GTX 990M revealed early at Chinese conference

Nvidia Headquarters — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Although many people expect each generation of GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia to be fleshed out with a wide range of products, nobody likes the curtains to open before the stage is properly set. Unfortunately for Nvidia, that seems be exactly what’s happened with its rumored GTX 990M mobile graphics chip, the existence of which Wu Haijun, CEO of Chinese computing manufacturer Hasee, revealed during a recent conference.

Haijun didn’t just confirm that the chip exists however, he went even further, saying that many companies would be releasing laptops built using the powerful new mobile GPU before the end of this year. That means that we are looking at a Q4 release date for the GTX 990M, as per NotebookCheck.

And that’s not all the information that’s been revealed — though the other informants aren’t quite so respectable. From sources said to be “independent industry insiders,” we’re told that the GTX990M is code-named N16E-GXX and will be built around the Maxwell GM204 architecture. Its TDP is said to vary between 100 and 185 watts.

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However, the big rumor is that this chip won’t use the mobile PCI express module (MXM) as with traditional laptop graphics solutions, but will be soldered straight to the motherboard. It’s not clear why that would be at this time, or even if it’s true, but it could be because of the variable power requirements, or a potentially larger than normal cooling solution.

The guys who originally spotted Mr Haijun’s slip-up during the Hasee conference have speculated that performance should be similar to the 980M SLI, but that is entirely guesswork, no matter how well informed.

Does the news of this late-in-the-year release make you want to hold off buying anything over the next couple of months?