Clevo W230ST Receives an Update with Maxwell to the W230SS!

Now just earlier this month, nVidia has released a new GPU Architecture in the form of Maxwell that currently resides in the GTX 750 Ti and the GTX 750. Now these new graphics cards bring a lot of new Changes to the table, offering decent performance while dramatically cutting power needed. The new cards arrive with a small TDP of 60 Watts, with then GTX 750 Ti performing close to a GTX 660 without having the need of an external 6-Pin Connector. Without the need of the 6-Pins allows PCs with a small Power Supply all the way down to 300Watts or less to power them. As you can see by the image, the OEM card is pretty small, enough for a small form build.

Only pity is that it doesn't have an SLI connector which would have turned this into quite a system that needs only 400W+ of power from your PSU and performs close to a GTX 770.

The OEM Reference GTX 750Ti is pretty damn small.
But truth be told: the card performs well beyond its weight.

With Maxwell releasing in the Desktop GPUs also comes the release of the GTX 800M Series for the Mobile GPUs. Now it has been confirmed that the GTX 850M and the GTX 860M will use the Architecture based on the GM107 while the 870M and the 880M flagship will retain the Kepler GK 104. We will focus abit more on the GTX 860M since it's the more powerful of the Maxwells.

GTX 860M

This is the more powerful of the Maxwell Mobile Duets. From its Specs, the GTX 860M is essentially a GTX 750 Ti in a nutshell. It's meant to be replace the GTX 760M. Interesting enough that the 860M has an ever-so-slightly better base clocks and lower Memory clocks but you know that the Desktop SKUs can always overclock to have any performance benefits. But aside from that, everything between the 2 GPUs are the same, and performs very similarly toward each other.

More information of the GTX 860M can be found here:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-860M.107794.0.html

There is however, the Kepler GK104 Version of the GTX 860M, that resembles very similarly to the Desktop GTX 660 OEM and GTX 760 but with lower clocks and runs on a 128-bit bus. That bus width however could be a limiting factor in larger resolutions which is the reason the Maxwell Version carries a large L2 Cache Memory of 2MB. This allows the card to run without much performance hit as compared to a card wth a 192-bit bus.

It's quite surprising from some benchmarks that with a TDP of 50-60 Watts compared to the GTX 760M with it being about the same or maybe lower, it performs slightly better than the GTX 770M which has significantly more TDP at 75W and a higher bus width and obviously well above the GTX 760M; the GPU it intends to replace.

The Clevo W230ST has received this update and married the GTX 860M to its hood while replacing the GTX 765M. The already light 13.3" Laptop has gone significantly better with more performance per square inches it has in its hood. With Battefield 4 able to run close to maximum settings and even the latest Titanfall at maximum settings, you can essentially plug in a large HD Monitor and enjoy the benefits from the Maxwell Architecture. You can vouch by the benchmarks because notebookcheck records the benchmark scores from a Schenker XMG P304 which is ANOTHER rename of the very same laptop.

And I received word from my local custom notebook shop Aftershock PC that their XG13 which is the rename of the W230SS has released the update for sale.

https://www.aftershockpc.com/AFTERSHOCK%20XG13%20V2/

As with most of Aftershock's Line of Clevo Notebooks, Most components can be chosen to the user's needs. Almost everything save the GPU (in some notebooks except the X15 and X17 and Titan) can be switched.

So this may be a great time to snag those laptops!