NVIDIA’s GeForce 700M Family: Full Details and Specs
by Jarred Walton on April 1, 2013 9:00 AM ESTGeForce 700M Models and Specifications
With that brief introduction out of the way, here are the specs of the now announced 700M family. If I had to guess, I expect we’ll see revised high-end 700M parts sometime later this year based on tweaked GK106 and GK104 chips—like maybe a GTX 780M that has the performance of the GTX 680MX but in the power envelope of the GTX 680M—but we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
| GeForce GT 750M | GeForce GT 745M | GeForce GT 740M | |
| GPU and Process | 28nm GK107 or GK106 | 28nm GK107 | 28nm GK107 |
| CUDA Cores | 384 | 384 | 384 |
| GPU Clock |
Up to 967MHz plus Boost |
Up to 837MHz plus Boost |
Up to 980MHz plus Boost |
| Memory Eff. Clock | Up to 5.0GHz | Up to 5.0GHz | Up to 5.0GHz |
| Memory Bus | Up to 128-bit | Up to 128-bit | Up to 128-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | Up to 80GB/s | Up to 80GB/s | Up to 80GB/s |
| Memory |
Up to 2GB GDDR5 or DDR3 |
Up to 2GB GDDR5 or DDR3 |
Up to 2GB GDDR5 or DDR3 |
Compared to the previous generation GTX 660M, GT 650M, GT645M, and GT 640M (not to mention the GT 640M LE), the new chips all have the same core set of features but now with GPU Boost 2.0 and higher memory clocks. I wish NVIDIA would just drop support for DDR3 on their higher end chips, and likewise the “up to” clauses aren’t really helpful, but they’re both necessary evils thanks to working with OEMs that sometimes have slightly different requirements. Overall, performance of these new 700M parts should be up 15-25% relative to the previous models, thanks to higher GPU and memory clock speeds.
You’ll note that the core clocks appear to be a little crazy, but this is based largely on how the OEMs choose to configure a specific laptop. With both GDDR5 and DDR3 variants available, NVIDIA wants to keep performance of chips in the same name within 10% of each other. Thus, we could see a GT 740M with 2.5GHz GDDR5 and a moderate core clock, another GT 740M with 2.0GHz GDDR5 and a slightly higher core clock, and a third variant with 1800MHz DDR3 but matched to a 980MHz core clock. Presumably, most (all?) currently planned GT 750M and GT 745M laptops are using GDDR5 memory, and thus we don’t see the higher core clocks. As for the Boost clocks, in practice that can increase the GPU core speed 15% or more over the normal value, with most games realizing a 10-15% performance thanks to the increase.
One final item of interest is that while the GT 750M appears to have a similar configuration to the other GPUs—384 cores, 128-bit memory interface—at least in the chip shots provided the GT 750M uses a different GPU core. Based on the appearance in the above images, the GT 750M uses GK106, only it’s what would be called a “floor sweeper” model: any GK106 chip with too many defective cores to be used elsewhere can end up configured basically the same as GK107. Presumably, there will also be variants that use GK107 (or potentially GK208, just like the other parts), but NVIDIA wouldn’t confirm or deny this.
| GeForce GT 735M | GeForce GT 730M | GeForce GT 720M | GeForce 710M | |
| GPU and Process | 28nm GK208 | 28nm GK208 | 28nm Fermi | 28nm Fermi |
| CUDA Cores | 384 | 384 | 96 | 96 |
| GPU Clock |
Up to 889MHz plus Boost |
Up to 719MHz plus Boost |
Up to 938MHz with Boost |
Up to 800MHz with Boost |
| Memory Eff. Clock | Up to 2.0GHz | Up to 2.0GHz | Up to 2.0GHz | Up to 1.8GHz |
| Memory Bus | Up to 64-bit | Up to 64-bit | Up to 64-bit | Up to 64-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 32GB/s | 32GB/s | 32GB/s | 32GB/s |
| Memory | Up to 2GB DDR3 | Up to 2GB DDR3 | Up to 2GB DDR3 | Up to 2GB DDR3 |
Moving on to the lower end of the 700M range, we have the GT 730M and 710M that have already shown up in a few laptops. Joining them are GT 735M and GT 720M, which are similar chips with higher clocks. All of these chips have 64-bit memory interfaces and that will obviously curtail performance a bit, but NVIDIA is targeting Ultrabooks and other thin form factors here so performance and thermals need to be kept in balance; more on this in a moment.
The GT 735M and 730M at least are “new” parts that we haven’t seen previously in the Kepler family. The word is that some OEMs were after more economical alternatives than even the GT 640M LE, and the option to go with a 64-bit interface opens up some new markets. It’s basically penny pinching on the part of the OEMs, but we’ve complained about BoM price saving measures plenty so we won’t get into it here. NVIDIA did mention that they’ve spent some additional time tuning the drivers for performance over a 64-bit bus on these chips, and their primary competition in the iGPU market is going to be HD 4000 running on a ULV chip—and in the near future, HD 4600 with Haswell. They'll also compete with AMD APUs and dGPUs, obviously, but NVIDIA is more interested in trying to show laptop vendors and users what they gain by adding an NVIDIA dGPU to an Intel platform.
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moep - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
The slide deck does not work (404).Technical difficulty or did you have to pull it?
JarredWalton - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
It's there now... our gallery is set to post things by day only, and since the NDA was at 9AM Eastern I didn't want the gallery going live nine hours early. So I set it for 4/2 and then just changed it to 4/1.nunomoreira10 - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
I was hoping to get an 15 inch normal size laptop with a gk106 fully enabled this summer, but this just crushed my hopes.they will just keep using those highly clocked gk107 and call it mid-high end...
JarredWalton - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
A fully enabled GK106 is almost certainly in the works, but it will be something like a GTX 770M. GTX 780M is likely to be GK104, but it will be interesting to see if NVIDIA can do a full enabled GK104 while keeping it within the typical 100W power envelope that gaming notebooks target. GTX 680MX is a full GK104, but I understand TDP is ~125W or so and that's why the only product using it is the iMac 27. We'll likely see the high-end 700M parts launch in June or July.transphasic - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
Jared, a question for you regarding the 700m line out this year- are these going to be backwards compatible with our current HM laptops from 2012, or are they only for the new Haswell design?Due to the issues that we have had with AMD, there's quite a few of us that want to get rid of AMD, and upgrade to the newest Nvidia card, and this 780m is quite a bit faster than the 680m.
I would like to swap out my 7970m GPU for the upcoming 780m card, and was wondering if this is do-able or not.
JarredWalton - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
Keep in mind that I'm guessing at 780M -- I could be off. As for backwards compatibility, given that we're essentially looking at minor tweaks and revisions to Kepler, they should all work fine in existing laptops. Getting a replacement GPU might be a bit difficult/expensive, though. Quick question: did the latest 13.3 beta drivers help you at all with 7970M? I Haven't had a chance to test then yet.transphasic - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
The new Catalyst 13.3 beta drivers are fine, and have no problems yet with them. My concern, though, is that these last few driver releases from AMD have not/are not dealing with increasing the FPS rates on current games, while Nvidia's has.Even though the new games that are out like Bioshock are AMD-coded, Nvidia is winning the battle on better gaming performance. While Nvidia is releasing their standard (and better) drivers for newer games at a faster rate than AMD is (as is usual), AMD is falling further and futher behind in other areas as well in terms of hardware specs- in this case, their 8000 series gaming GPU for this summer which has been very disappointing in it's specs, to say the least.
This is why I want to upgrade to the new 780m GPU. From what was said on another forum, the preliminary specs for the 780m is the equivalent of the 680MX for the Imac released late last year.
It is said to offer a 20%+ improvement over the 680m, and if it's backwards compatible to the HM series motherboards that we currently have, it's worth thinking about upgrading to this year for our existing Sager laptops.
You're right about the cost, though. If the price is prohibitive, then it would make sense to wait for the Maxwell release next year with whatever Nvidia has out then.
It really depends on cost at this point.
nunomoreira10 - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
A fully enabled gk106 may be asking to muchmaybe with 1 smx and a 64-bit memory controler disabled
leaving it with 3 smx a fast 128-bit memory controler and call it gt755m or gtx760m
it would be the gt555m of this generation and a sweet spot for a standart perfomance 15 inch laptop.
JarredWalton - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
I'm about 99% sure we'll see a full GK106 on mobile this year; the only question is what they'll call it. Well, that and how much power will it use and what will its clocks be. For clocks, 2500MHz (5000MHz effective GDDR5) seems likely, and clocks will probably be in the 600-700MHz range with Boost taking it up to a max of around 800MHz. That's my guess anyway. TDP will be ~70W, though, so this will be a part for larger gaming notebooks only./speculation
tviceman - Monday, April 1, 2013 - link
Based on the products announced today, it looks like GK106 based mobile GPU's will start with the gtx760m, and will surely be available in a 15" form factor.