NVIDIA’s GeForce 800M Lineup for Laptops and Battery Boost
by Jarred Walton on March 12, 2014 12:00 PM ESTClosing Thoughts
Overall, NVIDIA’s mobile GPU solutions continue to be the de facto standard bearer for gaming laptops. AMD’s upcoming Kaveri APUs will almost certainly do well in the budget sector, but users that want more performance – from both the CPU as well as the GPU – will likely continue to go with NVIDIA Optimus solutions, and if you’re the type of gamer that wants to be able to run at least 1080p with high quality settings, you’ll need at least a GTX class GPU to get there. The good news is that you should have plenty of choices in the coming months, and not only are we seeing faster GPUs but many laptops are starting to come out with high quality 3K and 4K displays.
Speaking of which, I also want to note that anyone that thinks “gaming laptops” are a joke either needs to temper their requirements or else give some of the latest offerings a shot. While it’s not possible to simply run all games at 1080p (or QHD+) with maxed out settings without a beefy GPU, even the GT 750M GDDR5 is able to deliver a good gaming experience for most titles at 900p High/1080p Medium settings. The GTX 850M should be quite a bit faster (~60%) than the GT 750M, and we should see it in notebooks that may cost as little as $1000. It’s no surprise then that NVIDIA thinks 2014 gaming notebook sales will be “off the charts”.
As is often the case, we haven’t been sampled any notebooks prior to the launch of the latest 800M series, but we should get some in the near future. We’re looking forward to Maxwell parts in particular, though for now it appears we’ll have to wait a bit for the high-end Maxwell SKUs to arrive (just like on the desktop). It will also be interesting to see how the GTX 860M Kepler and Maxwell variants compare in terms of performance, power, and battery life; I suspect the Maxwell parts will be the ones to get for optimal performance and power requirements, but we shall see.
The latest updates from NVIDIA aren't revolutionary in most areas, but Battery Boost at least could open the doors for more people to consider gaming notebooks. There's always the question of long-term reliability and upgradeability, which are inherently easier to deal with on a desktop, but with a modern laptop I can quite easily connect to an external display, keyboard, mouse, and speakers and never realize that I'm not using a desktop – until I launch a game, at least. What's even better is that when it comes time to take a trip, if all your data already resides on a laptop there's nothing to worry about; you just pack up and leave. That convenience factor alone is enough for many to have made the switch to using a laptop full-time, and I'm not far off from joining them. 2014 may prove to be the year where I finally make the switch.
Last but not least, for those that like the unfiltered NVIDIA slides, you can find those in the gallery below.
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
91 Comments
View All Comments
JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
They did drop the "GT" on the 840M/830M/820M.JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
And adding to that, keeping GTX allows them the ability to say, "GTX is required for Battery Boost, GameStream, and ShadowPlay."jeffbui - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
Is there a reason why the GPUs have been stuck at the 28nm node for so long? IIRC the 600 series was also a 28nm part.TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
simple. TSMC's 20nm process STILL isnt ready for mass use. until they are finished, both AMD and NVIDIA are stuck at 28nm. it's too bad, as laptop GPUs are screaming for 20nm gpus.Guspaz - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
GeForce Experience is pretty awesome. It used to be that whenever I got a new game, I'd have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the right settings for it; the default settings would usually either run way too slow or way too fast. But with GeForce experience, they've already tested the game with the same CPU and GPU that I've got, and its defaults are generally a good balance of quality and performance. So what used to be an involved process of play-tweak-play-tweak-play is now just a "mash button and go".That said, it could still use some polish. I don't know if it's still in beta, but it feels like it. It's not uncommon for it to start reporting "game cannot be optimized" for games that it DOES support (and that you have previously optimized), which usually requires a reboot. And a few months ago nVidia did a self-update that caused it to go completely nuts, locking up the machine (a trip to their forums indicated it happened to everybody who got the update before they fixed it).
Concillian - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
"Where things get a little interesting is when we get to the GTX 860M. As we’ve seen in the past, NVIDIA will have two different models of the 860M available, and they’re really not very similar (though performance will probably be pretty close)."no... performance won't be close. This is a laptop, where power efficiency is part of performance, and you me, and the author all know power consumption of the "Maxwell 860M" is going to be less than the "Kepler 860M" the article should be absolutely SLAMMING nVidia for calling two very different parts the same thing. The video card numbering schemes are confusing enough to laymen (I get asked to try to explain it regularly, since I'm the go to hardware guy in my circle of friends, relatives, co-workers, casual acquaintances and all their friends...) It's going to be impossible to tell them that it depends on which GTX860 they get and they probably can't tell which they'll get until they get the computer...
JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
We've complained many times about overlapping names in the past. There were for instance two completely different versions of the GT 555M (which later became the GT 635M I believe). And performance and battery life are not "the same" -- particularly since the GPU is usually off when you're on battery power. If you want to play games while unplugged, well, there it could be a different story. Anyway, we pointed it out, said it was a dumb overlap more or less (the "interesting" was meant as a sarcastic interesting, not a "wow, this is really interesting"; perhaps that wasn't properly conveyed though I'd suggest the rest of the text supports that), and moved on. If the Kepler variant is widely used, we'll certainly complain about it.Runamok81 - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
Best news here? nVidia finally dropped the silly GTX suffix. Bump that stock price. Sanity is prevailing.Death666Angel - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
Nope.Anders CT - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
GTX 860M and GTX 860M are two different GPU's using different architectures?That is a pretty lame naming scheme.