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MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro with GTX 980M review

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  • MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro with GTX 980M review

    Let's lay the cards on the table right away: jumping from the GeForce GTX 880M to the GTX 980M is not only a vast upgrade, but more than ever it narrows the performance gap between Nvidia's laptop and desktop GPUs. It's a different story for the desktop GTX 980 of course - which despite using the same Maxwell architecture only achieves a meagre advance over the former flagship card, the 780 Ti. Ultimately, Maxwell's triumph is in its energy efficiency - more performance from less power, a perfect fit for a gaming laptop.
    As a bedrock, the GTX 980M is based on the same GM204 architecture found in the desktop Maxwell-based cards; produced via a 28nm process, with a matching 64 ROPS and 256-bit memory bus. One crucial change is in its axing of four SMMs from the original 16 - in turn lowering the CUDA core count from 2048 to 1536, and texture units from 128 to 96. Otherwise, we see the core clock slip from 1126MHz to 1038MHz, though the 980M is able to boost up to the desktop's clock under the right circumstances.
    In effect, this brings its specs a closer to a trimmed-back version of the desktop GTX 970. To future-proof it somewhat, the GTX 980M has an 8GB pool of GDDR5 memory to its advantage, comfortably exceeding the desktop card's best configuration (though 8GB models for the desktop GPUs are inbound). Alas, this memory setup uses a lowered clock of 5000MHz (down from 7000MHz), and relies on a lessened 160GBps fill-rate. Given it's all in service of the laptop's fixed 1920x1080 screen, these specs are still well matched with the hardware at hand.
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