NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q vs NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 (Laptop) vs NVIDIA T1200 Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with Max-Q design is the power saving variant of the mobile GeForce RTX 2060. Therefore it is a high end gaming graphics card for thin laptops. It is based on the same chip as the RTX 2060 but with reduced clock speeds and a lower power consumption. It was released in 2020 with the Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop.

With the refresh, Nvidia also reworked the Max-Q technologies for more efficiency. Low Voltage GDDR6 (lower clocked but more headroom for the GPU) and improved regulator efficiency should improve the performance per Watt. Two new optional features can also be implemented by the OEM. Max-Q Dynamic Boost is able to shift power from the CPU to the GPU on a per frame basis to increase overall performance. Furthermore, the laptop manufacturer can also implement Advanced Optimus with a dynamic display switch (hardware) to enable Optimus, G-SYNC and high refresh rate displays (up to 4K 120 Hz).

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 2060 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).

The performance should be only slightly below the normal RTX 2060 due to the decreased clock rates. It should be most suited for 1080p gaming at maximum detail level. Raytracing features however may reduce framerates a lot, so using raytracing will be limited to some games.

The chip is specified at a TGP of around 65 Watt and therefore clearly lower than the 80 - 90 Watt of the regular RTX 2060 Mobile.

The Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 for laptops is a professional high-end graphics card for big and powerful laptops and mobile workstations. It is based on the same TU104 chip as the consumer GeForce RTX 2080 (mobile) but offers more shaders (128 more). Compared to the desktop RTX 5000, the mobile variant offers lower clock speeds. There are different versions available with 110 Watt (1035 - 1545 MHz) and 150 Watt (1350 - 1770 MHz) in addition to the even lower clocked Max-Q variant.

The Quadro GPUs offer certified drivers, which are optimized for stability and performance in professional applications (CAD, DCC, medical, prospection, and visualizing applications). The performance in these areas is therefore much better compared to corresponding consumer GPUs.

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 support it). The Quadro RTX 5000 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

Depending on the application or game, the Quadro RTX 5000 is even faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 and therefore the fastest mobile graphics card. Especially for some professional apps and workflows that make use of the large VRAM, the Quadro can best the RTX2080 clearly.

The high power consumption of the RTX5000 makes the card most suited for big and heavy laptops. The slower Max-Q variant is intended for thinner laptops.

The Nvidia T1200 Laptop GPU (or Quadro T1200 for laptops) is a professional mobile graphics card that is based on the Turing architecture (TU117 chip). Compared to the consumer GTX 1650 Ti, the T1200 features more CUDA cores / shaders (1024 versus 896). The Quadro T2000 uses the same TU117 chip, but features all 1024 cores (2x to the T1000) and is therefore significantly faster. The chip is manufactured in 12nm FinFET at TSMC. The T1200 was introduced as a refresh to the Quadro T1000 together with the new Ampere RTX A workstation cards like the faster Nvidia RTX A2000.

It is available in different variants from 35 - 95 Watt (TGP) with different clock speeds (and performance). The GPU supports DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 for external connections.

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q 3.0 technologies (Dynamic Boost, WhisperMode).

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 up to 50% more instructions per clock and a 40% more power efficient usage compared to Pascal. In contrary to the faster Quadro RTX cards, the T1000 and T2000 do not feature raytracing and Tensor cores.

When configured as a slow 35W variant, the T1200 is also suited for thin and light laptops.