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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Mobile in 2025: Review and Relevance for Gamers and Professionals

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Mobile, released in 2014, became a landmark solution for mobile PCs of its time. However, in 2025, its position appears ambiguous: on one hand, it lags behind modern GPUs in performance and functionality, while on the other, it remains an affordable option for basic tasks. Let’s explore who can benefit from this card today.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Maxwell Architecture: A Legacy of the Past

The GTX 980 Mobile is based on the Maxwell architecture (GM204), built using a 28-nm process. This generation brought a significant leap in energy efficiency compared to the previous Kepler. However, by 2025, 28 nm is considered outdated: modern GPUs utilize 5–7 nm processes (for example, NVIDIA Ada Lovelace or AMD RDNA 4).

Unique Features

The card supports DirectX 12 (Feature Level 11_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3, but lacks RTX technologies (ray tracing), DLSS, or FidelityFX. This is unacceptable for games with RTX effects or upscaling. However, it does feature:

- MFAA (multi-frame sampled anti-aliasing for performance optimization);

- Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) — high-resolution rendering followed by scaling.

Conclusion: Maxwell will work for older projects and basic tasks, but not for modern AAA games with advanced graphics.

2. Memory: GDDR5 Limitations

Type and Size

The GTX 980 Mobile is equipped with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth is 224 GB/s. In 2025, this is insufficient: even budget cards (for example, RTX 3050 Mobile) offer 8 GB of GDDR6 and 192 GB/s, but thanks to optimizations from NVIDIA, the efficiency is higher.

Impact on Performance

- In games with high-resolution textures (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077), 4 GB leads to FPS drops and crashes.

- For 1080p gameplay with “Medium” settings in older projects (The Witcher 3, GTA V), the memory capacity is adequate.

3. Gaming Performance

Results in Popular Games (1080p, medium settings)

- CS:GO — 150–200 FPS;

- Fortnite — 50–60 FPS (without DLSS support);

- Red Dead Redemption 2 — 25–30 FPS;

- Hogwarts Legacy — 15–20 FPS (minimum settings).

Resolutions

- 1080p: acceptable for games up to 2018;

- 1440p and 4K: not recommended, even for indie projects.

Ray Tracing: impossible due to the absence of RT cores.

4. Professional Tasks

Video Editing

- In Adobe Premiere Pro, rendering using CUDA is accelerated, but 4 GB of memory limits workflow with 4K materials.

- The card performs well for 1080p editing (ProRes, H.264).

3D Modeling

- Basic scenes can be processed in Blender and Autodesk Maya, but complex projects (e.g., involving Ray Tracing) depend on the CPU.

Scientific Computing

- CUDA support allows the GPU to be used in machine learning (but modern neural networks require at least 8 GB).

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP and Cooling

- The TDP of the GTX 980 Mobile is 120–150 W. For laptops in 2025, this is high (modern equivalents like the RTX 4060 Mobile consume 100–120 W while offering double the performance).

- Recommendations:

- Use cooling pads;

- Regularly clean the system of dust;

- Avoid prolonged loads at temperatures above 85°C.

6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA RTX 3050 Mobile

- Price: $600–800 (new laptops);

- Performance: +80% FPS in games;

- Technologies: DLSS 3, RTX.

AMD Radeon RX 6600M

- Price: $550–750 (new laptops);

- Performance: +70% FPS;

- Technologies: FSR 2.0.

Conclusion: The GTX 980 Mobile falls behind even budget modern solutions.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

- A power supply of 180–200 W is required for laptops with the GTX 980 Mobile.

Compatibility

- Windows 10/11: NVIDIA drivers support the card, but updates ceased in 2024;

- Linux: Nouveau drivers work, but for full functionality, it is better to use proprietary versions.

Drivers

- Use the latest available version (545.xx) to fix issues in older games.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros

- Low price on the secondary market ($80–120);

- Reliability (provided it is in good condition);

- CUDA support for basic professional tasks.

Cons

- No RTX/DLSS;

- 4 GB of memory;

- High power consumption.

9. Final Verdict: Who is the GTX 980 Mobile Suitable For?

This graphics card is suitable for:

1. Budget gamers, willing to play older titles on medium settings.

2. Students and enthusiasts, learning basic video editing or 3D modeling.

3. Owners of older laptops who do not require maximum performance.

However, if your budget allows, it is better to consider laptops with the RTX 3050 or RX 6600M: they offer modern technologies and future-proofing.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Mobile in 2025 is an example of a “workhorse” from the past. It is not suitable for demanding tasks, but it retains a niche audience due to its affordability and proven reliability.

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Basic

Label Name
NVIDIA
Platform
Mobile
Launch Date
September 2015
Model Name
GeForce GTX 980 Mobile
Generation
GeForce 900M
Base Clock
1064MHz
Boost Clock
1140MHz
Bus Interface
MXM-B (3.0)
Transistors
5,200 million
TMUs
?
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.
128
Foundry
TSMC
Process Size
28 nm
Architecture
Maxwell 2.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size
8GB
Memory Type
GDDR5
Memory Bus
?
The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.
256bit
Memory Clock
1753MHz
Bandwidth
?
Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.
224.4 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate
?
Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.
72.96 GPixel/s
Texture Rate
?
Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.
145.9 GTexel/s
FP64 (double)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
145.9 GFLOPS
FP32 (float)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
4.762 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units
?
The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.
2048
L1 Cache
48 KB (per SMM)
L2 Cache
2MB
TDP
Unknown
Vulkan Version
?
Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.
1.3
OpenCL Version
3.0
OpenGL
4.6
DirectX
12 (12_1)
CUDA
5.2
Power Connectors
None
Shader Model
6.7 (6.4)
ROPs
?
The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.
64

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)
Score
4.762 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
FirePro S9150
4.968 +4.3%
Arc Pro A50
4.909 +3.1%
GeForce GTX 980 Mobile
4.762
Radeon Pro 575X
4.579 -3.8%
Radeon 760M
4.387 -7.9%