Qualcomm Adreno 620 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q vs Qualcomm Adreno 618

Qualcomm Adreno 620

The Qualcomm Adreno 620 is a mobile graphics card for upper mid-range smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It is included in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G and 765 SoCs and based on the Adreno 600 architecture (like the Adreno 630, which should be fully compatible in software).

According to Qualcomm, the Adreno 620 in the 765G is 10% faster than the one in the 765 and 20% faster than the old Adreno 618. In our benchmarks, the Adreno 620 in the Snapdragon 765G even was 25% faster in selected benchmarks, but the faster CPU will also influence the results.

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 618

The Qualcomm Adreno 618 is a mobile graphics card for upper mid-range smartphones and tablets (mostly Android based). It is included in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 and 730G SoCs and based on the Adreno 600 architecture (like the Adreno 630, which should be fully compatible in software).

In our benchmarks, the Adreno 618 in the Snapdragon 730 was 14 to 30% faster than the Adreno 616 in the Snapdragon 710. The performance in the 730G should be additional 15% faster, due to higher clock rates.

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).