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.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
I've never been much of a fan of SLI in laptops. Scaling is never perfect, often there is more difficulty with drivers and game compatibility, and battery life can take a hit as well. I mentioned it didn't support SLI, but I can't say it bothers me much. 860M Maxwell supports it (apparently) and will use the same chip, so really it's only going to be a small bump in price to go from two 850M to two 860M -- assuming an OEM wants to do SLI 860M that is.Harmattan - Wednesday, March 12, 2014 - link
I think the thesis of this article is right on: it's a great time for gaming notebooks. The idea just four years ago that I could play the newest games at highest settings at 2560x1600 at more than respectable FPS was unthinkable. My Sager with dual 780ms does that with legs to spare, and I should be able to do this with a SINGLE GPU once high-end Maxwell mobile chips come later this year -- simply amazing.IntelUser2000 - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
"we’re talking about a feeble 16GB/s of memory bandwidth – that’s lower than what most desktops and laptops now have for system memory, as DDR3-1600 with a 128-bit interface will do 25.6GB/s."Actually the shared aspect in iGPU systems effectively makes the bandwidth equal to about half that. That is, 12.8GB/s.
JarredWalton - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
Only if you're using the iGPU to do something, but since I'm discussing system bandwidth vs. GPU bandwidth I didn't get into that. I suppose something like Kaveri will end up with about the same 16GB/s of bandwidth from the system RAM (with the remaining bandwidth going to the CPU), but really Kaveri will still only be a "moderate" GPU performance level.lmcd - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
Since when has Fermi been die shrunk? The 820 needs fact-checked.Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
Since 2012. They released a 28nm version of GF108: GF117.http://www.anandtech.com/show/5697/nvidias-geforce...
jasonelmore - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
First Maxwell SLI Enabled GPU!!! and its in a LAPTOP WTFfteoath64 - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
Does anybody see why Maxwell part is the starting point and Kepler holding the higher end of the range ?. They are squeezing blood out of Kepler before a complete switch to Maxwell. It is a very clever trick to pull and buys NV time to carefully craft the performance of higher end Maxwell parts to suit the performance/price model they wanted. This release alone seems enough to maintain their discrete gpu market on laptops while AMD struggles with their mobile market. It keeps Intel IGP at bay except for non gamers who do not care about discrete graphics.hero4hire - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
I am one of those people that think laptop gaming "is a joke" still. 1hr gaming is still limited but more so is most gamers are going to want to use a mouse not trackpad and therefore use a table. At the point you're gaming at a table why not build a solid desktop and buy an ultraportable for less? Are people unable to spend a 1k to 2k budget better in this regard?I am greatful to see real performance hitting laptops, lower 850m = 580m in the illustration for example. Coming from a purely cost sense I am unconvinced an upgradable desktop and cheap slim low power laptop is not better for the vast majority while also being cheaper. Especially in the long run as you can upgrade a desktop while a $200-$300 laptop won't depreciate like a 1k-2k one will. For example, who is going to buy that 580m laptop for even half its list now? A cheap laptop is almost always worth $100.
lordmocha - Sunday, March 16, 2014 - link
most play plugged into the power and with an external mouseyet the reason to get a gaming laptop (not gaming desktop + laptop) is that it can be cheaper (though performance will be worse), and that it is very portable to take to a friends house