14 DAY TRIAL // The Maxwell series of graphics processing units from NVIDIA had to be redesigned for the 28nm fabrication process, and the ETA seems to have settled on Q4 2014. Now, it is said that the next flagship mobile graphics processing unit will debut at the same time.
And by flagship mobile GPU we mean the GeForce GTX 980M. The mobile line of GPUs seems to be one generation ahead of the desktop one, name-wise, even though, as far as technology goes, they are the same.
The latest consensus on the Internet is that the GeForce 900-Series of laptop graphics processors will come out in October or November.
In addition to the GTX 980M, there will be GTX 975M, 970M, 960M, and 950M GPUs, plus the GT 940. The October/November release date was not confirmed for them though. Their specifications are unknown.
The barebones are known, however, for the Maxwell technology itself. NVIDIA focused on efficiency. In other words, the GPU performs tasks better on the same resources as Kepler, and in some cases less.
That is why the NVENC video encoder is 1.5 to 2 times faster than on Kepler GPUs (video is encoded at 6 to 8 times the speed of playback).
PureVideo Feature Set E video decoding should go 8 to 10 times better as well, as the decoder cache benefits from increases in memory efficiency.
The amount of L2 cache has gone up on GM107 as well, compared to GK107, from 256 KB to 2 MB, cutting on the need for memory bandwidth. Meanwhile, the memory bus is of 128 bits, instead of GK106's 192 bits, for power savings. Also, the CUDA core count is of 128 instead of 192, but said to have 90% of the latter's efficiency despite the larger difference.
All in all, Maxwell is a fairly paradoxical piece of work (especially since H.265 is not supported for full hardware decoding, as NVIDIA uses a mix of hardware and software decoding instead). Then again, this only applies to the GM107 that is already on the market, powering the GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti.
The desktop cards set to debut this fall, and the mobile GTX 980M for that matter (plus the 975M most likely, at the very least) will use the GM204, which will have better specifications all around. Unfortunately, a leak containing the specs of the chip hasn't appeared, save for a pretty unbelievable one that says GM204 will be a 16nm chip.