GeForce 800M series

Last updated

GeForce 800M series
Release dateMarch 12, 2014;9 years ago (March 12, 2014) [1]
CodenameGF117
GK104
GM10x
Architecture Fermi
Kepler
Maxwell
ModelsGeForce series
  • GeForce GTX series
Transistors585M (GF117)
  • 1.02B (GK208)
  • 1.87B (GM107)
  • 3.54B (GK104)
Fabrication process TSMC 28 nm
Cards
Entry-levelGeForce 800M
GeForce 820M
GeForce 825M
GeForce 830M
GeForce 840M
GeForce 845M
Mid-rangeGeForce GTX 850M
GeForce GTX 860M
High-endGeForce GTX 870M
GeForce GTX 880M
API support
DirectX Direct3D 12.0 (feature level 11_0) [2] [3] Shader Model 6.7 (Maxwell), Shader Model 6.5 (Kepler) or Shader Model 5.1 (Fermi)
OpenCL OpenCL 3.0 [lower-alpha 1]
OpenGL OpenGL 4.6 [4]
Vulkan Vulkan 1.0
n/a (GF117)
SPIR-V
History
Predecessor GeForce 600 series
Variant GeForce 700 series
Successor GeForce 900 series
Support status
Fermi cards unsupported
Security updates for Kepler until September 2024
Maxwell fully supported

The GeForce 800M series is a family of graphics processing units by Nvidia for laptop PCs. [2] It consists of rebrands of mobile versions of the GeForce 700 series [2] and some newer chips that are lower end compared to the rebrands.

Contents

The GeForce 800 series name was originally planned to be used for both desktop and mobile chips based on the Maxwell microarchitecture (GM-codenamed chips), named after the Scottish theoretical physicist James Clerk Maxwell, which was previously introduced into the GeForce 700 series in the GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti, released on February 18, 2014. [5] However, because mobile GPUs under the GeForce 800M series had already been released using the Kepler architecture, Nvidia decided to rename its GeForce 800 series desktop GPUs as the GeForce 900 series. [2]

The Maxwell microarchitecture, the successor to Kepler microarchitecture, was the first Nvidia architecture to feature an integrated ARM CPU of its own. [6] This enabled Maxwell GPUs to be more independent from the main CPU according to Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. [7] Nvidia expects three major things from the Maxwell architecture: improved graphics capabilities, simplified programming, and better energy-efficiency compared to the GeForce 700 series and GeForce 600 series. [8]

Architecture

First generation Maxwell (GM10x)

First generation Maxwell GM107/GM108 provides few consumer-facing additional features; Nvidia instead focused on power efficiency. Nvidia's video encoder, NVENC, is 1.5 to 2 times faster than on Kepler-based GPUs meaning it can encode video at 6 to 8 times playback speed. [5] Nvidia also claims an 8 to 10 times performance increase in PureVideo Feature Set E video decoding due to the video decoder cache paired with increases in memory efficiency. However, HEVC is not supported for full hardware decoding, relying on a mix of hardware and software decoding. [5] When decoding video, a new low power state "GC5" is used on Maxwell GPUs to conserve power. [5]

Nvidia increased the amount of L2 cache on GM107 to 2 MB, up from 256 KB on GK107, reducing the memory bandwidth needed. Accordingly, Nvidia cut the memory bus to 128 bit on GM107 from 192 bit on GK106, further saving power. [5] Nvidia also changed the streaming multiprocessor design from that of Kepler (SMX), naming it SMM. The layout of SMM units is partitioned so that each of the four warp schedulers controls isolated FP32 CUDA cores, load/store units and special function units, unlike Kepler, where the warp schedulers share the resources. Texture units and FP64 CUDA cores are still shared. [5] SMM allows for a finer-grain allocation of resources than SMX, saving power when the workload isn't optimal for shared resources. Nvidia claims a 128 CUDA core SMM has 90% of the performance of a 192 CUDA core SMX. [5]

GM107/GM108 supports CUDA Compute Capability 5.0 compared to 3.5 on GK110/GK208 GPUs and 3.0 on GK10x GPUs. Dynamic Parallelism and HyperQ, two features in GK110/GK208 GPUs, are also supported across the entire Maxwell product line.

Maxwell provides native shared memory atomic operations for 32-bit integers and native shared memory 32-bit and 64-bit compare-and-swap (CAS), which can be used to implement other atomic functions.

Maxwell supports DirectX 12. [9]

Products

Products formerly placed into the GeForce 800 (8xx) series

Nvidia has announced that the company skipped the GeForce 800 series for desktop graphics cards, most likely because the GTX 800M series consists of high-end Kepler and low-end Maxwell based components. Instead, Nvidia had announced that the newly renamed GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 will be introduced formally on September 19, 2014. [2]

GeForce 800M (8xxM) series

The GeForce 800M series is designed for notebooks. The processing power is obtained by multiplying shader clock speed, the number of cores and how many instructions the cores are capable of performing per cycle. Note that all GK104 based GPUs are using the older Kepler Architecture and the 820M uses GF117 cores based on the Fermi Architecture.

ModelLaunch Code
name(s)		Fab
(nm)		 Bus
interface 		Core config1Clock speed Fillrate Memory API support (version)Processing Power2
(GFLOPS)		 TDP
(watts)
Core
(MHz)		Shader
(MHz)		Memory
(MT/s)		Pixel
(GP/s)		Texture
(GT/s)		Size
(MB)		Bandwidth
(GB/s)		TypeBus width
(bit)		 DirectX OpenGL
GeForce 800M [lower-alpha 2] [10] March 17, 2014GF117 TSMC
28 		PCIe 2.0 ×848:8:8738147620005.95.9204814.4 DDR3 6412.0
(11_0)		4.6141.715
GeForce 820M [lower-alpha 2] [11] February 2014 PCIe 2.0 ×1696:16:4719–9541438–19082.9–3.811.5–15.316276.1–366.315
GeForce 830M [lower-alpha 3] [12] March 12, 2014GM108 PCIe 3.0 ×16256:16:8
(2 SMM)		1082—8.216.514.455430
GeForce 840M [lower-alpha 3] [13] 384:24:8
(3 SMM)		10298.224.716790.330
GeForce GTX 850M [14] GM107640:40:16
(5 SMM)		936+Boost
876+Boost		500014.035.02048
4096		32
80		 DDR3
GDDR5 		1281198.140
GeForce GTX 860M [15] GM107
GK104		640:40:16
(5 SMM)
1152:96:16
(6 SMX)		1029+Boost
797+Boost		16.5
12.8		41.2
76.5		80 GDDR5 1317.1
1836.3		40–45
75
GeForce GTX 870M [16] GK1041344:112:24
(7 SMX)		941+Boost22.6105.43072
6144		1201922529.4100
GeForce GTX 880M [17] 1536:128:32
(8 SMX)		954+Boost30.5122.14096
8192		1602562930.7105
  1. ↑ In OpenCL 3.0, OpenCL 1.2 functionality has become a mandatory baseline, while all OpenCL 2.x and OpenCL 3.0 features were made optional.
  2. 1 2 Lacks hardware video encoder
  3. 1 2 Lacks hardware video encoder and decoder

Successor Architecture

The next generation of mobile cards was the 900M series, which continued usage of the Maxwell archicture. Nvidia followed the Maxwell architecture with the Pascal architecture in 2016 in the GeForce 10 series.

Chipset table

Discontinued support

"Driver 368.81 is the last driver to support Windows XP/Windows XP 64-bit".

In March 2018, Nvidia discontinued support for 32-bit operating systems with the release of driver version 391.35. [18]

Notebook GPUs based on the Kepler architecture moved to legacy support in April 2019 and stopped receiving critical security updates in April 2020. [19] [20] The Nvidia GeForce GTX 830M, 840M and 850M from the 8xxM GPU family were unaffected by this change.

Nvidia announced that after Release 470 drivers, it would transition driver support for the Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 operating systems to legacy status and continue to provide critical security updates for these operating systems through September 2024. [21]

See also

Notes

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    References

    1. ↑ Burnes, Andrew (March 12, 2014). "Introducing GTX 800M Notebook GPUs". GeForce.com. Nvidia . Retrieved August 31, 2014.
    2. 1 2 3 4 5 Shilov, Anton (August 29, 2014). "Nvidia to skip GeForce GTX 800 series, to introduce GeForce GTX 970, GTX 980 in mid-September". KitGuru.
    3. ↑ Kowaliski, Cyril (March 21, 2014). "DirectX 12 will also add new features for next-gen GPUs". The Tech Report. Retrieved April 1, 2014.
    4. ↑ "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M". TechPowerUp.
    5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Smith, Ryan; T S, Ganesh (February 18, 2014). "The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti and GTX 750 Review: Maxwell Makes Its Move". AnandTech. Archived from the original on February 18, 2014. Retrieved February 18, 2014.
    6. ↑ Nvidia Maxwell to be first GPU with ARM CPU in 2013, Guru3d.com
    7. 1 2 "Nvidia Maxwell Graphics Processors to Have Integrated ARM General-Purpose Cores - X-bit labs". xbitlabs.com. Archived from the original on October 20, 2013.
    8. ↑ "Nvidia: Next-Generation Maxwell Architecture Will Break New Grounds - X-bit labs". xbitlabs.com. Archived from the original on June 29, 2013.
    9. ↑ "DirectX 12: A Major Stride for Gaming". The Official NVIDIA Blog.
    10. ↑ "NVIDIA GeForce 800M Specs". TechPowerUp.
    11. ↑ "GeForce 820M - Specifications - GeForce". geforce.com. Archived from the original on December 19, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
    12. ↑ "GeForce 830M - Specifications - GeForce". geforce.com. Archived from the original on December 10, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
    13. ↑ "GeForce 840M - Specifications - GeForce". geforce.com. Archived from the original on December 17, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
    14. ↑ "GeForce GTX 850M - Specifications - GeForce". geforce.com. Archived from the original on December 6, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
    15. ↑ "GeForce GTX 860M - Specifications - GeForce". geforce.com. Archived from the original on December 4, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
    16. ↑ "GeForce GTX 870M - Specifications - GeForce". geforce.com. Archived from the original on December 19, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
    17. ↑ "GeForce GTX 880M - Specifications - GeForce". geforce.com. Archived from the original on December 10, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
    18. ↑ "Support Plan for 32-bit and 64-bit Operating Systems | NVIDIA".
    19. ↑ Eric Hamilton (March 9, 2019). "Nvidia to end support for mobile Kepler GPUs starting April 2019". Techspot.
    20. ↑ "List of Kepler series GeForce Notebook GPUs". Nvidia.
    21. ↑ "Support Plan for Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 | NVIDIA".
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