Similar to Fermi and Kepler, Maxwell / GM107 supports DirectX 11.2 with feature level 11.0 only.Īlthough the GTX 860M has much less memory bandwidth and computing power, it can compete with (or sometimes even beat) the old Kepler-based GeForce GTX 770M while drawing significantly less power. Many games of 2013/2014 (Tomb Raider or BioShock Infinite, etc.) can be played fluently in FullHD resolution and very high detail settings. The increased size can handle some of the memory traffic to allow for a relatively narrow memory interface without significantly reducing the performance.

Smaller Streaming Multiprocessors (SMM) with only 128 ALUs (Kepler: 192) and an optimized scheduler should lead to better utilization of the shaders. Nvidia promises that a Maxwell SMM with 128 ALUs can offer 90 percent of the performance of a Kepler SMX with 192 ALUs. GM107 features 5 SMMs and thus 640 shader cores, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs (128-bit interface).Īnother optimization is the massively enlarged L2 cache (GM107: 2 MB). The GTX 860M offers 640 shader units clocked at 1029 MHz (+ Boost) as well as 4 GB of GDDR5 memory (128 bit, 5000 MHz effective).Īlternatively, there is also a version based on the Kepler chip GK104, which has 1152 shader units clocked at 797 MHz.Ĭompared to Kepler, Maxwell has been optimized in several details to increase power efficiency. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M is an upper mid-range, DirectX 12-compatible graphics card for laptops unveiled in March 2014. It is one of the first cards based on Nvidia's new Maxwell architecture (GM107 chip), but is still manufactured in 28 nm.

Nvidia geforce gtx 860m reviews