A few strings from the Nvidia drivers reference the chipmaker's upcoming mobile-friendly GeForce MX350 and MX330 graphics cards.
According to the driver strings, the GeForce MX350 and MX330 will stay true to their origins and continue to be based on the same Pascal microarchitecture as their predecessors. However, word on the street is that the GeForce MX350 and MX330 won't be mere rebrands this time around. Apparently, Nvidia is finally giving its MX series a long-awaited upgrade.
Pairing an Intel processor with an Nvidia MX-series graphics card is a popular combination among laptop manufacturers that aim to offer a viable graphics solution that's a tad better than integrated graphics. So when AMD announced its Ryzen 4000-series APUs, it's not hard to see why Nvidia might be getting a little worried.
| Model | Microarchitecture | GPU | CUDA Cores |
|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce MX350* | Pascal | GP107 | 640 |
| GeForce MX250 | Pascal | GP108 / GP108B | 384 |
| GeForce MX150 | Pascal | GP107 / GP108 | 384 |
| GeForce MX330* | Pascal | GP108 | 384 |
| GeForce MX230 | Pascal | GP108 | 256 |
| GeForce MX130 | Maxwell | GM108 | 384 |
*Specifications are unconfirmed.
The current GeForce MX250 utilizes the GP108 die and has up to 384 CUDA cores. The new GeForce MX350 is rumored to tap the GP107 die for 640 CUDA cores. The 66.7% increase in CUDA cores should help push the GeForce MX350 into the GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile's territory in terms of performance.
The GeForce MX330, on the other hand, could continue to rely on the same GP108 die that's found inside the GeForce MX230. Nevertheless, the GeForce MX330 should be getting an upgrade of its own. The existing GeForce MX230 only has 256 CUDA cores at its disposal, while the GeForce MX330 might come with 384 CUDA cores, a 50% bump.
The GP107 and GP108 dies are manufactured at Samsung with the company's 14nm FinFET process. There aren't any details about the memory configuration on the GeForce MX350 and MX330, but considering that Nvidia has been using the same recipe for two generations straight, the MX300-series might just end up with the same 2GB of GDDR5 memory across the familiar 64-bit memory interface. The jump from the MX100 to MX200-series saw an increase in the operating and memory clock speeds, and we could see the same on the MX 300 series as well.
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The GeForce MX350 and MX330 are expected to drop in February 2020.
Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.