NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile vs Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile

The Nvidia GTX 1050 is a mainstream GPU based on the Pascal architecture and was announced in January 2017. Contrary to the faster models, the GTX 1050 uses the GP107 chip, which is manufactured in a 14 nm process at Samsung.

The notebook version differs a bit in terms of clocks, but is equipped with 640 shader units, just like the desktop model. It is shipped with up to 4 GB GDDR5-VRAM attached via 128-bit interface and a 7 Gbps memory data rate (112 GB/s).

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 can vary quite a lot depending on the cooling performance of the laptop. It can be just as fast as the desktop model under ideal conditions, but the notebook model is usually a bit slower. The GeForce GTX 960M is beaten by around 30%, so the GTX 1050 is comparable to a GTX 965M in general. It is therefore an upper mainstream GPU. Games from 2016 can be played in high settings an the Full HD resolution.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 1050 is roughly on par with the old GTX 960M, which would mean around 40-50 Watts and (probably due to better selection and optimized parts) therefore much lower compared to the desktop counterpart. This means the graphics card will usually be used for powerful multimedia notebooks and entry-level gaming systems with at least 15.4 inches.

Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics

The Intel Iris Xe MAX (DG1 Low Power - LP or iDG1LPDEV) is a dedicated PCIe 4.0 mobile entry-level graphics card with 96 execution units (EUs) based on the Gen 12 architecture. Compared to the integrated Intel Iris Xe in the Tiger Lake CPUs, the Xe MAX offers 4 GB dedicated LPDDR4x graphics memory (68 GB/s versus 56 GB/s for the MX350) and higher clock speeds of 1.65 GHz (vs. 1.35 GHz). Both support DP4A DLBoost instructions to speed up AI tasks and two media engines (including AV1 decoding in hardware). Currently the GPU is only available for Tiger Lake based laptops and offers some possibilities to use the iGPU and dGPU together (using the Deep Link software framework). The GPU uses hybrid graphics to turn off the Xe MAX when not in used (display ports are routed through the iGPU, but the Xe MAX features four dedicated display ports in comparison to the Nvidia GeForce MX350).

Furthermore, Intel supports to shift TDP between the two chips for better CPU performance or balancing graphics workloads.

The gaming performance is on average slightly better than a fast Intel Iris Xe iGPU with plenty of TDP and cooling headroom. There are even some games where the iGPU is faster thanks to Deep Link sharing power and cooling. Intel targets 1080p gaming with low to medium settings with the GPU and provided examples where the MAX is on par or better than a dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX350. 

According to Intel, the GPU is mostly aimed at content creators that can make use of the additional compute units, AI (DP4a) acceleration or media encoders.

As the Iris Xe Graphics, the Xe MAX supports Variable Rate Shading, Adaptive Sync, Async Compute, DirectX 12.1, OpenGL 4.6 and OpenCL 2.

As the Tiger Lake CPUs, the Iris Xe MAX dGPU is manufactured in the modern 10nm SuperFin process at Intel. Intel aims the Max-GPU for laptops with a combined power budget of 35 Watt and up. The power consumption of the GPU alone is specified similar to the 25W of the GeForce MX350 (we guess including the graphics memory).