NVIDIA Quietly Releases GeForce GTX 670MX and GTX 675MX for Notebooks
by Dustin Sklavos on October 1, 2012 8:12 PM EST- Posted in
- NVIDIA
- Mobile Workstation
- Kepler
- Laptops
Testing the Alienware notebooks with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680Ms while seeing reviews for the GK104-based GeForce GTX 660 Ti and GK106-based GeForce GTX 660 go up has been interesting because it seemed as though NVIDIA's branding had painted themselves into a corner with the GTX 670M and 675M. Both of those chips are re-brands of last generation's Fermi-based GTX 570M and 580M, respectively. So while the GK106 would be seemingly ideal for notebooks, where was NVIDIA going to put it? The GTX 660M is based on GK107 with GDDR5, and then it's a jump to Fermi for the 670M.
As it turns out, NVIDIA's branding team is as creative as they've always been, although this launch is an unusually quiet one. No press releases or fanfare, but certainly worthy of attention. NVIDIA is updating their mobile line with the GTX 670MX and GTX 675MX, both of which are based on Kepler silicon.
The GTX 675MX, essentially replacing the GTX 675M, seems to be a full GK104 chip, with 960 CUDA cores and up to 4GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit memory bus. Assuming the performance difference between the desktop GTX 660 and GTX 560 Ti (the two chips powering the GTX 675MX and GTX 675M/580M respectively) scales down, the 675MX should be about 20% faster than its predecessor. It's clocked at 600MHz on the cores and an effective 3.6GHz on the GDDR5. I'm not 100% sure on the GPU on this one, though; it'd have to be GK104 cut down to five SMX clusters, which would be accurate to the GK106 except for the 256-bit memory bus (GK106 only supports 192-bit).
Meanwhile, the GTX 670MX appears to be using a full GK106, as it too has 960 CUDA cores but only tops out at 3GB of GDDR5 on a 192-bit memory bus. It's clocked at 600MHz on the CUDA cores and 2.8GHz effective on the GDDR5. Again this should be a fairly handsome performance improvement over the Fermi-based GeForce GTX 670M.
As an added sidebar, NVIDIA has also launched their first Kepler-based Quadro mobile GPU, the Quadro K3000M. This appears to be a heavily cut down GK106, with 576 CUDA cores and up to 2GB of GDDR5, presumably on a 128-bit memory bus.
Origin PC was the first to get into our mailbox announcing immediate availability of these GPUs, but undoubtedly they will gradually become available from other vendors as well.
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bobogo2013 - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
We all know the joke... what did the bird say as they flew over K.............. no??? lolAnyways... I've had this graphix card going on 2 years now? With the system a Q6600 oc'd at 3.2 stable (i watercool it now with the corsair 70 something or other)...
Should I upgrade my crappy gfx card or cpu? OR BOTH??? What is the advice? Motherboard mind you... must be able to oc the crap outta it... (not super crap just like after a night of drinking crap... ;O )
Thanks.
KillerFry - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
... I... don't even... whut!etamin - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
Anandtech has a forum for all your questions.Wolfpup - Friday, October 5, 2012 - link
This is a desktop? Why on Earth post this here?Well anyway, I wouldn't call either "crappy" and think they're both probably very very useable, BUT if you've got the money and/or need, you can do enough better now that upgrading wouldn't be silly IMO.
etamin - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
My head is exploding with this nomenclature nonsense...I feel for the people getting shortchanged by this marketing ploy.
Spunjji - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
The marketing ploy to shortchange people already happened (670M / 675M rebrand). This is, at last, the release of some decent performance-class notebook hardware and that can only be a good thing.It's a shame they already screwed the pooch on the names, though, meaning they've had to bolt on ridiculous quantities of RAM to make it obvious which cards are better.
blanarahul - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
Thankfully Alienware is being smart enough to not get caught in NVIDIA's ploy. I bet they will use the 2 GB variant of the GTX 675MX and the 1.5 GB variant of GTX 670MX.One peculiar thing though, the GK104 and GK106 are capable of reaching and exceeding 1200 MHz on the desktop GPus, but they only manage 600 MHz on the notebook side.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
It's not that the GPUs can't hit higher clocks; it's a matter of hitting those clocks within a certain TDP. Core and RAM clocks are both higher on the desktop because the TDP is much greater; on notebooks, the highest TDP we've seen is ~100W, and these second tier mobile GPUs are more likely in the 60-75W TDP range.blanarahul - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
Oh didn't think about that.Please check the following article:-
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6334/iphone-5-screen...
There is a mistake which I have mentioned in the comments on the first comment page.
blanarahul - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - link
It's the second last comment.