Nvidia’s full-size GTX 980 graphics card is coming to laptops

The days of watered-down laptop graphics cards could soon be at an end.

Nvidia is bringing its flagship GTX 980 GPU to a number of notebook devices.

That’s right – the full-size, desktop GTX 980, rather than the laptop-friendly 980M offshoot that launched last year.

What this means in practice is while the 980M achieved around 70 to 80 per cent of its full-fat sibling, the laptops equipped with the GTX 980 will be able to harness the whole of the card’s hardware for gaming, video editing and so on.

That’s helped by the full 2048 CUDA core architecture of the component, unchanged from its desktop PC counterpart, as well as the overclockable nature of the card – an overclocking tool will accompany the new laptops.

The GTX 980 will offer 7Gbps of memory bandwidth, versus the 980M’s 5Gbps. Similarly, the 980 will come with four to eight phase power supplies, against the 980M’s three.

To help with cooling in the smaller form factor of a laptop, the 980 will have one change – a new custom-tuned fan. Each laptop will tweak the card’s formula and specifics to suit its manufacturer’s wants and needs.

To avoid draining battery life, the 980 will require that the laptop be plugged into the wall. On portable power, it will automatically drop its performance to match that of the 980M to conserve life.

The six laptops that comprise the first wave of 980-equipped machines are as follows:

• Asus GX700
• Clevo P775DM-G
• Clevo P870DM-G
• Gigabyte Auros RX7Y4
• MSI GT72
• MSI GT80