NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q vs AMD Radeon RX 560 (Laptop) vs AMD Radeon RX 540

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q

The Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti with Max-Q design is a power efficient mainstream GPU for laptops 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 clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1050 Ti 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 Ti can vary quite a lot depending on the cooling performance of the laptop. Nvidia states that the Max-Q variant should be about 10 to 15% slower than a regular GTX 1050 Ti for laptops. Therefore, the GPU is most suited for Full HD and high quality settings for games of 2016.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with Max-Q design is rated at 40 to 46 Watt and therefore a lot lower than a regular GTX 1050 Ti for laptops (53 Watt). This means that the Max-Q GTX 1050 Ti is also suited for thin and light laptops.

AMD Radeon RX 560 (Laptop)

The AMD Radeon RX 560 for laptops (RX 560M) is a mid-range Polaris 11 / 21 gaming graphics card for laptops. It was first shown at CES 2017 in the Lenovo Legion Y520 as the "AMD RX 560M" with up to 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM. As the desktop RX 560 it can be based on the Polaris 21 and 11 chip (RX 560 and RX 460) with 986 or 1024 shaders. The performance should be similar to the desktop variants, with slightly reduced clock speeds.

More information on the Polaris architecture and its features can be found here.

AMD Radeon RX 540

The AMD Radeon RX 540 is mobile mid-range graphics card for laptops based on the Polaris 12 chip (most likely). It is manufactured in an improved 14 nm FinFET process at Globalfoundries. The performance should be between the Radeon Pro 450 and 455 in the MacBook Pro 2016 range that is also based on the Polaris architecture. AMD specifies the RX 450 at 1.2 TFLOPS (Pro 450 1 TFLOP, Pro 455 1.3 TFLOPs). Compared to Nvidia graphics cards, the gaming performance should be between the GeForce GTX 950M and GTX 960M.

The features of the Radeon RX 540 are identical to the faster RX 460 and all other Polaris chips. See more details on the Polaris architecture here.

The power envelope of the faster Radeon Pro 460 is rated at 35 Watt according to the AMD blog post. Due to the slower specs, the Radeon RX 540 use slightly less.