NVIDIA GeForce 910M vs NVIDIA Maxwell GPU Surface Book

NVIDIA GeForce 910M

The NVIDIA GeForce 910M is an entry-level DirectX 12 compatible graphics card announced in late 2015. Its core is based on the 28nm GF117 chip (Fermi architecture) and is equipped with 64-bit DDR3 memory. The 910M is a renamed GeForce 820M, which already was based on the the old GT 620M, GT 720M and GeForce 710M.

Architecture

The GF117 is based on the optimized GF108 Fermi chip (GeForce GT 540M) and offers 96 shaders, 16 TMUs and 4 ROPs. Each shader core is clocked twice as fast as the rest of the graphics chip, a technique known as hot clocking. More detailed information on Fermi can be found on the GT 435M GPU page.

It should be noted that the GF117 does not offer dedicated graphic ports and can therefore only be used in conjunction with Optimus.

The 820M supports GPU Boost 2.0, which can automatically overclock the card if the laptop cooling system allows it.

Performance

The gaming performance should be identical to the old GeForce 820M (see this page for benchmarks and game tests) and therefore also GT 720M and the Intel Iris Graphics 5100. This places the card in the entry level segment. Only old or low demanding games run fluent on this graphics card.

Features

The shader cores (also called CUDA cores) can be used for general calculations with APIs such as CUDA, DirectCompute 2.1 and OpenCL. PhysX is theoretically possible, but the 910M is too slow to handle both PhysX and 3D rendering in modern games. 3D Vision is not supported according to Nvidia.

Power consumption

The power consumption of the Geforce 910M should be similar to the old 820M and GT 720M. As a result, the GPU is best suited for notebooks 13 inches in size or greater. The efficiency however cant be compared to a modern Maxwell based GPU like the GeForce 920MX.

NVIDIA Maxwell GPU Surface Book

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The Nvidia Maxwell GPU is a dedicated graphics card in the Microsoft Surface Book laptop. It is based on the Maxwell GM108 chip as the Geforce 940M with 384 shaders. Instead of the DDR3 graphics memory, the Surface Book graphics card features faster GDDR5 memory (both 64 Bit though).

Thanks to the faster graphics memory, the Surface Book Geforce is performing better than the average GeForce 940M. However, the 945M and GTX 950M are still noticeably faster. Demanding games therefore only run in low settings fluently.

More details can be found in our extensive review of the 2015 Microsoft Surface Book with the dedicated Maxwell GPU.

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NVIDIA GeForce 910M

NVIDIA Maxwell GPU Surface Book

GeForce 900M Series

GeForce 945M	512 @ 0.93 - 1.05 GHz	128 Bit @ 2000 MHz
Maxwell GPU (940M, GDDR5)	384 @ 0.95 - 0.99 GHz	64 Bit @ 5012 MHz
GeForce 940MX	384 @ 1.12 - 1.24 GHz	64 Bit @ 4000 MHz
GeForce 940M	384 @ 1.07 - 1.18 GHz	64 Bit @ 2000 MHz
GeForce 930MX	384 @ 0.95 - 1.02 GHz	64 Bit @ 2000 MHz
GeForce 930M	384 @ 0.93 - 0.94 GHz	64 Bit @ 1800 MHz
GeForce 920MX	256 @ 0.97 - 0.99 GHz	64 Bit @ 1800 MHz
GeForce 920M	384 @ 0.95 GHz	64 Bit @ 1800 MHz
GeForce 910M	384 @ 0.64 GHz	64 Bit @ 2000 MHz

GeForce 945M	512 @ 0.93 - 1.05 GHz	128 Bit @ 2000 MHz
Maxwell GPU (940M, GDDR5)	384 @ 0.95 - 0.99 GHz	64 Bit @ 5012 MHz
GeForce 940MX	384 @ 1.12 - 1.24 GHz	64 Bit @ 4000 MHz
GeForce 940M	384 @ 1.07 - 1.18 GHz	64 Bit @ 2000 MHz
GeForce 930MX	384 @ 0.95 - 1.02 GHz	64 Bit @ 2000 MHz
GeForce 930M	384 @ 0.93 - 0.94 GHz	64 Bit @ 1800 MHz
GeForce 920MX	256 @ 0.97 - 0.99 GHz	64 Bit @ 1800 MHz
GeForce 920M	384 @ 0.95 GHz	64 Bit @ 1800 MHz
GeForce 910M	384 @ 0.64 GHz	64 Bit @ 2000 MHz

Codename

N15V-GM

Surface Book

Architecture

Kepler

Maxwell

Pipelines

384 - unified

Core Speed

641 MHz

954 - 993 (Boost) MHz

Memory Speed

2000 MHz

5012 MHz

Memory Bus Width

64 Bit

Memory Type

DDR3

GDDR5

Max. Amount of Memory

2048 MB

1024 MB

Shared Memory

API

DirectX 12 (FL 11_0), Shader 5.0

DirectX 12 (FL 11_0), Shader 5.0, OpenGL 4.5

Power Consumption

15 Watt

Transistors

900 Million

technology

28 nm

Features

PhysX, Verde Drivers, CUDA, Play, Optimus, GPU Boost 2.0

GPU Boost 2.0, Optimus, PhysX, CUDA, GeForce Experience

Date of Announcement

01.09.2015

01.10.2015