Rumour has it that Nvidia is not planning to release an “M” variant of its Pascal-based GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards for the notebook market. According to PC Gamer, an inside source has told them that instead of releasing a cut-down mobile version of the Pascal GP104 GPUs, Nvidia will be providing manufacturers with the desktop variant of both Pascal-based GPUs – for gaming notebooks.
Notebook manufacturers aren’t new to the concept of slapping a desktop variant GPU in their products, like the dual GM204 GPU inside the ROG GX700 for example. What is interesting about this rumour however, is the fact that this would be the first time Nvidia is skipping out on an “M” variant for its newly introduced GPUs.
That said, other sources are saying that this may only be the case with high-end Nvidia GPUs, lower-end Pascal GPUs should have their own respective mobile versions in the future. Despite this, one shouldn’t expect the Pascal GP104 GPU used in future gaming laptops to perform on par with the desktop variants; simply because mobile GPUs tend operate with a lower TDP, which results in a reduction of overall performance.
Knowing this, it would be interesting to see just how much of a performance downgrade the “mobile” variant of the Pascal GP104 will be compared to its desktop counterpart; especially when one considers how efficient Pascal GPUs are when it comes to power efficiency.
(Source: PC Gamer)
