NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q vs NVIDIA RTX A1000 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 RTX A1000 Laptop GPU or A1000 Mobile is a professional graphics card for mobile workstations. It is based on the GA107 Ampere chip and offers a slightly slower performance than the consumer GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU. It offers 2,048 CUDA cores, 16 Raytracing and 64 Tensor cores paired with a 128 Bit memory bus.  It is available in different variants from 35 - 95 Watt (TGP) with different clock speeds (and performance). The GPU supports eDP 1.4b to connect the internal monitor and 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 technologies (Dynamic Boost, WhisperMode).

The raw performance should be sloghtly slower than GeForce RTX 3050 for laptops at the same TGP level. Both GPUs depend heavily on good cooling and a high TGP for good performance. At a similar power consumption level the RTX A1000 should be clearly faster than the old Quadro T1200. 

The GA107 chip offers 2.560 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 1,280 INT32 ALUs). With Ampere all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. However, RTX A1000 can only use 2048 CUDA cores. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).

The GA107 chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip). Depending on the TGP, the A1200 can also be used in thin and light laptops (with 35 Watt TGP e.g.).