Are these 980/970m benchmarks legit?

Basically mobile cards are limited by TDP, increasing performance via increasing power usage isn't really an option since you can't just stick better cooling on due to space limitations. With Maxwell GM204, Nvidia chose to increase performance while also lowering TDP. So this brings the gap between mobile performance and desktop performance.

The other issue is we haven't actually seen the "bigger" designs yet for this generational transition. For example Nvidia will release a higher TDP and overall bigger Maxwell part for the desktop, once this occurs you will see the gap widen apart again since that part (likely GM200) would not be suitable for mobile. For instance Nvidia GTX 780m/880m were far behind desktop parts like the GTX 780
because it was GK104 for the former and GK110 for the latter.
 
limitedaccess said:
Basically mobile cards are limited by TDP, increasing performance via increasing power usage isn't really an option since you can't just stick better cooling on due to space limitations. With Maxwell GM204, Nvidia chose to increase performance while also lowering TDP. So this brings the gap between mobile performance and desktop performance.

The other issue is we haven't actually seen the "bigger" designs yet for this generational transition. For example Nvidia will release a higher TDP and overall bigger Maxwell part for the desktop, once this occurs you will see the gap widen apart again since that part (likely GM200) would not be suitable for mobile. For instance Nvidia GTX 780m/880m were far behind desktop parts like the GTX 780
because it was GK104 for the former and GK110 for the latter.
Click to expand...

So you do think the benchmarks are realistic? That's pretty impressive. I've usually found mobile graphics are 3+ generations behind, not just 1.
 
The numbers are what you'd expect. The mobile chips are still slower since they have likely cut down memory bandwidth quite a bit as well as core clockspeeds somewhat for the 980m vs 980.

You'd need to expand a bit more regarding the generations behind comment. Nvidia for example since the GTX 680m has been using GK104 which is the exact same GK104 part launched on the desktop with GTX 680. Desktop became much faster after Nvidia launched GK110 parts (Titan, GTX 780/ti), which aren't suitable for mobile. Since Nvidia has not launched a GM200/210 part yet you'd have parity with the desktop as both are using GM204.
 
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