This is one of the most exciting thing that was announced this week by NVIDIA is the GTX980 for laptops; not a GTX980M, not a separate chip for mobile graphics, but a full working GTX980 GPU chip just like how you would get on a desktop GPU. Is that even possible or comparable? Let us give you a rundown from our experience at the press conference and handson.
Now, one question I am sure you guys will be asking is, how in the world did NVIDIA fit a GTX980 GPU in a mobile PCB? Is the GPU different from the desktop PCB? Well, we were told that NVIDIA actually select GTX980 GPUs that has certain requirements fit for laptops, all from the same batch of GPUs used for the desktop. Quite an amazing feat since this is quite tedious and resource consuming. I was told that the GPU you see on the mobile PCB is exactly the same chip found on the desktop PCB, which is probably why the performance is comparable between the both.
On the mobile PCB of the GTX980, you will also find 7GBPS DRAM memory, 4-8 phase power supply (the current GTX980M has 3-4 phase), while the inductors and capacitors has been tweaked to get 50% higher peak current in order to give the mobile GPU enough current to power it.
Well, good news for overclockers. This new chip has unlocked GPU and CPU, allowing enthusiasts to overclock their gaming laptops to however they want it to be. Apparently, there is also twice the amount of cooling although fan controls is based on the manufacturers discretion. As for overclocking performance, it also depends on individual brand and models, but to give it a general benchmark, you can overclock to about 50% faster.
To ensure this GPU is future ready, the GTX980 for laptops is VR ready, hence it can be used to offer the first VR notebook in the world. Since VR is demanding, needing at least 5 million pixels in 90fps to generate a scene, the GTX980 in a laptop would be able to cope with such a demand with an all-rounded platform.
During the press conference, we were given a chance to have a good look at how the GTX980 performs on a few laptops from Aorus, Clevo, Asus and MSI. These were then compared with a desktop running on GTX980 and benchmarked side by side. All of the laptops on demo were on Skylake except for the Aorus, which was on the Broadwell CPU. Check out our images of the benchmarks and a video of the Auros notebook being hooked to 3 1080p monitors.
