Nvidia Geforce GTX 965M ‘Maxwell Mobility’ GPU Spotted in Driver Updates

The folks over at Videocardz.com have spotted an interesting detail in the recent update of Nvidia drivers: the GTX 965M (Mobility Geforce) GPU. Since the GPU will be recognized after the 344.77 driver update, it means that the silicon has been more or less finalized, marking the core as a GM204 or a GM107 (in all probability).

Nvidia Geforce GTX 965M (probably) Maxwell Mobility spotted amongst Geforce 344.77 driver update

The nomenclature of the leaked card puts it ahead of the GTX 960M while behind the GTX 970M; out of which, only the latter has been released. It is possible that the GTX 960M is based on an older Kepler rebrand or even, that the GPU isn’t coming at all. Either ways, the fact that there are more Maxwell GPUs inbound is interesting news for mobility fans. Maxwell’s efficient architecture would make it very ideal for laptop conditions especially if you are talking about a midrange GPU such as the GTX 965M, whose power consumption should be pretty low comparatively. Here is the relevant clause from the update:

NVIDIA_DEV.139B = “NVIDIA N16P-GX”
NVIDIA_DEV.13D9 = “NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M”

The reason I would not go with any other core like the GM206 or GM208 is because neither of these cores have even been heard of so far. Zauba.com, the shipping database, is one of the most reliable ways to check if a GPU has actually taped out and so far there is no sign of any GM206 or GM208. On the other hand, all recent Nvidia cores ranging from the GM210, to GM204 and even the big maxwell GM200 are present. Interestingly we have been expecting the GTX 960M for a long time and also the GTX 975M. However, it seems like we are only getting the GTX 960M and the GTX 965M.

It also seems like Nvidia is getting ready to run the Maxwell 28nm node for a good year or two now. The ideal case would have been to move to 16nm FinFET+ before recycling a generation continuously but I guess second generation Maxwell is better than kepler any day. Also, so far the only competition AMD has provided is with the Mobility Tonga GPU M295X, which hasn’t been officially released yet but can be found in Apple iMac devices. Lets just hope it isn’t a Kepler rebrand at any rate.