Digital Foundry brings an extensive comparative graphic around the new mobile graphic card Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M, based on the second generation of the Maxwell architecture. With the arrival of the GTX 980M a new path for portable gamers has opened up, either for the increase in performance, which it represents, or for the reduction of energy consumption compared to the previous generation.
Without a doubt, get ready; there are a lot of surprises to come.
To begin, Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M will be compared to GeForce GTX 880M (a GTX 780M slightly overclocked and with more RAM). Such test will be held under the title Crysis 3, a title very dependable of a GPU. As it will be proven by this test, the GTX 980M is about 10 FPS faster, except when it reaches the minute 2:07, from which the GTX 880M dominates over GTX 980M until the end of the test. The reasons for this are unknown, but the difference could be a more powerful CPU.
Now it is time to compare the behavior of Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M if directly connected to the plug with a battery versus the behavior of the Battery Boost, which is the energy savior mode.
In Battlefield 4 (Ultra + 4x MSAA) we can see that the graphics get by really well, in its full performance (ran by the net) it offers 60-70 FPS, by battery between 30-40 FPS, and when using the energy savior mode it sets at 30 FPS. The Battery Boost, besides saving the battery, reduces the performance to 30 FPS, that way additional resources are not used to get to such rate, which leads to the use of bigger frequencies that drain the battery in a faster way.
Lastly, we need to find the place of Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M among other desktop graphic cards; we will look into the most expensive cards with the best graphic cards of this generation and previous ones, such as Nvidia GTX 680, Nvidia GTX 780 and Nvidia GTX 970.
We will have to take a look again to Battlefield 4, Crysis 3, Merto Last Light, Tomb Raider: Ultimate Edition and Bioshock Infinite. The conclusion is clear, the GeForce GTX 980M is not only faster than the GeForce GTX 680, but its performance is practically the same as the GeForce GTX 780, logically the GeForce GTX 970 is step ahead.
In Conclusion
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M has something we had not seen up to this day, the performance of the graphic card has a extensive range for a mobile device equipment sold over the counter.
Obviously, everything has its ups and downs; the cheapest laptop model equipped with a GTX 980M today costs around 2,700 Euros; with this money one could put together a table with a SLI configuration of two GTX 970/GTX 980 and still have money left, but this would be impossible to carry around. If one only needs this to play, a PS4 or an Xbox One would be a good choice to play without worrying about the requisites.
Another option is to wait until the price of this device is lowered, because all the models based on GTX980 have a 32 GB RAM memory, in addition to a SSD of 512 GB and a HDD of 1 TB, which greatly increases its price.
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