
GeForce GTX 980 Comes to Notebooks - richardboegli
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/09/22/notebooks/
======
some-guy
While this may be a great engineering feat, I would rather see mass-market
external GPU enclosures become the norm once/if Thunderbolt 3 becomes
mainstream.

It would be really nice for instance dual-boot a Macbook Pro for work during
the day, then come home and plug in an external GPU for gaming.

~~~
stephengillie
Some of us have been waiting for external GPUs for nearly a decade. I'm not
sure a critical mass of demand exists for this type of interface.

Value gamers stick to mainstream ATX PCs, and often do their own work, as
components can be much cheaper and the labor is free (supplemented by a few
internet build guides).

High-end gamers often do their own work so they can ensure quality throughout
the build and verify every component. Those that don't usually only buy
completed systems, and replace these very frequently.

Almost all use cases where an external card device would be useful are already
served by having a desktop instead of a laptop, where the discrete GPU is
almost external, an ever-increasing stack of chips, fans, and radiators
sticking out of a motherboard slot.

~~~
wlesieutre
Note that Intel is explicitly supporting external GPUs this time with
Thunderbolt 3. I don't think that was the case in previous versions. It sounds
more likely to happen this cycle, though as you point out it's a small market,
so I don't expect it to be cheap.

[http://liliputing.com/2015/08/intel-says-
thunderbolt-3-will-...](http://liliputing.com/2015/08/intel-says-
thunderbolt-3-will-bring-external-graphics-to-laptops.html)

[http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-
shilov...](http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/msi-
preps-external-graphics-solutions-with-thunderbolt-3-interface/)

~~~
richardboegli
There is a limitation on the width of the bus though. I recall reading this
when it first was announced and it is referenced in the linked article that
you reference [1]: 40Gb/s of bandwidth – or about 5GB/s – provided by
Thunderbolt 3 is tremendously lower than 15.75GB/s offered by a fully-fledged
PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot.

[1] [http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-
shilov...](http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/msi-
preps-external-graphics-solutions-with-thunderbolt-3-interface/)

~~~
orik
Single GPU setups show no performance degradation at 2.0 x16 and some/slight
degradation at 2.0 x8.,

5GB/s should do just fine.

[https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-
Expre...](https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-
Express_Scaling/21.html)

~~~
richardboegli
Good to see

------
technotony
Doesn't this mean that the Oculus Rift can now run on notebooks? that's a
pretty big deal and means they might sell a lot of these!

[1] Oculus Rift specs [http://www.slashgear.com/final-oculus-rift-specs-
revealed-fo...](http://www.slashgear.com/final-oculus-rift-specs-revealed-
for-2016-consumer-model-11387922/)

[2] GeForce GTX 980 outperforms GTX 970: [http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-
GTX-980-vs-GeForce-GTX-970](http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-980-vs-
GeForce-GTX-970)

~~~
corysama
"The new GTX 980 notebook offers a great portable option for the Oculus #Rift.
We're excited to see high-performance notebooks powering #VR!"

[https://twitter.com/oculus/status/646348068594413568](https://twitter.com/oculus/status/646348068594413568)

------
vegabook
This thing guzzles up to 300 watts under load. There is _no way_ this chip is
not going to be throttled to death in a laptop form factor, unless the laptop
itself makes more fan speed than a 747. I personally own a Gigabyte Brix Pro
i7 and it gets hot and throttled as soon as you load the 8 cores, and this is
a 65 watt TDP. Sure, this monster-chip-in-a-notebook pitch sounds great in the
press release. It's not going to be a good piece of engineering.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-
gtx-980-re...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-
gtx-980-review/21)

~~~
kevingadd
The 9xx series has pretty good power management. In practice even at 4k
resolutions a 980 or 980ti will spend a lot of time running below 100% TDP.

Also, those measurements in the anandtech article are _total system power_ ,
not GPU power, which is why the idle measurement is in the 70w range. (Modern
GPUs generally do not pull down 70w at idle.)

One of the upsides to having a really high-spec GPU in a laptop is that as
long as the power management is done properly, it can burst up to full speed
to get you low latency for rendering and then drop back down to idle. In
sustained rendering scenarios (like games) it may end up
thermal/acoustic/power throttled, but that happens on desktops anyway - it
will just throttle quicker and scale down a bit more.

~~~
vegabook
Point taken on the total system power, but it's still 165 watt TDP. Agreed for
"burst" workflows it'll be fine. But how many people have "burst" workflows
that need a _mobile_ 980? This thing is for gamers and they'll be maxing it
for hours at a time, or (I personally) would be maxing it for GPU compute. I
just think it's being done for publicity and that this is not really a serious
use case for a chip like this. Indeed this whole "my chip number is bigger
than yours" game is not seeing increases in real life performance because of
aggressive throttling. I'm seeing lower-power chips beating throttled higher-
power chips in small form factor computers.

You know how merciless gamers can be. Nvidia better be sure that the systems
sporting this chip can achieve 980-style expectations, because otherwise these
guys will light up the forums with criticism.

------
mdorazio
What I'd like to see is a return to single slot video cards for desktop PCs,
which should be entirely possible if they're cramming a 980 into a laptop. The
monstrosities that AMD and Nvidia keep cranking out every year are just absurd
at this point, especially if you care about form factor or power consumption.

~~~
maaku
You can find single-slot cards on the market.

~~~
CarVac
Hardly. Mostly they're low-spec professional cards.

No single slot cooler will handle a 250 watt chip without making a racket.

~~~
richardboegli
AMD Radeon R9 Nano was specifically designed for this [1]

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/9621/the-amd-radeon-r9-nano-
re...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9621/the-amd-radeon-r9-nano-review)

------
monochromatic
Any word on what the power consumption is? This seems like a great way to get
a painfully hot laptop with awful battery life.

------
matthew-wegner
There are a few comments on external GPUs/form factor/heat here. The thing is,
this laptop is nowhere near a laptop form factor: [https://cdn2.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/zQi8qkv6X9tGfH4lsA6QsZ8lU5U...](https://cdn2.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/zQi8qkv6X9tGfH4lsA6QsZ8lU5U=/1020x0/cdn0.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4022492/asusgx700handson1_1020.0.jpg)

From: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9251275/asus-gx700-water-
co...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9251275/asus-gx700-water-cooled-
gaming-laptop-ifa-2015-video)

(It's basically an external enclosure bolted on to a laptop...)

------
sgoraya
I spoke with a laptop reseller a few minutes ago and according to him, the 980
will only fit in laptops thicker than 1" \- so it will not be available in a
slimmer, lighter gaming laptops like the MSI Ghost series.

~~~
bd
Thinnest notebook from GTX 980 launch lineup is Aorus X7 DT:

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-announces-GeForce-
GTX-98...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-announces-GeForce-GTX-980-for-
notebooks.150756.0.html)

While it's not yet listed on Aorus site, it's quite likely chassis would be
same/similar to its older sibling Aorus X7 Pro:

[http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X7%20Pro-
SYNC](http://www.aorus.com/Product/Features/X7%20Pro-SYNC)

This was 2x GTX 970M SLI model, pretty slim at ~23 mm with 3 kg weight.

I wonder though how well cooling will work with GTX 980. All previous Aorus
models kinda struggled with cooling, and that was with less powerful GPUs
(albeit SLI).

Out of announced notebooks, the least weird ones are MSI GT72 and Clevo
P775DM:

[http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc2/G...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc2/GTX_980_Press_Deck_1442606447_page_022_4.jpg)

Pity they didn't include also 15" sibling of that Clevo chassis (P750DM). That
one would be pretty awesome.

~~~
richardboegli
From your reference:

The first notebooks with the GTX 980 GPU will come by the end of this month.
[1]

[1]: [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-announces-GeForce-
GTX-98...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-announces-GeForce-GTX-980-for-
notebooks.150756.0.html)

------
hspak
I feel like overclockability is the last thing Nvidia should be focusing on
for laptops. The trade-off for overclocking is heat generation which is
undesirable for laptops by far. These cards generate a lot of heat as is.

~~~
moron4hire
I don't think people are expecting these to be laptops, exactly. More like
very portable "desktops". I know a lot of people in the VR community are going
bonkers over this announcement. It's going to make setting up demos a hell of
a lot easier. Nvidia's Optimus technology (don't ask me what it was for, I
could never keep it straight) was a serious impediment to achieve low tracking
latency, to the point of being downright impossible. I even once returned a
laptop with a 980M the same day I got it after I found out Optimus basically
made it useless to use with my DK2.

I probably won't buy one of these. I'll probably just stuff my desktop into an
aluminum case suitcase. But you could pull the battery out and throw it away
for all the VR folks care. This will get setup on a table at conferences by a
lot of people.

------
josu
This is great, but I was expecting notebook gaming to go the streaming way.
What's stopping game streaming from becoming mainstream? Latency?

~~~
TillE
OnLive tried that. They're gone.

Yes, latency is the biggest problem. The absolute best case scenario is that
you have a direct fiber connection to your ISP, which is hosting servers
locally. Then it would probably be acceptable.

Realistically, with a standard consumer broadband connection you're adding
tens of milliseconds on top of everything else, which completely ruins a lot
of action games.

However! If you've got a desktop gaming PC at home, you can now play games
from your laptop (or TV) with Steam in-home streaming. They don't even have to
be Steam games. Over a wired LAN it's fantastic, and on WiFi it's still pretty
good.

------
monocasa
I wonder what the thermal budget looks like. I can't imagine that it can run
at full crank for an extended period of time.

~~~
nacs
Agreed. Also, unless they've managed to massively cut down on the power
requirements, the 980 would burn through your battery rapidly.

------
wonjun
When is this available for purchase?

------
richardboegli
This is AWESOME.

