Nvidia GTX 1080 Desktop Chips Coming to Laptops
Nvidia's recently unveiled GTX 1080 and 1070 GPUs were great news for desktop owners, but meant very little for those of us belonging to the laptop tribe. However, it looks like gaming notebook fans will soon be able to get in on the high-powered Pascal fun. According to PCGamer, Nvidia will roll out its new 10-series chips for laptops around August or September.
Now instead of the mobile-centric M series of chips, Nvidia looks like it's throwing caution to the wind and outfitting gaming notebooks with the desktop versions -- similar to what it did with the GTX 980 for the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro Dragon Edition and the Origin Eon17-SLX. In fact, the company is getting rid of M-series chips altogether, which means better graphics performance overall for gaming laptop aficionados.
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The only difference between the chips and cards is that the laptop version will have lower Thermal Design Power (TDP), which is the amount of heat that must be dissipated to keep a chip in optimal operating temperature. Whenever the chips ship, you can also expect to see lower clock speeds on the laptop versions, though they should have the ability to be raised to higher speeds -- provided your loadout can handle it.
While the thought of even more powerful portable gaming rigs is great. I'm more excited by the prospect of what this means for virtual reality. If every gaming laptop from here on out can support the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive, consumers will potentially have a cheaper entry into the world of VR.
I can't wait for these new powerhouses to arrive. The testing and the subsequent gaming is bound to be epic. Stay tuned.
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Sherri L. Smith has been cranking out product reviews for Laptopmag.com since 2011. In that time, she's reviewed more than her share of laptops, tablets, smartphones and everything in between. The resident gamer and audio junkie, Sherri was previously a managing editor for Black Web 2.0 and contributed to BET.Com and Popgadget.