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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M

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. 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).

Alternatively, there is also a version based on the Kepler chip GK104, which has 1152 shader units clocked at 797 MHz.

Architecture

Compared to Kepler, Maxwell has been optimized in several details to increase power efficiency. 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).

Another optimization is the massively enlarged L2 cache (GM107: 2 MB). The increased size can handle some of the memory traffic to allow for a relatively narrow memory interface without significantly reducing the performance.

Similar to Fermi and Kepler, Maxwell / GM107 supports DirectX 11.2 with feature level 11.0 only.

Performance

Although 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. However, very demanding games such as Crysis 3 or Battlefield 4 will require lower resolutions and/or details.

Despite its considerably higher shader count, the Kepler version is about 10 percent slower, mainly due to the worse bandwidth efficiency.

Features

GM107 integrates the sixth generation of the PureVideo HD video engine (VP6), offering a better decoding performance for H.264 and MPEG-2 videos. Of course, VP6 supports all features of previous generations (4K support, PIP, video encoding via NVENC API). Unfortunately, HDMI 2.0 is still not supported.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 860M should be similar to the old GTX 765M (about 60 watts). The low-clocked Kepler version draws just slightly more power. Therefore, the 860M is best suited for 15-inch laptops or larger. The 800M series also supports Optimus to automatically switch between an integrated graphics card and the Nvidia GPU.

ManufacturerNVIDIA
GeForce GTX 800M Series
GeForce GTX 880M SLI 3072 @ 954 MHz2x 256 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 860M SLI 1280 @ 1029 MHz2x 128 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 880M 1536 @ 954 MHz256 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 870M 1344 @ 941 MHz192 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 860M 640 @ 1029 MHz128 Bit @ 5000 MHz
GeForce GTX 850M 640 @ 876 MHz128 Bit @ 2000 - 5000 MHz
CodenameN15P-GX
ArchitectureMaxwell
Pipelines640 - unified
Core Speed *1029 MHz
Memory Speed *5000 MHz
Memory Bus Width128 Bit
Memory TypeGDDR5
Max. Amount of Memory4096 MB
Shared Memoryno
DirectXDirectX 12 (FL 11_0), Shader 5.0
Transistors1870 Million
technology28 nm
FeaturesBattery Boost, GameStream, ShadowPlay, GPU Boost 2.0, Optimus, PhysX, CUDA, SLI, GeForce Experience
Notebook Sizemedium sized
Date of Announcement12.03.2014
* The specified clock rates are only guidelines for the manufacturer and can be altered by them.

Benchmarks

GFXBench 3.0 - Manhattan Offscreen OGL off screen
0%
100%
min: 41.1     avg: 41.1 (8%)     median: 41.1 (8%)     max: 41.1 fps
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
GFXBench 3.0 - Manhattan Onscreen OGL on screen
0%
100%
min: 37     avg: 37 (16%)     median: 37 (16%)     max: 37 fps
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
Cinebench R15
Ref. Match 64Bit +
OpenGL 64Bit +
3DMark - Fire Strike Graphics 1920x1080
0%
100%
min: 3056     avg: 3853.8 (9%)     median: 3904 (10%)     max: 4199 Points
+ 24 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Fire Strike Score 1920x1080
0%
100%
min: 2807     avg: 3579 (15%)     median: 3661 (16%)     max: 3907 Points
+ 24 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Cloud Gate Standard Graphics 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 21015     avg: 27115 (17%)     median: 27960.5 (17%)     max: 30150 Points
+ 24 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Cloud Gate Standard Score 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 8168     avg: 14786.5 (30%)     median: 15323.5 (31%)     max: 16389 Points
+ 24 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Ice Storm Unlimited Graphics Score 1280x720 offscreen
0%
100%
min: 215144     avg: 215144 (47%)     median: 215144 (47%)     max: 215144 Points
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Ice Storm Extreme Graphics 1920x1080
0%
100%
min: 72647     avg: 119949 (31%)     median: 137981 (36%)     max: 149220 Points
+ 3 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark - Ice Storm Standard Graphics 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 46010     avg: 151571 (20%)     median: 163330 (22%)     max: 199233 Points
+ 20 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
Unigine Heaven 3.0 - DX 11, Normal Tessellation, High Shaders 1920x1080
0%
100%
min: 44.4     avg: 48.8 (18%)     median: 49.5 (18%)     max: 53.9 fps
+ 7 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
ComputeMark v2.1 - Normal, Score 1024x600
0%
100%
min: 3094     avg: 3102.5 (14%)     median: 3103.5 (14%)     max: 3109 Points
+ 4 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
LuxMark v2.0 64Bit - Room GPUs-only
0%
100%
min: 480     avg: 569 (11%)     median: 593 (11%)     max: 695 Samples/s
+ 5 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
LuxMark v2.0 64Bit - Sala GPUs-only
0%
100%
min: 897     avg: 1015 (10%)     median: 1081 (10%)     max: 1100 Samples/s
+ 5 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark 11 - Performance GPU 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 4453     avg: 4912.9 (10%)     median: 4902 (10%)     max: 5305 points
+ 25 benchmarks and specifications   - Hide comparison chart
3DMark 11 - Performance 1280x720
0%
100%
min: 4111     avg: 5125.9 (18%)     median: 5134 (18%)     max: 5545 points
+ 25 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
3DMark Vantage
P GPU no PhysX 1280x1024 +
P Result 1280x1024 +
3DMark 06 Standard 1280x1024 +
Unigine Heaven 2.1 - high, Tesselation (normal), DirectX11 1280x1024
0%
100%
min: 58.4     avg: 68.9 (31%)     median: 70 (31%)     max: 75.2 fps
+ 6 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
PCMark Vantage - Gaming Score 1024x768
0%
100%
min: 20232     avg: 20232 (66%)     median: 20232 (66%)     max: 20232 Points
+ 1 benchmarks and specifications   + Show comparison chart
SPECviewperf 12
Solidworks (sw-03) 1900x1060 +
Siemens NX (snx-02) 1900x1060 +
Showcase (showcase-01) 1900x1060 +
Medical (medical-01) 1900x1060 +
Maya (maya-04) 1900x1060 +
Energy (energy-01) 1900x1060 +
Creo (creo-01) 1900x1060 +
Catia (catia-04) 1900x1060 +
SPECviewperf 11
Siemens NX 1920x1080 +
Tcvis 1920x1080 +
SolidWorks 1920x1080 +
Pro/ENGINEER 1920x1080 +
Maya 1920x1080 +
Lightwave 1920x1080 +
Ensight 1920x1080 +
Catia 1920x1080 +
Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64Bit +
Cinebench R10 Shading 32Bit +
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card

Game Benchmarks

The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailled information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.

Titanfall 2
low 1280x720
96.1  fps    + Compare
med. 1366x768
68.4  fps    + Compare
high 1920x1080
32  fps    + Compare
ultra 1920x1080
29.4  fps    + Compare
3840x2160
9.6  fps    + Compare