Qualcomm Adreno 610 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q vs Qualcomm Adreno 640

Qualcomm Adreno 610

The Qualcomm Adreno 610 is a mobile graphics card for mid-range smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It is included in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 SoCs and based on the Adreno 600 architecture (like the Adreno 630, which should be fully compatible in software).

In synthetic benchmarks, the Adreno 610 positions itself between the old Adreno 510 and Adreno 512 / 612

The GPU supports modern standards like Vulkan 1.0 (according to Wikipedia), OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0 and DirectX 11 (FL 11_1).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 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 1060 for laptops based on the cooling capabilities. The base frequency (1063-1265 MHz) is also much lower than on the regular GTX 1060 (1506 MHz, at least -16%) and the Boost (1341-1480 MHz) is also much lower compared to 1708 MHz (at least -13%) for the regular GTX 1060. The memory clock, however, is identical.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1060 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 GP106 chip is produced in 16nm FinFET at TSMC and offers a range of new features, like DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and improved H.265 video de- and encoding (PlayReady 3.0). A list of improvements and features can be found in our article on the Pascal architecture.

The power consumption of the Max-Q design is notably lower than the normal GTX 1060 for laptops and ranges between 60 and 70 Watt (TGP) according to Nvidia.

Qualcomm Adreno 640

The Qualcomm Adreno 640 is a smartphone and tablet GPU that is integrated within the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC. The chip will be available from early 2019 and will be used mainly in high-end Android devices.

According to Qualcomm, the Adreno 640 GPU offers a 20% improved performance over the Adreno 630, its predecessor, which is integrated in the Snapdragon 845 SoC. The enhanced performance is achieved by the Adreno 640 having 50% more FP16 and FP32 compute units (ALUs) than the Adreno 630, while its 7 nm FinFET manufacturing process makes it 20% more efficient too.

The Adreno 640 will also support the Vulkan 1.1 API, something which is possible for other Adreno 600 series GPUs too.