Introducing NVIDIA’s GeForce 800M Lineup for Laptops

NVIDIA launched the first of many Maxwell parts to come with the desktop GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti, which brought a new architecture to NVIDIA’s parts, but one that isn’t radically different from the previous generation’s Kepler.The result was roughly a doubling of performance per Watt, with the GTX 750 Ti being nearly twice as fast as the GTX 650 with only slightly higher power draw (and some of that most likely comes from the increased load on the rest of the system thanks to the higher frame rates).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 800M Specifications
Product	GTX 880M	GTX 870M	GTX 860M	GTX 860M	GTX 850M
Process	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm
Architecture	Kepler	Kepler	Kepler	Maxwell	Maxwell
Cores	1536	1344	1152	640	640
GPU Clock	954 + Boost	941 + Boost	797 + Boost	1029 + Boost	876 + Boost
RAM Clock	2.5GHz	2.5GHz	2.5GHz	2.5GHz	2.5GHz
RAM Interface	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit
RAM Technology	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Maximum RAM	4GB	3GB	2GB	2GB	2GB
Features	GPU Boost 2.0 Battery Boost GameStream ShadowPlay Optimus PhysX CUDA SLI GeForce Experience	GPU Boost 2.0 Battery Boost GameStream ShadowPlay Optimus PhysX CUDA SLI GeForce Experience	GPU Boost 2.0 Battery Boost GameStream ShadowPlay Optimus PhysX CUDA SLI GeForce Experience	GPU Boost 2.0 Battery Boost GameStream ShadowPlay Optimus PhysX CUDA SLI GeForce Experience	GPU Boost 2.0 Battery Boost GameStream ShadowPlay Optimus PhysX CUDA GeForce Experience

NVIDIA GeForce "Mainstream" 800M Specifications
Product	840M	830M	820M
Process	28nm	28nm	28nm
Architecture	Maxwell	Maxwell	Fermi
Cores	?	?	96
GPU Clock	?	?	719-954MHz
RAM Clock	?	?	2000MHz
RAM Interface	64-bit	64-bit	64-bit
RAM Technology	DDR3	DDR3	DDR3
Maximum RAM	2GB	2GB	2GB
Features	GPU Boost 2.0 Optimus PhysX CUDA GFE	GPU Boost 2.0 Optimus PhysX CUDA GFE	GPU Boost 2.0 Optimus PhysX CUDA GFE

NVIDIA's Performance Estimates for the 800M Series
GPU	% Increase Over Next GPU	% of 820M	% of GTX 760M
GTX 880M	20%	641%	227%
GTX 870M	35%	534%	189%
GTX 860M	15%	396%	140%
GTX 850M	70%	344%	122%
840M	35%	203%	72%
830M	50%	150%	53%
820M	N/A	100%	35%

GTX 800M: Battery Boost

Maxwell and Kepler are both DX11 parts that implement some but not all of the DX 11.1 features – there is one exception. NVIDIA has apparently modified the hardware in the new GTX 800M chips to support a feature they’re calling Battery Boost. The short summary is that with this new combination of software and hardware features, laptops should be able to provide decent (>30 FPS) gaming performance while delivering 50-100% more battery life during gaming.

This could be really important for laptop gaming, as many people have moved to tablets and smartphones simply because a laptop doesn’t last long enough off AC power to warrant consideration. Battery Boost isn’t going to suddenly solve the problem of a high-end GPU and CPU using a significant amount of power, but instead of one hour (or less) of gaming we could actually be looking at a reasonable 2+ hours. Regardless, NVIDIA is quite excited to see where things go with Battery Boost, and we’ll certainly be testing the first GTX 800M laptops to provide some of our own measurements. Let’s get into some of the details of the implementation.

GTX class of 800M GPUs will now also support NVIDIA’s GameStream and ShadowPlay technologies, again through NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience software. Unlike Battery Boost, these are almost purely software driven solutions and so they are not strictly limited to 800M hardware. However, the performance requirements are high enough that NVIDIA is limiting their use to GTX GPUs, and all GTX 700M and 800M parts will support the feature, along with the GTX 680M, 675MX, and 670MX. Basically, all GTX Kepler and Maxwell parts will support GameStream and ShadowPlay; the requirement for Kepler/Maxwell incidentally comes because GameStream and ShadowPlay both make use of NVIDIA’s hardware encoding feature.