Intel Arc A310 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (Desktop) vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q

Intel Arc A310

The Intel Arc A310 is a dedicated entry-level graphics card from Intel for desktops. It is based on the ACM-G11 chip and offers 6 of the 8 Xe cores (96 ALUs), 6 of the 8 ray tracing units, 1.152 MB L1 cache and 4MB L2 cache. The memory interface is 64 bits wide and supports 4GB GDDR6 graphics memory with 15.5 Gbps. The TGP is between 40 and 75 watts depending on the model.

The A310 is similar to the mobile Arc A350Mexcept for the higher clock rates of the cores and memory.

The ACM-G11 chip is manufactured at TSMC in 6nm (N6 process) and offers 7.2 billion transistors and is 157 mm2 in size. It integrates two media engines for VP9, AVC, HEVC, AV1 8k60 12-bit HDR decoding and 8k 10-bit HDR encoding. The integrated 4 display pipes support 4x 4k120 HDR, HDMI 2.0B, DP 2.0 10G and Adaptive Sync.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti is the second fastest Pascal based graphics card in November 2017. It is a high-end desktop graphics card based on a cut down GP104 chip as the GTX 1080 and manufactured in 16 nm FinFET at TSMC. Compared to the GTX 1080, it uses the more available GDDR5 graphics memory, and compared to the GTX 1070 it offers more shaders (2432 versus 1920). More details on the Pascal architecture including all features and comparisons to Maxwell, can be found here.

The performance of the GTX 1070 Ti was in our tests right between the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. However, the powerefficiency was worse than the GTX 1070 and near the GTX 1080. Nvidia also specifies the 1070 Ti and 1080 at 180W.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 with the Max-Q design is a mobile high-end GPU from the Pascal series. It is designed for thin and light laptops and about 10-15% slower than a regular GTX 1070 for laptops based on the cooling capabilities. The base frequency (1101-1215 MHz) is also much lower than on the regular GTX 1070 (1433 MHz, at least -10%) and the Boost (1265-1379 MHz) is also much lower compared to 1645 MHz (at least -6%) for the regular GTX 1070. The memory clock, however, is identical.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1070 though. The drivers for the Max-Q version were optimized for efficiency (and not performance; only for Max-Q models), there are optimized voltage converters for 1V operation, high-end cooling methods, and a 40 dB limit for the fan noise (with clock adjustments to ensure this at all times).

Features

The GP104 chip is manufactured in 16nm FinFET process at TSMC and offers a range of new features. DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP), improved H.265 video en- and decoders (for PlayReady 3.0) are only some of the improvements. See our detailed Pascal architecture article for more details.

The power consumption of the Max-Q design is notably lower than the normal GTX 1070 for laptops and ranges between 80 and 90 Watt (TGP) according to Nvidia.