In a rather unusual turn of events, the first I officially knew of the GeForce GTX 965M was when I saw it in some of MSI’s new gaming notebooks on Sunday. NVIDIA usually briefs us on new product launches, but for whatever reason they didn’t feel the need to send us anything in advance. (Maybe it might have something to do with Tegra X1 and all the car stuff being shown at CES?) Officially, NVIDIA unveiled the new GPU two days ago on January 6, but we’ve been busy running around Las Vegas so this is the first chance I’ve had to say a bit more about the new GPU. Let’s get into the details.

Given the quiet nature of the launch, you can already guess that this isn’t a new GPU core. Basically we’re getting another GPU for laptops based on GM204, and it’s one step down from GTX 970M placing it somewhere around the level of the GTX 870M but with updated features courtesy of GM204. In terms of specifications, the GTX 965M is has 1024 CUDA cores clocked at 944MHz, plus boost clocks, and the GDDR5 memory uses a 128-bit bus and is clocked at 5GHz. By way of comparison, GTX 970M has 1280 cores clocked at 924MHz (plus boost) with a 192-bit GDDR5 5GHz interface. This effectively puts performance at roughly half the speed of the desktop GTX 980, or around 2/3 the performance of the GTX 980M (depending on memory bandwidth use).

NVIDIA unfortunately doesn’t disclose any information on TDP or pricing with their notebook GPUs, and it’s not clear if the GTX 965M will come with 2GB or 4GB of VRAM (or perhaps both configurations will be available). That said, it’s a safe bet that GTX 965M will use less power than GTX 970M, which in turn uses less power than the GTX 980M (around 100W). We will hopefully see some notebooks with GTX 965M in the near future for testing, and considering the number of notebooks we saw sporting the new GPUs we expect that to occur sooner rather than later.

Source: NVIDIA

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  • balthozar - Thursday, January 8, 2015 - link

    Could you please share with us the laptops you saw with the 965M?
  • JarredWalton - Friday, January 9, 2015 - link

    Gigabyte will support it on most of their gaming notebooks I believe, including the AORUS line. MSI will have GE62/GE72 coming with the GPU this quarter, and I think we'll see it as an option on some of their existing notebooks as well. Clevo can certainly support it, and I think Acer had it in at least some of their V Nitro offerings. Basically, anywhere we've already seen GTX 970M could easily add 965M as a lower spec option.
  • TheJian - Thursday, January 8, 2015 - link

    You have an AMD portal but no NV one. You're surprised they don't think of you guys first? ;) You were surprised when they didn't send you guys a cake for shield? Really? I'd be surprised if you're even in their address books at this point...LOL. Now that Ryan is running things (mr. AMD), none of this should be surprising at all. I'm still waiting for 1440p to become the norm Ryan...ROFL. We're a few years after the 660ti article and I still don't see it in steam surveys etc.

    Quit pushing AMD and NV might remember you guys. You tested a BETA Nexus9, that was receiving updates during review. How about testing it again to give a REAL review now that google has patched the OS a bit and you should have better NV drivers by now also for that OS (not beta anyway by now). Two different topics here, but you get the point. They step back and look at how their stuff is tested, compared etc and think to themselves "let them buy our stuff if they want to review it". I would do the same ;)
  • just4U - Thursday, January 8, 2015 - link

    You know.. at times I really do respect your opinion but your comment today simply comes off as fanboyism. I suspect that Nvidia not having a portal has more to do with decisions they made rather than Anandtech but whatever. As to bias? Pfft.
  • OrphanageExplosion - Friday, January 9, 2015 - link

    Good lord, someone needs to take a reality pill.

    The AMD portal is gone on my screen. It was obviously a sponsorship deal set-up by the third party agency that (used to?) handle Anandtech's ads and has no bearing whatsoever on what the writers produce. Anand has explained why he handed off sponsorship and advertising to a third party many times in the past.

    None of the press were briefed on GTX 965M, so it's not a snub from NVIDIA.

    Oh and as for Ryan's AMD bias. Guess what - it's all in your head. Go read the R9 290 review if you think he panders to the red corner. The reference 290 had tons of power but had a horrible, loud and ineffective cooler design and he told it like it was - and got tons of unwarranted shit in the comments for doing so.
  • MrSpadge - Saturday, January 10, 2015 - link

    +1
  • mobutu - Friday, January 9, 2015 - link

    Thanks, but how about some news regarding the desktop 960 that is rumoured to launch in 15 january?
  • JarredWalton - Friday, January 9, 2015 - link

    If desktop 960 is launching on January 15, I can assure you that we're professional enough to not comment on something that's under NDA.
  • Hrel - Friday, January 9, 2015 - link

    I hate NDA's, they should let us know ASAP, it affects our buying decisions.

    You can get all carried away in the complexities of running a business, but bottom line, if you give a shit about your customers you'll think about their happiness BEFORE your profits. Then guess what, because you stopped trying to dictate economic activity your profits go UP! It's so very simple and yet so very secret, apparently.
  • Galcobar - Saturday, January 10, 2015 - link

    The NDA is in place precisely because it affects buying decisions.

    Being told something better/faster/cheaper is arriving soon leads people to hold off on buying today. Even more so when there's a definitive date. If you do that too often as a company, eventually you have no current sales, and thus have no money with which to actually develop and deliver that better/faster/cheaper product, and then you're out of business.

    More importantly -- probably much more importantly in a two-horse race such as this -- you lose the first-mover advantage against your competitor. In a market such as graphics cards, knowing what's coming makes it easy for the competitor to drop the price on an existing product and grab many of your prospective sales before you have a chance to launch.

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