Update: This article contains updated and more accurate information about the mobility series.
NVIDIA recently launches its lineup of Turing desktop graphics cards and as expected, it is planning to do the same for its laptop lineups as well. Word has already started to spread as laptop manufacturers hint at upcoming 'next-generation lineup' (something our own Adrian Ip covered in Razer's earning analysis) and the only question that remains is what we will be seeing first. This article is a mix of publicly available information as well as whispers I have heard from surprisingly technophillic birds.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q mobile designs will be rolled out soon with next-generation laptop lineups, no 2070 in sight
The first thing that's very interesting is that NVIDIA is going to be launching the Turing lineup with the RTX 2080 Mobile GPU. Historically, NVIDIA has moved on to using desktop dies in laptops - which makes it very hard to predict what they will launch - but we are pretty sure about this one since its the only GPU that has the suffix "M" in its machine ID.
The device IDs for the Turing lineup were posted on Github and are given below:
- Turing TU102: 1e02, 1e04, 1e07
- Turing TU102GL: 1e30, 1e3c, 1e3d
- Turing TU104: 1e82, 1e87
- Turing TU104M: 1eab
- Turing TU106: 1f07
Of course, it is the TU104M with device ID 1eab that is of particular interest to us today, since that is the GPU making up the RTX 2080 Mobile graphics card. Want more proof? well, here is the same device ID listed with the RTX 2080 Mobile nomenclature intact. I have screenshotted the entry below in case NVIDIA tries to get it scrubbed from the database:
This is great news for gamers who want something more portable than a tower because NVIDIA's Max-Q designs are the closest you can ever get to desktop-grade performance in a laptop. Heat and cooling are usually quite innovative for these laptops and clocks are lower than their desktop counterparts. TDP is usually the next big concern but considering 12 NFF is an improved version of 16nm FinFET this is something that we should have quite a bit of leeway with (Low clocks + 12 NFF = decent TDP).
I also received the following quote from a random bird that wandered in from the open window:
"We will putting the 2080-Max Q into our thin 15 and 17'' versions with NVIDIA's help. It’s still unclear at the moment when the 2070 will be out. Our ID/design will be pretty much the same as what you saw but heres the thing, NVIDIA is working very hard to standardize the height and wieghts this time around. This is a new branch of their mobility philosophy and they have provided z-heights to us for each graphics card"
So it looks like integration of the 2080-MaxQ is going pretty well and we should see prominent partners like Razer and others roll out their brand new Turing mobility graphics card soon. The final question that I am sure is on everyone's mind is whether we will see a 2070 or 2060 anytime soon. Well, to that, I don't know for sure but I would think not. The reason for that is simple, I have heard that the 2070 won't be out until around November and the 2070 mobility cannot ship before its desktop part and the 2060 Mobile cannot ship till the 2070 does, of course.
What this means is that everything except the RTX 2080 Mobile might have to wait for the 10-series inventory to finish up and NVIDIA to roll out its RTX 2070 and 2060 GPUs in the fourth quarter before the mobility side plays catch up. This might be somewhat of a bummer to people who want to get the optimal mid-tier power configuration for a laptop - something that would ideally give decent battery time and not just insane amount of graphical jiggawatts; but unfortunately, it looks like we might have to wait a bit.
