Today is the big launch for 60 new Geforce 10-series notebooks, and according to Mark Aevermann, the company’s Geforce Notebook Product Lead, there is going to be a pretty significant performance leap over the previous Maxwell generation launched just under two years ago.

“If you take the very same notebook that was available in Maxwell and you compare it to the same notebook with Pascal, you see a 70 percent increase in performance,” said Aevermann.

Nvidia has said that for a very long time, the company has wanted to take the full Geforce GTX desktop GPU experience and bring it to notebooks without creating watered-down “M” versions. This year marks the first time the company will be bringing the full Geforce 10-series desktop chips to notebooks without creating a second notebook-optimized hardware lineup. The only differences will be some slight clockspeed adjustments and the way in which the GPUs are configured with drivers and notebook settings – with the exception of the GTX 1070.

“They’re the same chip [as in their same-name desktop GPUs], they’re configured a bit differently,” said Aevermann. “We’re in a more constrained environment so we have to do everything we can possibly do to squeeze out performance.”

Any Geforce GTX 1080 equipped notebooks will feature the same chip and frequencies as their desktop counterparts but  – GP104 GPU, 2560 CUDA cores, a 1,607MHz base clock, a 1,733MHz Boost clock and 8GB of GDDR5X memory (10Gbps).



Gigabyte Sager, Aorus, MSI and ASUS gaming notebook lineups equipped with Geforce 10-series GPUs (via XoticPC.com)

The Geforce GTX 1070 for notebooks gets an interesting change – the same GP104 GPU, but with a core upgrade from 1,920 to 2,048 cores, a lower 1443MHz base clock (instead of 1,645MHz) and a lower 1,645MHz Boost clock (instead of 1,683MHz).



Geforce 10-series notebooks can feature up to GTX 1080 SLI (via XoticPC.com)

Meanwhile, Geforce GTX 1060 equipped notebooks will feature the same chip as their desktop counterparts but with lower clockspeeds – GP106 GPU, 1280 CUDA cores, a 1,405MHz base clock (instead of 1506MHz), a 1,670MHz Boost clock (instead of 1,709MHz) and 6GB of GDDR5 memory (8Gbps).



Nvidia Geforce 10-series GPU comparison chart (Larger image here)

At the press event in Bangkok, Thailand, Nvidia explained that having more cores but at lower clock frequencies gives better power efficiency for thin and light notebook form factors. Some are claiming that gaming performance will be within 10 percent of desktop GPU equivalents, but this will vary based on refresh rate and other factors. Of course, many Pascal gaming notebooks will also offer OC adjustments that should allow GPU offsets in excess of 300MHz.

Any gaming notebook equipped with these three Nvidia Geforce 10-series GPUs will be VR-capable out of the box, with Nvidia claiming there is simply no reason a watered-down “M” series lineup anymore. “There is a gaming notebook for every gamer,” said Aevermann. “Every major manufacturer will be releasing gaming notebooks with GTX 10 GPUs inside.”

Xotic PC has teamed up with MSI, Gigabyte Sager, ASUS and other leading gaming laptop manufacturers to add additional high-performance customizations and visual personalizations to dozens of new Geforce 10-series notebooks either now available or currently up for pre-order. Some of these notebooks even offer Geforce GTX 1080 SLI, which we thought was very impressive minus the price tag.