Gaming notebooks are getting more and more powerful. While the recent release of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (Founders Edition) meant practically nothing for notebook owners, it may be time to give it a second look for the simple reason that it is the “most advanced gaming graphics card ever created.”
The good news does not end there either. The chips, apparently, are not M versions of the desktop GPUs. They will be the same chips but will operate at a lower Thermal Design Power or TDP. In case you are not aware, TDP is just the amount of heat that should dissipate to keep the chip at its optimal operating temperature, Laptop Mag reported.
Additionally, it has been reported that Nvidia is actually scrapping the entire series of M chips. This can only mean good things and better overall graphics for gaming laptop users. Something similar was undertaken by Nvidia with the GTX 980 for MSI GT72 Dominator Pro Dragon Edition and the Origin Eon17-SLX.
The futuristic power of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 is apparent in its VR uses. The Laptop Mag report also made a point of noting that if every gaming laptop can be equipped with the GTX 1080, then Oculus Rift or HTC Vive can be much more accessible and cheaper.
PC Mag reports that GTX 1080's Pascal architecture can be disheartening. It uses a 16nm production process and 3D FinFET transistors that stack for improved performance with lower power consumption. Pascal additionally supports Ansel, an upgraded system for in-game screenshots, Simultaneous Multi-Projection for better multimonitor performance and VR gaming.
In addition, Fast Sync a brand-new monitor syncing mode, significantly reduces screen tearing with super high frame rates. All these pros do come with a downside. Multicard gamers might not appreciate that Pascal is designed for two-way SLI only. Therefore, three or four card setups will be much more difficult to have.
On the technical side, the GTX 1080 has four Graphics Processing Clusters, 20 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), and 2,560 CUDA processing cores. Base and boost clock speeds are higher now at 1,607MHz and 1,733MHz respectively. Memory speed and bandwidth are also improved at 10Gbps and 320GBps. These specs make the GTX 1080 a monster that can easily accommodate intensive applications like 4k and VR.
The MSRP of the Founders Edition is at $699 but the regular version goes for $599. This is significantly lower than other top-tier chips from both Nvdia and AMD which can easily go above the $1,000 mark at the time of its release.
However, if the price is still too high for you, the GTX 1070 offers most of the specs of the 1080 but at an even lower price. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 wiill be available for gaming notebooks by around August or September.
