Nvidia launches overclock-friendly GTX 980 desktop GPU for gaming laptops

 

 
Earlier this month,  Asus’ insane water-cooled laptop and the appearance of a new Nvidia GPU that looked for all the world like a GTX 980 desktop chip in a mobile form factor. Today, Nvidia is taking the lid off that particular project — and it’s even crazier than we thought it was. Putting a GTX 980 in a notebook chassis is a bit nuts, even if these systems are only portable in the same way that a five-gallon bucket is portable.
The handful of laptops now shipping with full-size GTX 980 graphics cards in them will allow those cards to be overclocked, opening up still more performance alongside the unlocked Intel Skylake-K chips that Chipzilla is now shipping in mobile as well. None of the specs are skimped on — the GPU’s core clock is 1126MHz base, identical to the standard desktop, while its GDDR5 memory bus is clocked at an effective 7Gbps. Max clock frequencies could supposedly hit an additional 200MHz, though that’s going to depend a great deal on the cooling solution of the system.



Other features coming to these new systems include variable fan controls, 17-inch 1080p panels, and 4-8 phase power supplies with higher peak currents. The end result should be some truly amazing notebooks from the likes of Asus, MSI, and Clevo. MSI even intends to introduce an SLI version of the laptop with an 18.4-inch screen.