NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 with Max-Q design is a mobile graphics card that is based on the Turing architecture (TU117 chip). Compared to the faster RTX 2000 GPUs (e.g. RTX 2060), the 1650 integrates no Raytracing or Tensor cores. Compared to the desktop version, the mobile and Max-Q versions use all 1024 shaders of the TU117 chip. It is designed for thin and light laptops and about 10-15% slower than a regular GTX 1650 for laptops (depending on the cooling capabilities). According to the specifications, the Max-Q variant clocks 20% slower for the base speed and 27% for the boost speed.

Beginning March 2020, the GTX 1650 Max-Q is also available with fast 4GB GDDR6 (N18P-G61).

The performance should be slightly faster than the old GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q. 

The Turing generation did not only introduce raytracing for the RTX cards, but also optimized the architecture of the cores and caches. According to Nvidia the CUDA cores offer now a concurrent execution of floating point and integer operations for increased performance in compute-heavy workloads of modern games. Furthermore, the caches were reworked (new unified memory architecture with twice the cache compared to Pascal). This leads to 50% more instructions per clock and a 40% more power efficient usage compared to Pascal.

Compared to the bigger Turing chips (like the TU116 of the GTX 1660 Ti and the RTX lineup), the TU117 does not include the new NVENC encoder but an older one similar to the one used in Pascal and Volta.

Nvidia specifies a power consumption of 35 Watt TGP (Total Graphics Power) and therefore 15 Watts lower than a normal (Max-P) 1650 for laptops. Therefore, the Max-Q variant is well suited for thin and light laptops. The TU117 chip is manufactured in 12nm FFN at TSMC.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 for laptops is the fastest mobile graphics card for notebooks in early 2019. It is based on the desktop RTX 2080 but with reduced core speeds (-7% Boost, -9% Base). The memory appears to be similar clocked and sized. Therefore, the RTX2080 offers 2,944 shaders and 8 GB GDDR6 memory connected by a 256 bit interface (14 GHz, 448 GB/s).

A more power efficient "Max-Q" version is also planned with further reduced clock rates.

Features

NVIDIA manufacturers the TU104 chip on a 12 nm FinFET process and includes features like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Real-Time Ray Tracing (RTRT), which should combine to create more realistic lighting effects than older GPUs based on the company's Pascal architecture (if the games supports it). The RTX 2080 is also DisplayPort 1.4 ready, while there is also support for HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and H.265 video en/decoding (PlayReady 3.0).

Performance

The mobile RTX 2080 should perform a bit slower than the desktop RTX 2080 and therefore definitely faster than the old GTX 1080 for laptops. Therefore, it should be able to run all demanding games in 4k with maximum details. Raytracing features however may reduce framerates a lot.

The power consumption of the card was reduced from 215 Watt for the desktop RTX 2080 to 150 Watt. However, it is still only suited for thick and heavy gaming laptops. For thinner and lighter designs, the Max-Q variant of the RTX 2080 is intended that can be configured at 80 or 90 Watt (at much lower clock speeds).

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design is a mobile graphics card for laptops that is based on the Turing architecture (TU116 chip). It is designed for thin and light laptops and about 10-15% slower than a regular GTX 1660 Ti for laptops (depending on the cooling capabilities). According to the specifications, the Max-Q variant clocks 22% slower for the base speed and 16% for the boost speed.

Compared to the faster RTX 2000 GPUs (e.g. RTX 2060), the 1660Ti integrates no Raytracing or Tensor cores. The performance is similar to the old GTX 1070 (Max-Q) but at a reduced TGP of 60 Watt (versus 80 of the laptop version 115 Watt of the desktop version). 

In April 2020 Nvidia refreshed the GTX 1660 Ti with the new codename N18E-G0-A1 with similar specs and pin compatible to the refreshed RTX chips (e.g., RTX 2070 Super Mobile).

The Turing generation did not only introduce raytracing for the RTX cards, but also optimized the architecture of the cores and caches. According to Nvidia the CUDA cores offer now a concurrent execution of floating point and integer operations for increased performance in compute-heavy workloads of modern games. Furthermore, the caches were reworked (new unified memory architecture with twice the cache compared to Pascal). This leads to 50% more instructions per clock and a 40% more power efficient usage compared to Pascal.

Nvidia specifies a power consumption of 60 Watt TGP (Total Graphics Power) and therefore 20 Watts lower than a normal (Max-P) 1660Ti for laptops. Therefore, the Max-Q variant is well suited for thin and light gaming laptops. The TU116 chip is manufactured in 12nm FFN at TSMC.