Introducing AMD’s Radeon 7000M and NVIDIA’s GeForce 600M Mobile GPUs
by Jarred Walton on December 7, 2011 2:45 AM ESTNVIDIA’s GeForce 600M Parts
We just covered the AMD side of things, but yesterday NVIDIA quietly refreshed their entry-level and midrange mobile GPUs in a similar manner. We weren’t briefed on the updates, most likely because there’s not much to say. Like AMD there are three "new" 600M parts. Here’s the overview of what NVIDIA is offering, with the previous generation equivalents listed for reference.
| NVIDIA GeForce GT 635M, GT 630M, and 610M Specifications | ||||||
| GeForce GT 635M | GeForce GT 555M | GeForce GT 630M | GeForce GT 540M | GeForce 610M | GeForce 520MX | |
| Core Name | GF106/GF108 | GF106/GF108 | GF108 | GF108 | GF119 | GF119 |
| Stream Processors | 144/96 | 144/96 | 96 | 96 | 48 | 48 |
| Texture Units | 24/16 | 24/16 | 16 | 16 | 8 | 8 |
| ROPs | 24/4 | 24/4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Core Clock | 675/753MHz | 675/753MHz | 672MHz | 672MHz | 900MHz | 900MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1.8/3.6GHz DDR3/GDDR5 | 1.8/3.14GHz DDR3/GDDR5 | Up to 900MHz (1.8GHz) DDR3 | 900MHz (1.8GHz) DDR3 | 900MHz (1.8GHz) DDR3 | 900MHz (1.8GHz) DDR3 |
| Memory Bus Width | 192/128-bit | 192/128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 64-bit | 64-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 43.2/57.6GB/s | 43.2/50.2GB/s | 28.8GB/s | 28.8GB/s | 14.4GB/s | 14.4GB/s |
NVIDIA has the specifications up for their 600M parts, and it appears that they’ll be doing a straight rebadge without changing the clock speeds from the 500M equivalents—in fact, they’ll even keep the craziness that is the GT 555M. The only difference we could find is that GT 635M GDDR5 variants may have slightly more memory bandwidth (or more likely is that the spec page just doesn't adequately describe the bipolar nature of the product). What they will be changing is the apparent positioning of the products. The GT 630M and 610M drop 10 points from the model number, while the GT 635M drops 20 points; that appears to leave room for future GT 640M/650M parts, though nothing has been announced as yet. We also don’t have information on pricing, but there’s a possibility that with the drop in model number the prices will also be lower.
Like the AMD 7000M launch, GeForce 600M looks to be more about marketing and product positioning than anything. Mobile GPUs are about a generation behind their desktop counterparts, so with the renaming both AMD and NVIDIA are paving the way for new high-end GPUs to replace the current HD 6990M and GTX 580M. Thus, when we see the desktop HD 7970 and GTX 680 (or whatever they end up being named), we’ll should also see HD 7970M and GTX 680M. If recent history holds, those will end up being mobile variants of HD 7700 and GTX 660 (whatever those entail).
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RussianSensation - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
That may be true, but rebadging parts is doing nothing to move the industry forward for either camp. Sad showing indeed. They didn't even move these parts to 28nm to try and reduce their power consumption. It would have been far better to cut the prices on current line-ups to bring more performance to the consumer at lower price levels, but no. The performance improvements in graphics industry on the mobile side seem to be getting worse and worse every new generation, while the transparency behind specs for those cards is also lacking.Wreckage - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
All the rumors said the 7000 series was going to be this epic update? Bulldozer part II.serpretetsky - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
rumors about the 7000 series weren't talking about any rebadged parts. Amd hasn't released the 7000 series everyone is talking about yet. We're still going to see whether or not it's Bulldozer part II.kolobos - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
You probably thought these Radeon 7000M GPU are new products by AMD. And these NVIDIA 600M are new? NOPE! No they’re not! They’re old! They have been bastardized by their developers in California, U.S.Look how RAM is cheap and overproduced, we won't have notebooks with less than 4 GB. Nope! It’s just Chuck Testa.
Oh no, non-TN panels are finally can be produced for reasonable price. It's probably hard to find monitors, TV and notebooks with crappy TN these days. Nope! Chuck Testa.
Hold on a second, new SSD are probably better and more durable than old ones? Nope! It’s just Chuck Testa with another realistic mount.
Call Chuck Testa for the most life like dead innovations around. Period.
Did they just create OLED TV after 10 years of waiting? Nope!
LV3 - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
The GPU industry needs to find a way to pull out of TSMC - you can almost always link a problem nVidia or AMD is having to 'fab issues at TSMC' or 'TSMC is late on the next process'But shame on AMD for rebadging, OEMs will charge a premium for no additional performance. nVidia did the same thing, but AMD was supposed to be the one who doesn't do that. Not anymore.
Roland00Address - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
Globalfoundries? One of the other fabs?Globalfoundries is currently several months behind TSMC in production, and it is to my understanding that the other fabs are even further behind TSMC. Only Intel is developing there factories faster than TSMC is.
Belard - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
AMD seems to be on a fast track to stupidville.It's pointless and stupid to repackage the last years crap.
Anyone who knows the difference can see this is stupid. So when the real 7000 series comes out... Now you have an older tech with a new name... The confusion isnt worth it AMD. Nvidia has been doing this from years. Why follow them? Same stupid crap like Firefox 8 or 9 whatever the frack browser it is that I no longer want to touch. Between ff 4.0 and 8.0 (4.4 really) Opera has had 4 releases that did more... 11.11 .50 .51 .52 and recently 11.60 which has not made the news like stupid ff "8".
Add this garbage to amd's new K Llano chips... Like as if anyone who knows what a K chip is, would be fooled by this naming trick from AMD. Llano isn't in the same game as i5 CPUs... Neither is the slightly faster and embarrassing FX chips.
Concillian - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
We're launching a GPU that will be running at... hmm, we aren't going to tell you.It will have memory bandwidth of... guess!
I know people are more interested in discussing that it's a re-badge, but really what is the point of having a launch with no specs at all.
If they didn't already have the parts on the shelves since they're the same as last gen, then this would be a textbook paper launch, but since they do, what do you call this, I mean other than dumb.
ICBM - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
Apparently they fired the wrong people in the marketing department. This is the kind of crap they need to get away from.alent1234 - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
sounds like it's a paper launch with no products for months to come except hot airi heard Intel wants to start renting out Fab capacity to others and with TSMC's problems i can see ATI and Nvidia going to Intel