GTX 990M notebook GPU is as fast as a desktop GTX 980

For as quickly as GPU architecture is advancing, particularly in the power efficiency space, the mobile sector is still somewhat partial to cooling and energy limitations.

It’s for that reason that mobility GPUs are usually significantly dialled down when compared to their desktop brethren.

Take the comparison between GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 980M for example: The GTX 980 has the GM204’s full complement of 2048 CUDA cores, 64 ROPs and 128 TMUs, all of which are clocked at 1126 MHZ and can be boosted to 1216 MHZ. On the other hand, the GTX 980M sports just 1536 CUDA cores, 96 TMUs and, fortunately, all 64 ROPs, but they’re running at a slower core speed– 1038 MHZ.

That means just 75% of the desktop equivalent’s performance, which, while good, isn’t quite good enough for NVIDIA.

NVIDIA’s latest mobility flagship, which the press has named the GTX 990M, was unveiled at a Chinese technology conference last month.

And while it’s reported to use the full GM204 GPU, much like the GTX 980, it wasn’t confirmed until now.

At IFA 15 the site Computerbase got the chance to play around with ASUS’ shiny, new water cooled ROG GX700 notebook. The GPU they found inside was not a GTX 980M, but something altogether more powerful.

The GTX 990M, according to what Computerbase was able to report, uses the entire GM204 GPU, which means 2048 CUDA cores, and it runs at an impressive 1190 MHz to boot.

While NVIDIA’s mobility cards do not offer boost functionality, the GTX 990M still has a higher base core speed than even the GTX 980.

Alongside the fully-fledged GM204 GPU is 8GB of GDDR5 RAM running at 2.5 GHz (5GHz equivalent), which is 2 GHz slower than its desktop part, but still manages a fairly impressive 160 GB/s.

The GTX 990M puts NVIDIA firmly at the top of the mobility GPU market, and by a good distance. AMD really doesn’t have anything capable of competing.

Expect any notebook/laptop equipped with the GTX 990M to cost, well, a lot, but it is purely for the top end of the enthusiast spectrum.

	GeForce GTX 990M	GeForce GTX 980M	GeForce GTX 970M	GeForce GTX 980	GeForce GTX 970
GPU	GM204	GM204	GM204	GM204	GM204
CUDA Cores	2048	1536	1280	2048	1664
Render Output Units	64	64	48	64	56
Texture Mapping Units	128	96	80	128	104
GPU Frequency	1190 MHz	1038 MHz	924 MHz	1, 126 MHz / 1, 216 MHz	1, 050 MHz / 1, 178 MHz
Memory	8GB GDDR5	8GB/4GB GDDR5	6GB/3GB GDDR5	4GB GDDR5	4GB GDDR5
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Frequency	5 GHz	5 GHz	5 GHz	7 GHz	7 GHz
Memory Bandwidth	160 GB/s	160 GB/s	120 GB/s	224 GB/s	224 GB/s
TDP	135W	125W	75W	165W	145W