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Rumor: Nvidia 980MX and 970MX updates coming this summer

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Nvidia is putting out updated versions of their mobile GPUs, if the latest rumor can be believed.

WCCFTech is reporting that Nvidia will soon reveal the Geforce GTX 980MX and 970MX graphics card, more powerful versions of the existing 980M and 970M, released back in 2014, that currently dominate the mobile gaming market. If these reports are accurate, the new chips should be on the market in this year’s second quarter.

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The GTX 980MX is apparently a compromise of sorts between the existing desktop GTX 980 and laptop GTX 980M chips. The 980MX reportedly offers the same frame buffer, memory frequency, memory bandwidth, and TDP as the 980M, and has the same GM204 architecture at its heart. But the 980MX offers 1,664 CUDA Cores to the 980M’s 1,536, and 104 texture units to the 980M’s 96. The 980MX also offers a slightly higher clock speed, at 1,048MHz to the 980M’s 1,038MHz.

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Model GeForce GTX 980MX GeForce GTX 980M GeForce GTX 970MX GeForce GTX 970M
Architecture Maxwell Maxwell Maxwell Maxwell
GPU GM204 GM204 GM204 GM204
CUDA Cores 1664 1536 1408 1280
Texture Units 104 96 88 80
Raster Devices 64 64 56 48
Clock Speed 1048 MHz 1038 MHz 941 MHz 924 MHz
Memory Bus 256-bit 256-bit 192-bit 192-bit
Frame Buffer 8/4 GB GDDR5 8/4 GB GDDR5 6/3 GB GDDR5 6/3 GB GDDR5
Memory Frequency 5000 MHz 5000 MHz 5000 MHz 5000 MHz
Memory Bandwidth 160 GB/s 160 GB/s 120 GB/s 120 GB/s
TDP 125W 125W 100W 100W

The less powerful GTX 970MX reportedly has a similar relationship to the existing 970M, with a slightly higher CUDA core count and more texture units, but otherwise similar specs. The above chart breaks down the differences.

All this is hypothetical at this point. Nothing has been officially announced, and it’s not clear who WCCTech’s sources are.

Having said that, Nvidia is presumably going to announce something soon – if not this, something else. The leak comes after rival GPU maker AMD revealed it’s upcoming Polaris line at CES 2016, which included some pretty big news in terms of energy efficiency.

Nvidia’s current mobile GPUs have dominated the gaming laptop market for a while now, but that could easily change if AMD’s numbers turn out to be accurate. It will be interesting to see what Nvidia ends up announcing.

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