$4,000 on NewEgg I can build a Dual Xenon (12-Cores total) server with 64GB of RAM (expandable to 512GB), Quad Gigabit Ethernet Ports, and Quad SLI
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Again, that may be relevant to you (a very specific subset of people) but most people end up buying their laptop at WalMart/BestBuy and there it's:
Here's a desktop, Core i3, 4GB RAM, 1TB hard drive: $399
Here's a laptop, Core i3, 6GB RAM, 500GB hard drive: $399
The fact that the Core i3's both have different model names or even from entirely different platforms is largely irrelevant, as long as the MHz is close and the GB matches, they're on par to most people. And some people will do the research and find ou
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If a customer is looking at computers on that low of the spectrum, they wouldn't give a flying fuck about anything in this article. If a person is looking for something to do email and facebook and maybe a few flash games, they wouldn't need a desktop; and they sure as hell wouldn't need a bloody nVidia 980 in whatever the hell piece of crap device they buy. This article is about nVidia putting their newest gaming graphics card into a laptop form factor. This is an article targeting the gaming and perfo
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I'm not so sure about that; at my new (software dev) job I asked for one desktop and one laptop (expecting a Macbook and a Dell tower or something), but got issued a Thinkpad and a Mac Mini. I have yet to see another new employee get a computer with actual ATX-compatible components.
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Never gonna happen. In the corporate world, physical desktop machines will stick around for a long time.
In the workstation market perhaps, otherwise I think laptops for portability and thin clients for on-site work is taking over. That way they can just provision you more resources in a data center somewhere and if it breaks just grab a different thin client.
And as long as you pay a significant premium for a laptop which isn't as easily upgraded, a lot of home users will continue to buy a desktop.
For the premium? Sure. But my impression is relatively few people do anything but the simplest of upgrades, the kind you potentially could do on a laptop too unless it's soldered in except maybe a few gamers.
You can pretty much have a desktop machine built to spec, whereas a laptop is always going to be a much more limited menu.
It's easier to go a little overkill these days.
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Why have 4K at 17", though? Or even 18"? I have a 28" 4K desktop monitor and it's gorgeous, but I can't even make out the pixels when I'm at a reasonable using distance. What benefit is 4K over 1440 on a laptop, other than requiring beefier gaming components?
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I'd be curious to see if this does even better in a similar form factor.
Please outline a scenario where it could do better in a small form factor?
Congratulations, you can theoretically game on your notebook. For 10 minutes on a fully charged battery. While suffering third-degree burns to your crotch and hands.
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Well, if you assume that gaming is always about pushing the most pixels on the most powerful/power-hungry hardware, then no.
For any other definition of gaming, why would you want GTX 980?
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Why would anyone game on a ultra-light budget-oriented laptop that has no way to provide adequate cooling or power to game?
Gaming laptops are neither ultra-light or budget-oriented. Some of them weigh over 10 lbs. because they need to be thick enough to cram the high-end GPUs and other components inside as well as the cooling system to keep it from burning a hole through a desk. They also typically cost several thousand dollars because they're using the premium components that can cost more than another person's entire system.
I don't know why people buy something like this as it's clearly not for me. I'd rather make a mid-ra
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I don't know why people buy something like this as it's clearly not for me.
There, you said it. Different users have different needs.
Personnaly I would never go back to a desktop. It takes too much space, and I love that I can do gaming, and browsing, and anytime I want I just pick up my laptop and bring it with me anywhere in the house.
I could have a gaming desktop AND a cheap laptop, but then I'd have 2 machines to maintain, (on top of the 5 other laptops in my household).
And to be sure I can acces my data on both computers, I'd have to either duplicate it or put it on a network
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Sadly, most people want their laptops, cars with auto transmissions, and 1GB data plans (not even enough for a 90's 56K modem).
I think it's significant that if the Oculus Rift succeed, these GTX 980 laptops will probably be the only ones that meet recommended specs. Also, current nVidias won't take advantage of important DX12 features, so they've been doing things like not overpricing new cards, GameWorks, etc.
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Not all of us use it for gaming. Some use the the GPU for heterogeneous computing R&D.
I use my desktop i7 + a discrete GTX 980Ti for (game) dev.
I _also_ use a MacBook Pro with a "decent" mobile 750M for WebGL (shader) testing.
Since I can't lug around my desktop, having a portable laptop that doesn't have a complete crap GPU is extremely convenient.
Different strokes for different folks.
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Simple: These cards are not targeted at ultralights. What's different is that this is the desktop 980 chip in a laptop format. Normally, nvidia disables a few cores, underclocks, and adds an 'm' to the model. They didn't do that this time. Instead, they left the chip intact, binned for good ones, and modified the power regulation. Like the other high end 'm' gtx models, you'll find these in gaming machines which are way bigger and heavier than ultralights.
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Don't think of it as a laptop that you just game on.
Think of it as a small gaming computer you can have on your lap, with built-in UPS, that you can also take to work or on holiday.
Seriously, gaming notebooks are the best combination of things - powerful, off-grid, mobile, small, portable. I've taken to buying a better laptop and not bothering with a desktop at all. With all your games, all your work, all your VM's, and you can take it anywhere and game anywhere that there's a plug socket - LAN parties, o
"High-End Gaming Notebook" (Score:3)
I know those words, but in that context they make no sense.
Re:"High-End Gaming Notebook" (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it will have zero battery life, need to be thicker to hold the cooling gear and huge video card, and need an external monitor to save weight.
They'll also remove the keyboard and touchpad to prevent overheating.
Essentially it will ship as a big black box about 18"x18"x8". ;-)
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It's not about playing GTA V on three monitors. It's showing you that it can handle three times what GTA V needs in a demo.
And you might be able to buy something cheaper but it's not going to be small enough or light enough to lug around, come with a built-in UPS (laptop battery), etc.
Don't forget - if it can do three GTA V screens simultaneously, that means it can do one GTA V screen at 1/3rd power. And still scale for a good time after you've bought it (which makes that investment more worthwhile).
Perso
Thanks, nVidia... (Score:2)
Now please stick in in an external Thunderbolt 3 box, so I don't have to buy a $2500 gaming laptop that weighs a stone and will be obsolete in six months when the next GPU comes out.
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In the UK, it's 14 pounds (lb) of weight. In the imperial system that pre-dates anything metric and even gets the symbols it uses from the Latin (lb = libra).
Come back when your measurement system is several thousand years old.
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Stone as a unit of measure does not exist in the US, it's UK and Ireland thing. Ignoramuses like you seem to think anything non metric is the US but allow me to educated you that the former British colonies still use plenty of imperial measurements. In the UK and Ireland if you ask someone what they weigh they are more likely to answer in stone than kilos and they still buy their beer in pints.
can they mass produce this thing? (Score:2)
Normal part, just binned for high speed so that it still operates at the desired clock rate while powered from a lower voltage supply.
Essentially just the best of the best will make the cut; this makes very uncertain the actual number of viable dies out of any given wafer batch.
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If they have been producing the part for any length of time they should be able to predict within a couple percent the number of parts per wafer run they will get.
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Wafer yield is an imperfect science, you can't predict it within a couple percent what it will be except if it's very high (90% and more).
Moreover, they're talking about binning the rare part that somehow hits the target speed at much lower VDD. I don't think one can estimate the chance of this occurring in a batch.
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There is a reason I said wafer run, not per wafer. A run of 5000 wafers is going to generate roughly the same number of "good" parts on mature processes. Nvidia has been producing these parts for almost a year, they have the process down, they should and probably are predicting their numbers to within a few percent on a 5000 wafer batch.
Makes perfect sense to me (Score:1)
I've got a Sager Clevo gaming notebook with an 860M, and there's nothing to hate about it. It lasts a long time on a charge. It plays most games at their highest res. It runs Linux great. It's light, with an SSD for the OS drive. It runs two external monitors when I'm using it for work. It has no DVD, so it's lightweight. It doesn't run the Nvidia card when I'm not playing 3d games (uses the onboard Intel graphics). This GTX980 on a Clevo would likely have all those same benefits. You folks trash talking ga
Use Case? (Score:2)
Can someone point out to this tired old man what the point of this is supposed to be? Serious question. Is it for something other than "enthusiast" market e-peen?
Look, I get why some folks want to game on a notebook. But pretty much every single notebook with a nVidia GTX980M will play pretty much every single game at high framerates on it's screen's native res. But they've got a notebook pushing 3x1920x1080 at this NY event...is this what it's supposed to be used for? Is it really "mobile" when I nee
To everybody bashing gaming laptops... (Score:4, Insightful)
Until very recently I was traveling for work every week, and the gaming laptop on which I am typing this post saved my sanity and liver in plenty of hotel rooms. It is a Clevo P150SM-A, weighing in at about 12lbs including AC adapter. It was not fun lugging it around airports twice a week while waiting for connecting flights. But it did the job, and I could play Fallout, Skyrim, Bioshock, Dying Light and many other games at very respectable frame rates. Even now that my traveling days are done, I am sitting on my balcony with a cup of tea, enjoying the end of the Canadian summer. I can also set it up in my living room while my significant other is watching TV.
I had gaming desktops for about a decade, and I just got tired of being stuck at the same desk in the evenings, while spending my mornings at a different desk in the office.
I am aware that a laptop's performance will never come close to that of a desktop. But if you cannot understand why someone will make that trade-off, don't click reply.
All that said, I am surprised nobody mentioned the significant issue that Nvidia has with the Windows 10 upgrade. NBR is full of reports of black screens after upgrading, and the cause seems to be the Nvidia driver overwriting the LCD EEPROM. It seems Alienwares are particularly affected, with a few Clevos as well.
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I myself can't even stand lugging one from the living room to the bedroom! Can't wait till there's a decent one of these:
http://www.kitguru.net/compone... [kitguru.net]
http://hexus.net/tech/news/per... [hexus.net]
I'd love to have it connected to the monitor of my desk and connect my slim-and-light laptop to it for gaming. Even more awesome would be the fact that one could have an enclosure and be able to even swap out the graphics card!
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As long as you're fine having your desktop on all the time, the steam gamestream mode actually works extremely well. I built a HTPC and stuck a high end graphics card in it for couch gaming, but soon after, they made their gamestream service respectable. I moved the graphics card into the desktop and SLI'd it and instead used on-chip graphics for the HTPC. The HTPC played games as flawless as before using the streaming with better quality b/c of more power on the desktop. I'm looking forward to the stea