GTX 980 vs GTX 980M Apples to Apples Comparison
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,369 words · ~6 min read
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while graphics card names really aren't what they used to be rage tnt monster
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spitfire that kind of good stuff at least the
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drivers are much improved and instead of having like you know the good video
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cards and then the like kneecapped video cards that suck you're getting really
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great performance at pretty much every price point these days but the big
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question still remains well two big questions really first are you stoked to
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see part two of personal rig update 2015
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with a 3d model of the custom case that i'll be making drop a like if you are
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and second is a laptop video card good
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enough for serious gaming or do you need desktop grade graphics let's find out
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the master case 5 by coolermaster gives you the freedom to truly make your
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mid-tower pc case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories
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click the link in the video description to learn more so this video was inspired
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by a piece of content that we did recently on the changes in performance
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of a graphics card over time as drivers mature you can check that out up there
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and by a brainstorm that i had the other day when we were working on our
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inventory and i saw the sager np 9773 a
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laptop with a core i7 4790k in it and i
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went light bulb yeah the rationale last time we checked
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out the gtx 980m which we did about 10 months ago when it was released of well
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you know the CPU doesn't seem to be much of a system bottleneck in gaming these
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days so it's probably fine that one system is using a desktop chip and the
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other is using well a laptop one was probably fine but real scientists
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only change the variable that they want to compare at least when they want
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halfway decent results so i decided to revisit the testing that was inspired by
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this slide from NVIDIA where i wanted to see what the gap really is between the
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desktop and laptop gaming experience with the same class of GPU so this will
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be a head-to-head battle between the gtx 980 and the 980m but this time it'll be
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a fairer fight instead of hamstringing
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the 980m with a mobile CPU i took
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advantage of the fully turboed up we're talking 4.4 gigahertz devil's canyon
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core i7 4790k in it that means both
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systems are set up identically with 16
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gigs of RAM Windows 8.1 with all the latest updates a 1080p screen resolution
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and solid-state storage with the only difference being the graphics cards and
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the results may shock you we saw a 30 to
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40 performance delta across the board
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just like last time okay so yes the results aren't very shocking at all but
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at least now we know for certain just how far behind the desktop roadmap
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the mobile one is lagging which leads us to the next comparison price while the
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mobile gtx 980m performs worse than a desktop gtx 980 its pricing puts it
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above the desktop part at least if ebay
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is to be believed it's hard to actually find these things on a retail shelf and
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when you combine that with the generally higher costs associated with most of the
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rest of the components of a laptop i mean the cost of developing an
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individual motherboard for every custom-made chassis compared to standardized desktop parts is very very
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high it means that laptop gamers are going to be paying more for less so it
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makes our apples to apples comparison quite difficult because
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what is an apple really is it the same
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branded class of hardware against the same branded class of hardware or do we
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have to look at it from a performance per dollar perspective and then how do
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you account for things that have a value
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but would seem ridiculous to try to quantify on a graph like being able to
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transport your gaming experience around with you very easily so
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the answer is for now not so different from what it's always
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been while performance is no longer several generations behind the cost i
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mean our similarly kitted out desktop costs hundreds of dollars less than our
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laptop even when you don't factor in the ability to reuse your previous monitor
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something that many desktop owners will do makes gaming laptops the weapon of
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choice really only for folks who lack the space
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for two discrete machines a desktop and a notebook and who are able to afford
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the convenience tax of mushing them into one but with some of the product rumors
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circulating now both unsubstantiated like that NVIDIA may be releasing a
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desktop gtx 980 like not m class mobile
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GPU and substantiated like all the new products that are coming with Intel
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skylake processors inside it appears as though the future maybe even the near
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future is going to be very interesting i mean to be clear i don't
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think that the pricing gap is going away but for gamers it looks like the
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performance gap will continue to shrink
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and while i can hear some of you groaning about skylake mobile CPU saying
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there's nothing special about them from a performance standpoint compared to
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broadwell or even haswell consider this
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Intel is bringing more power savings
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with skylake can you go to start performance but maybe it is
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that's power that can be used for you guessed it better graphics course in
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those laptops so maybe there's just a shifting of the available resources
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happening to bring us better mobile gaming
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but whatever way that goes we'll be covering it for sure and in the meantime
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i hope you guys enjoyed our look at just how much there is separating desktop and
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notebook graphics today and on that subject or more accurately
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not on that subject at all i guess massdrop.com massdrop.com is the site
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where basically the community decides like hey guys let's all get together and
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like buy this thing and then mass drops all like okay let's find you know a
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legitimate non-counterfeit source either direct from the manufacturer or from a
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reputable distributor let's get a bunch of those things for you guys and then
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let's make sure that it's cheaper because a whole bunch of you have committed to buy it at once so the way
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it works is once something goes up on the massdrop site the more people commit
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to buy the better the price gets until it reaches a defined limit and the oh
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this is a good one the feature deal today is the lg 34 um 95 c-p yes my
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friends that is a flat wide 3440 by 1440 ips monitor very very
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similar to the one that i reviewed here declaring 4k to be dead to me and that's
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to be my new favorite monitor super awesome super worth checking out
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head over to draw. slash Linus tech tips
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