Nvidia GTX 970M SLI Brings GTX 980 Desktop Class Performance

Well gamers everywhere, your prayers take been answered. Getting desktop class GPU performance in a gaming laptop has never been this easy. And nosotros're not talking about mid-range desktop GPUs either. We're talking well-nigh Nvidia'due south flagship, the GTX 980. Which is the fastest gaming GPU to date.

Nvidia GTX 980 Desktop Class GPU Performance in a Gaming Laptop

The gaming laptop in question is the Aorus X7 Pro. Aorus is a sub-brand of Gigabyte reserved for high finish gaming laptops. The Aorus X7 which launched before this year came with a 2-way SLI GTX 765M configuration. So Gigabyte introduced a 2d version which updated the GPUs to the 860M. The Aorus Pro introduces a much more powerful two-fashion SLI GTX 970M configuration.

Specifications

Wccftech	Aorus X7	Aorus X7 V2	Aorus X7 Pro
CPU	i7-4700HQ Processor (2.4GHz-3.4GHz)	i7-4860HQ Processor (ii.4GHz-3.6GHz)	i7-4870HQ (two.5GHz-3.7GHz)
Graphics	NVIDIA® GTX 765M SLI GDDR5 4GB	NVIDIA® GTX 860M SLI GDDR5 8GB	NVIDIA® GTX 970M SLI GDDR5 3GB*2
Retentivity	4GB/8GB DDR3L 1866, 4 slots (Max 32GB)	4GB/8GB DDR3L 1866, 4 slots (Max 32GB)	4GB/8GB DDR3L 1866, iv slots (Max 32GB)
Storage	- mSATA 128GB/256GB/512GB, ii slots - two.5" HDD 500GB/750GB/1TB/2TB 5400/7200rpm , 1 slot	- mSATA 128GB/256GB/512GB, three slots - 2.5" HDD 500GB/750GB/1TB/2TB 5400/7200rpm , 1 slot	- mSATA 128GB/256GB/512GB, 3 slots - 2.5" HDD 500GB/750GB/1TB/1.5TB/2TB 5400/7200rpm , i slot
Display	17.iii" Full HD 1920x1080 LED backlight	17.3" Full Hard disk drive 1920x1080 LED backlight	17.3" Full HD 1920x1080 Wide Viewing Angle LCD

Benchmarks

Chinese VR-Zone has published GTX 970M SLI benchmarks and the results are impressive. The examination system for the GTX 970M SLI is the Aorus X7 Pro with the specifications listed above. The examination system for the GTX 980 are as follows :

Intel Core i7-5960X
DDR4 3000MHz CL15 Grand.Skill 4GB x 4
ASUS X99-Deluxe
512GB Crucial MX100
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
Corsair AX1500i

And then keep in mind here that we're not only comparison a pair of mobile GPUs against a desktop flagship GPU. Simply the test setup for the GTX 980 as well maintains a very significant advantage in CPU performance. After all the i7 5960X is Intel's 8 core Haswell-Eastward flagship which has twice every bit many cores as the i7 4870HQ, higher average clock speed and significantly more than enshroud.

Looking at the synthetic benchmarks starting from 3DMark 11 all the fashion to Heaven. The results don't seem all that impressive. But gamers don't actually buy gaming laptops to run synthetic benchmarks exercise they ? They purchase them to play games. And two 970M GPUs in SLI are truly impressive. The average FPS of the 970M SLI setup is higher than a desktop GTX 980 across the board except in i instant where information technology's a dead estrus. The minimum FPS is better in half of the tested games and worse in the remaining one-half. However it'due south not worryingly lower than the desktop GTX 980 GPU and the FPS remains very playable. As well recall that the minimum FPS striking could very well be due to the CPU performance disparity rather than the graphics setup.

The performance numbers we're looking at makes information technology fifty-fifty possible for Gigabyte to update the brandish to 2560x1440 resolution and still maxed about games with very playable framerates. Makes us even more than excited to look at GTX 980M numbers when running in 2-way SLI. While Maxwell didn't really innovate a sizable leap in performance on the desktop. Even though nosotros're still on the same 28nm process. The mobile side showed a much more healthy improvement in performance cheers to the efficiency improvements that the Maxwell architecture has brought.

Nvidia still has a card up its sleeve with the GM200 core which is supposed to be twice as powerful as the GM204 core powering the GTX 900 series cards. The "big daddy" Maxwell GPU is rumored to come up out side by side year on a more efficient manufacturing process. One might wonder if the combination of the more than efficient manufacturing procedure and the Maxwell architectural power efficiency improvement would allow Nvidia to bring the GM200 GPU to mobile. Now that would be a site to behold ! Aorus X7 Pro GTX 970M SLI Gaming Notebook