Introducing AMD’s Radeon 7000M and NVIDIA’s GeForce 600M Mobile GPUs
by Jarred Walton on December 7, 2011 2:45 AM ESTNVIDIA’s GeForce 600M Parts
We just covered the AMD side of things, but yesterday NVIDIA quietly refreshed their entry-level and midrange mobile GPUs in a similar manner. We weren’t briefed on the updates, most likely because there’s not much to say. Like AMD there are three "new" 600M parts. Here’s the overview of what NVIDIA is offering, with the previous generation equivalents listed for reference.
| NVIDIA GeForce GT 635M, GT 630M, and 610M Specifications | ||||||
| GeForce GT 635M | GeForce GT 555M | GeForce GT 630M | GeForce GT 540M | GeForce 610M | GeForce 520MX | |
| Core Name | GF106/GF108 | GF106/GF108 | GF108 | GF108 | GF119 | GF119 |
| Stream Processors | 144/96 | 144/96 | 96 | 96 | 48 | 48 |
| Texture Units | 24/16 | 24/16 | 16 | 16 | 8 | 8 |
| ROPs | 24/4 | 24/4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Core Clock | 675/753MHz | 675/753MHz | 672MHz | 672MHz | 900MHz | 900MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1.8/3.6GHz DDR3/GDDR5 | 1.8/3.14GHz DDR3/GDDR5 | Up to 900MHz (1.8GHz) DDR3 | 900MHz (1.8GHz) DDR3 | 900MHz (1.8GHz) DDR3 | 900MHz (1.8GHz) DDR3 |
| Memory Bus Width | 192/128-bit | 192/128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 64-bit | 64-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 43.2/57.6GB/s | 43.2/50.2GB/s | 28.8GB/s | 28.8GB/s | 14.4GB/s | 14.4GB/s |
NVIDIA has the specifications up for their 600M parts, and it appears that they’ll be doing a straight rebadge without changing the clock speeds from the 500M equivalents—in fact, they’ll even keep the craziness that is the GT 555M. The only difference we could find is that GT 635M GDDR5 variants may have slightly more memory bandwidth (or more likely is that the spec page just doesn't adequately describe the bipolar nature of the product). What they will be changing is the apparent positioning of the products. The GT 630M and 610M drop 10 points from the model number, while the GT 635M drops 20 points; that appears to leave room for future GT 640M/650M parts, though nothing has been announced as yet. We also don’t have information on pricing, but there’s a possibility that with the drop in model number the prices will also be lower.
Like the AMD 7000M launch, GeForce 600M looks to be more about marketing and product positioning than anything. Mobile GPUs are about a generation behind their desktop counterparts, so with the renaming both AMD and NVIDIA are paving the way for new high-end GPUs to replace the current HD 6990M and GTX 580M. Thus, when we see the desktop HD 7970 and GTX 680 (or whatever they end up being named), we’ll should also see HD 7970M and GTX 680M. If recent history holds, those will end up being mobile variants of HD 7700 and GTX 660 (whatever those entail).
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Th3Loonatic - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
Like for reals. Why? Why do they even bother? Are they trying to con unsuspecting people who go, "OOOHHH!!! NEW GPU on my laptop!" ?Jamor - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
That exactly. The bastirds.MrSpadge - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
Looks like we can finally stop bashing nVidia for the renaming and start bashing both instead..MrS
Death666Angel - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
AMD already rebranded in the 57xx series and made them the 67xx series. So you should have been bashing them for about a year now. :-)GokieKS - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
They still haven't done it quite as egregiously as nVidia did with the multiple rebrandings of the 8800GT, but yeah, this following the 5770->6770 is almost as bad.JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
Don't forget that the 8800M GTX actually did go through a die shrink when it became the GTX 260M. That's actually a sensible approach when moving to a new process, and while it didn't do much for performance it was a lot more than a straight rebadging. So really, 8800M GTX became 9800M GT, and that's basically the same as what NVIDIA has done with the GT 630M vs. GT 540M -- a drop in model number positioning in the new series. AMD is basically doing the same thing here with the 7600M vs. 6700M and 7500M vs. 6600M. (The 7400M vs. 6400M on the other hand looks to be no better.)chizow - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
Nonsense, ATI rebadged both R200 and R300 countless times and even around the 8800GT's prime they rebadged the R600 (2900) into the RV670 (HD 3870).People put far too much emphasis on the unimportant peripheral details of a product (for whatever reasons) instead of the actual FPS and price and ultimately the value and relative performance of the product.
mino - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
... rebadged the R600 (2900) into the RV670 (HD 3870)HUH?
I want what you are smoking!
CarrellK - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 - link
You are incorrect Chizow. The RV670 was not the same piece of silicon as the R600. There were many differences, but the obvious ones were a different process (80HS versus 65) and a different memory interface (R600 was 512b...)chizow - Thursday, December 8, 2011 - link
And the cited 8800GT rebadge wasn't the same piece of silicon either, as 8800GT/G92 was 65nm and the 9800GT/G2b was a die-shrink to 55nm. Same with R600 to RV670 since it amounted to a die shrink.See my point? There's no point in nit-picking over this kind of practice because EVERYONE does it to some degree to fill out their product lines.
Even the paradigm of the industry, Intel, does this regularly. There's a strong chance they're still selling Wolfdale-based CPUs somewhere as Pentiums and making money on them.