Mobile GPUs have always lagged behind their desktop competitors.
Manufacturers like Nvidia and AMD simply can’t fit that much power and heat absorption into the small form factor required to fit onto a tablet, laptop, or smartphone. That means less power, less performance, and fewer frames per second for laptop gamers.
The upcoming Maxwell GTX 860M Ti takes a huge step towards narrowing that performance gap.
The GTX 860M’s early benchmarks were recently released/leaked and they’re blowing away the competition. Not only does the 860M offer superior performance and speed compared to any other mobile GPU, but it does so with a fraction of the power consumption.
Here are the tech specs for the GTX 860M:
-640 CUDA cores
-40 texture mapping units (TMUs)
-16 ROPs
Those specs (for those who know what they mean) aren’t impressive on their own. The GTX 760M and 770M each have higher ratings in all three of those numbers.
So why is the 860M blowing these other devices away?
In 3Dmark 11 benchmark testing, the 860M scored P5339. The next highest-scoring mobile GPU is the GTX 770M, which scored P5023. The ‘P’ at the front indicates this was the Performance test.
Benchmark results were slightly closer for the “Extreme” test, which maxes out all settings and pushes cards to their limits. In the extreme test, the GTX 770M scored X1747 while the 860M scored X1662.
Did I mention that the GTX 860M was able to do all of this while only consuming 45W of power? The standard for other laptop GPUs is 75W of power consumption. Dropping consumption that much means better battery life for gaming laptops – something that has always been a problem for those devices.
When will the 860M be released?
The 860M is nearing the end of its development but it likely won’t be seen on smartphones or tablets until 2015, when it will pair with the 20nm Tegra K1 to create some seriously powerful mobile devices.
However, we could see the 860M appear on laptops before the end of 2014 or beginning of 2015. AMD will have a tough test on its hands competing against the benchmark tests of a finely-optimized laptop running the GTX 860M, although their 45nm lineup has been very popular.
Personally, I can’t wait to get this kind of power on the Samsung Galaxy S6, Note 5, or whatever next-gen smartphones will get the upgrade.
All of the data was leaked onto the Notebook Review forums by a guy named Cloudfire.
