NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super (Desktop)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 with Max-Q design is a mainstream GPU based on the Pascal architecture and was announced in January 2018. Contrary to the faster models, the GTX 1050 uses the GP107 chip, which is manufactured in a 14 nm process at Samsung.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1050 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 GP107 chip is manufactured in a 14 nm FinFET process at Samsung and offers a number of new features, including support for DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) as well as improved H.265 video de- and encoding (PlayReady 3.0). A full list of improvements and the new Pascal desktop GPUs is available in our dedicated Pascal architecture article.

Performance

The performance of the GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q should be around 10-15 % below a regular GTX 1050 for laptops. This means the GPU is most suited for full HD gaming at high settings (not maximum).

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q is rated at 34 to 40 Watt and therefore significantly lower than the normal laptop GTX 1050 (53 Watt). Therefore, the Max-Q variant is also suited for thin and light laptops.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super for desktops is an entry-level gaming graphics card based on the Turing architecture. The chip, which has been named TU116, was introduced in November 2019. The GTX 1650 series does not offer ray tracing and tensor cores, unlike the more powerful RTX 2000 cards (e.g. RTX 2060). Performance is slightly better than with the GeForce GTX 1650 and comparable with the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT.

There have also been significant improvements in the Turing architecture in terms of the CUDA cores. Float and INT operations can now be executed simultaneously, the cache has been unified and improved, and Adaptive Shading has been introduced. As a result, Nvidia speaks of an up to 50% higher performance per core compared to Pascal.

The new entry-level card benefits from the advantages of the TU116 chip, since the newer NVENC video encoding delivers more performance compared to Pascal.

Nvidia specifies a power consumption of 100 watts TGP (Total Graphics Power) for the graphics card. The TU11 chip is manufactured by TSMC in a 12 nm FFN process.