NVIDIA GeForce MX250 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce MX250

The Nvidia GeForce MX250 is a dedicated entry-level mobile graphics card for laptops. It is based on the same Pascal GP108 chip as the predecessor, the GeForce MX150 / desktop GeForce GT 1030 but features increased clock speeds. As with the MX150, the MX250 is available in two versions, the normal 25 Watt version (1D13 device ID) and a low power version with 10 Watt TDP (1D25 device ID) and reduced performance (The MX150 with 10W had a 32% lower clock speed). The GDDR5 memory interface now also supports speeds up to 3.5 GHz = 7 GHz effective (up from 3 GHz).

The GP108 chip is manufactured in a 14 nm FinFET process at Samsung (LPP) and offers a number of new features, including support for DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR and improved H.265 video de- and encoding (PlayReady 3.0). 4K HDR with Netflix however wont run due to the minimum 3 GB graphics memory that is required. Compared to the bigger Pascal chips, the small GP108 does not support Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) for VR and G-Sync. A full list of improvements and the new Pascal desktop GPUs is available in our dedicated Pascal architecture article.

Thanks to the increased core speeds (up to +3% in Boost for the 25 Watt version, and faster memory speeds), the new MX250 should be slightly faster than the older MX150. First benchmarks indicate a 5% increase. Still modern should only run fluent in low settings (see the page of the MX150 for games and benchmarks).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 is the second fastest Pascal based graphics card in mid May 2016. It comes in two variants, the desktop version (see here for the detail page) with 1920 shaders and the mobile variant with 2048 shaders and lower clock rates. Both cards are based on a cut down GP104 chip (like the GTX 1080) and are manufactured in 16 nm FinFET at TSMC.

Compared to the GTX1080, the GTX1070 features less CUDA cores (2048 versus 2560) that are clocked a bit lower (maximum Boost 1645 versus 1733). Instead of the new GDDR5X, the GTX 1070 uses slower GDDR5 graphics memory - but still 8 GB. The TDP is also reduced and rumored to be 10 Watts higher than the predecessor, the GTX 980M.

For thin and light laptops Nvidia offer a Max-Q called version of the GTX 1070 with lower TDP and also significantly lower performance. Sadly this variant im sold with the same GTX 1070 name, making it hard to judge the performance.

The performance depends on the cooling solution of the laptop. With a good fan system, the performance of the laptop version is on par with the desktop GTX 1070 (Founders Edition). Nvidia claims that partner solutions can be up to 10 percent slower however. In our benchmarks with various laptops the performance ranged from -5 to -14% slower performance compared to partner models of the GTX 1080 desktop models with slightly higher clocks.

On average the GTX 1070 is around 20 percent faster than the old mobile GeForce GTX 980 and therefore the second fastest mobile graphics card (non SLI). Therefore it is capable of WQHD and 4K gaming in high settings (see game benchmarks below).

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 GTX 1070 is specified with 115 Watt TGP according to Nvidia and therefore slightly above the old GeForce GTX 980M. This leads to rather big and clunky gaming laptops that use the GTX 1070. The later released Max-Q version of the GTX 1070 uses only 80 - 90 Watt TGP and is therefore better suited for thin and light laptops.