NVIDIA GeForce MX250 vs NVIDIA GeForce MX450

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 MX450

The Nvidia GeForce MX450 (N18S-G5, N18S-G5-B, N18S-LP codename) is a dedicated entry-level mobile graphics card for laptops. It uses the same TU117 chip as the GeForce GTX 1650 but with a reduced memory bus of 64 Bit. Furthermore, the MX450 is the first mobile GPU with PCIe Gen 4 x4 support. 

Currently four different versions are available with different specifications and performance:

N18S-G5-B: GBD-128 Package, 1395 - 1575 MHz, GDDR6 5001 MHz, 28.5 W
N18S-G5: GB2E-64 Package, 1395 - 1575 MHz, GDDR6 5001 MHz, 25 W
N18S-G5: GB2E-64 Package, 1395 - 1575 MHz, GDDR5 3501 MHz, 25 W
N18S-LP: GB2E-64 Package, 720 - 930 MHz, GDDR6 5001 MHz, 12 W

Especially the LP = Low Power variant is significantly slower than the typical 25 Watt variant.

The 25 Watt GDDR6 N18S-G5 should be up to 20% faster than a GeForce GTX 1050 but of course below a GTX 1650 (Max-Q). Therefore, demanding games like Horizon Zero Dawn should run lowest settings. Less demanding games like F1 2020 can be played in medium to high settings and full HD.

The TU117 chip is manufactured in 12nm at TSMC and thanks to the relatively low power consumption (TGP specified between 12 and 28.5 W) the dGPU is also suited for thin and light laptops. Mostly it is intended as an additional graphics card for Tiger Lake-U based laptops.