NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (Desktop) vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super (Desktop) vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (N17P-G1) for desktops is an entry level gaming graphics card that was announced late 2016. It is based on the GP107 chip using the Pascal architecture and manufactured in 14nm FinFET at Samsung (the bigger Pascal chips are manufactured in 16nm at TSMC). Usually it is equipped with 4 GB GDDR5 memory with a 7 Gbps data rate. The mobile GTX 1050 Ti version should be announced later (beginning of 2017) and feature similar specs.

The performance of the GTX 1050 lies between the Radeon RX 460 and the RX 470 on a similar level of the old GeForce GTX 960 (or 970M). Therefore, the card is most suited for 1080p gaming at high detail settings (but not maximum settings).

See our extensive review of the MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti for more information on power consumption, benchmarks and noise level.

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.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 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 1080 for laptops based on the cooling capabilities. The base frequency (1101-1290 MHz) is also much lower than on the regular GTX 1080 (1566 MHz, at least -18%) and the Boost (1278-1458 MHz) is also much lower compared to 1733 MHz (at least -16%) for the regular GTX 1080. The memory clock, however, is identical.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1080 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).

The performance is nearer to the normal (Max-P) GeForce GTX 1070 than to then GTX 1080 (at least in the Asus Zephyrus). Therefore, most demanding games should be playable in full HD and maximum detail settings (see game benchmarks below).

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 1080 for laptops and ranges between 90 and 110 Watt (TGP) according to Nvidia.