NVIDIA announces GTX 990M: to be more powerful than GTX 980M SLI

With their R9 Nano, AMD easily has the most powerful mini-ITX GPU, and by a long way – NVIDIA’s closest competitor is the GTX 970.

Small as mini-ITX GPUs are, however, mobile GPUs are a whole different board game, and it’s there where NVIDIA wants to hold onto the throne with their upcoming mobility GPU flagship, the GTX 990M.

Based on the GM204, the same GPU that powers the GTX 970, 980 and 980M, website NotebookCheck is reporting that NVIDIA has unveiled the GTX 990M, currently codenamed “N16E-GXX”, at a Chinese conference.

For the moment, the title “GTX 990M” is an educated guess. Given that NVIDIA has yet to label any of their current range of GPUs with the “5” suffix, having only used intervals of 10 in their naming scheme, we’re guessing that it won’t be called the GTX 985M.

What we do know is that the GTX 990M won’t be available via an MXM solution, meaning that the GPU will be soldered directly to the motherboard and, thus, you won’t be able to upgrade or replace it.

Advantageous as using the MXM 3 standard can be, it does have a power limitation, a TDP of 100W. NVIDIA has suggested that the GTX 990M may have a TDP as high as 185W, which is a lot more than MXM can handle – it also raises concerns of appropriate cooling.

The question of cooling will come down to notebook manufacturers and their preferred method. As far as spec and performance is concerned, that’s where NVIDIA comes in, and they’re claiming that the GTX 990M may very well exceed the performance of the GTX 980M SLI.

The end goal for NVIDIA is a mobility part that comes as close as possible to its non-mobility counterpart.

The GTX 980M’s performance is around the same as a standard non-mobility GTX 980, meaning that the GTX 990M may well offer superior performance. It’s for that reason that some are speculating that the GTX 990M may, in fact, use a cut down GM200 GPU – the same GPU responsible for the mighty GTX 980 Ti and GTX Titan X.

Either way, performance like that is going to come at a premium, and initial reports are suggesting a mobility graphics card that will cost almost twice as much as the GTX 980M

If you can afford it and the notebook that packs it, then you’re going to be in a very good place.