NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q vs AMD Radeon RX 560 (Laptop) vs AMD Radeon RX 590 (Desktop)

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 590 (Desktop)

The AMD Radeon RX 590 is a desktop graphics card positioned in the mid-range of 2018. It is manufactured in 12nm and offers 2,304 shader cores and 8 GB GDDR5 VRAM using a 256 Bit memory interface (8 GHz, 256 GB/s).

The RX590 uses the new Polaris 30 chip, which is a 12nm version of the Polaris 20 chip of the RX 580. Thanks to the improved process, the clock rates of the RX 590 can be higher at a similar power consumption. 

This leads to a 10 percent higher performance compared against the older Radeon RX 580 and therefore the RX 590 is faster than the GeForce GTX 1060. This means that the card is best suited for 1080p gaming in max. details (of 2018 games).

The power consumption is rated at 175 Watt and therefore 10 Watts below the Radeon RX 580 (185 Watt).