GeForce GTX 1070 (Laptop) vs 970M, 980M, GTX 980 (Laptop) and GTX 1070 (Desktop) – benchmarks and gaming tests

gtx-1070-vs-900m-cover

This year’s NVIDIA mobile GPUs are deliberately named after their desktop counterparts and miss the M at the back. And the reason is obvious, NVIDIA wants you to believe that they’ve finally closed the performance gap between two form factors – mobile and desktop. However, as our gaming and synthetic benchmarks show, this isn’t exactly true. There’s a little more way to go but it’s closer than ever and definitely closer than Maxwell was.

Put side by side, both variants seem almost identical but small details make the whole difference. For instance, the mobile GTX 1070 features a tad more CUDA cores and Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) than the desktop version (2048 vs 1920 and 170 vs 120 for CUDA and TMU respectively) but its core is clocked slightly lower – 1443 – 1645 MHz vs 1506 – 1683 MHz. The latter probably makes the biggest difference in the testing. But, on the other hand, when we did a short stress test of the mobile GPU, GPU-Z didn’t register clock rates above 1556 MHz so the pre-production sample not utilizing the full potential of the graphics card might also have to do with the tests’ outcome.

Nonetheless, the rest of the specs are identical, including the memory specs (8GB GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 2000 MHz on a 256-bit bus). That’s why in real-life use (gaming tests) the difference isn’t as big, only around 8-10% according to maxed out Full HD settings in F1, Tomb Raider, HITMAN, GTA V and Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

But how does it stack against its older predecessor 970M?

To be honest, this question needs to be paraphrased like this: “How does it stack against real predecessor, the GTX 980?”. Why? It’s simple. According to the early benchmarks and gaming tests , the GTX 1060 is a successor to the 970, the GTX 1070 to the 980 and 1080 to the 980 Ti. That’s why the early adoption of the GTX 1070 in laptops makes them so absurdly expensive. That’s because you get a top-notch desktop-like GPU performance without sacrificing portability. So if you are still waiting for the affordable Pascal GPUs, you might want to wait for the rumored GTX 1050 Ti GPU or maybe the 1060 as well.

Anyway, below you will see a comparison between the GTX 980 (Laptop), 970M, and desktop 1070 to get a better grasp of the evolution of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX family for now.

You can also check out the first GTX 1070-equipped notebooks here: http://amzn.to/2aWAEwX

Benchmarks

GPUGeForce GTX 1070 MobileGeForce GTX 1070 FEGeForce GTX 970MGeForce GTX 980MGeForce GTX 980 (Laptop)
Unigine Heaven 3.041605462 (+31%)2299 (-45%)2963 (-29%)3487 (-16%)
Unigine Heaven 4.035564489 (+26%)1678 (-53%)2311 (-35%)2586 (-17%)
3DMark Cloud Gate84191115350 (+37%)51143 (-39%)66709 (-21%)76639 (-9%)
3DMark Sky Diver4776759970 (+26%)24596 (-49%)30780 (-34%)40266 (-16%)
3Dmark Fire Strike1548518123 (+17%)7429 (-52%)9319 (-40%)11937 (-23%)

Gaming tests

tomb-raider-2013-wallpaper1

GPUTomb Raider (1080p, Low)Tomb Raider (1080p, Medium)Tomb Raider (1080p, High)
Mobile GTX 1070351 fps245 fps129 fps
Desktop GTX 1070555 fps (+58%)275 fps (+22)136 fps (+5%)

f1-2015-game

GPUF1 2015 (1080p, Low)F1 2015 (1080p, Medium)F1 2015 (1080p, Max)
Mobile GTX 1070128 fps110 fps106 fps
Desktop GTX 1070182 fps (+42%)152 fps (+38%)130 fps (+23%)

gta-5-cover

GPUGTA 5 (1080p, Low)GTA 5 (1080p, Medium)GTA 5 (1080p, Max)
Mobile GTX 1070140 fps100 fps48 fps
Desktop GTX 1070168 fps (+20%)131 fps (+31%)52 fps (+8%)

hitman-2016

GPUHitman: 2016 (1080p, Low)Hitman: 2016 (1080p, Medium)Hitman: 2016 (1080p, Max)
Mobile GTX 107093 fps87 fps75 fps
Desktop GTX 1070105 fps (+13%)98 fps (+13%)80 fps (+7%)

Shadow_of_Mordor_Wikia_-_Welcome_Video (1)

GPUMiddle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Low)Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Medium)Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (1080p, Max)
Mobile GTX 1070170 fps151 fps121 fps
Desktop GTX 1070235 fps (+38%)189 fps (+25%)133 fps (+10%)

The notebooks used for this article are the ASUS ROG G752VT (with GTX 970M), the Alienware 17 R3 (with GTX 980M) and Acer Predator 17X (with GTX 980 for laptops). Whereas the desktop GTX 1070, we used the one we already reviewed here.

You can also check out the first GTX 1070-equipped notebooks here: http://amzn.to/2aWAEwX

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Juan David Alvarez
7 anni fa

i want to know … the gtx1070 mobile is mxm as the 1080 mobile ?

C. S.
7 anni fa

Yes it is MXM like the 1080, however the 1080 requires a 330 watt power supply on most laptops, where the 1070 only requires a 230 watt power supply.

Cris
Cris
7 anni fa

Most percent figures are off in respect to the numercial values. Easy one: In GTA, 131 is a round 31% more than 100, not 24% (I don’t know where that figure came from) For Tomb Rider, 555fps (really??) is about 57% more than 351, not 37%. 168 FPS is a round and exact 20% more than 140, not 17%. I guess the percent figures should be preceeded with a “-” and put in the mobile version as “351 is 37% less than 555”, which would be almost correct. Or as in 100 is 24% less than 131, which would also… Read more »

Drae
Drae
7 anni fa
Rispondi a  Rossen Pandev

Your math is still off… I think you need to update your spreadsheet because I didn’t even get past the unigen heaven 3 benchmark scores and realized I can’t trust anything written here. Thank you.

Cris
Cris
7 anni fa
Rispondi a  Rossen Pandev

Everything’s fine as of yesterday.Just looked at all your figures again and nothing’s looking wrong now. I don’t see what Drae is pointing out. Maybe if he gave an example?

elmalodelapelicula
7 anni fa

Glad I could be of help!

Agustin
Agustin
7 anni fa

Christ and I just got a laptop with a 970m a couple of months ago. Do you honestly think it’s worth the upgrade or should I stick with my laptop?

ueg1974
ueg1974
7 anni fa
Rispondi a  Agustin

yes u should if u got money…….

Arwayne Coloma
7 anni fa

Hello can i ask i have a GTX980m 8gb is it worth to upgrade to GTX1070 Laptop?

SLae
SLae
7 anni fa

Very good review but I didn’t understand what is the difference between GeForce GTX 980M and GeForce GTX 980 (Laptop)?

Agustin
Agustin
7 anni fa
Rispondi a  SLae

The GeForce GTX 980m is the mobile variant of video cards only found on laptops and the GeForce GTX 980 is the desktop video card found usually on gaming desktops and very few laptops. If you compared the two, the GTX 980 hands down wins over the 980m through performance. In simple terms, anything with an “m” is inferior to one without an “m”

GTX 950> GTX 950m

Omkar sawant
Omkar sawant
7 anni fa

Which one keeps the laptop cooler
Mobile Gtx 1070 or 980m ?

Jim Rejda
Jim Rejda
7 anni fa
Rispondi a  Omkar sawant

1070. Pascal is much more efficient. But would love to see #’s

Dr. AMK
Dr. AMK
7 anni fa

It will be nice to have a comparison between the 1070 and the 980m in SLI, many of us has a laptops with 980m SLI and wants to know if the upgrade to one 1070 is worth or not?

gerard
gerard
6 anni fa

YES PLEASE compare1070 and the 980m in SLI I agree with Dr AMK.

zkostik
zkostik
6 anni fa
Rispondi a  gerard

Most recent games sadly don’t support SLI (new Far Cry 5 will and you need SLI for 4k@60p!) so you’re better off with a single more powerful gpu. If you have SLI 980M I’m not sure it’s worth the money for the upgrade, although single 1070 is a lot faster than a single 980M.