NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q vs Nvidia RTX A2000

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 with Max-Q design is the power saving variant of the mobile RTX 2080 with reduced clock speeds and power consumption. Therefore, it is suitable for thin gaming laptops. It is based on the same TU104 chip is the desktop and mobile variant and offers 2,944 shaders and 8 GB GDDR6 memory connected by a 256 bit interface (12 GHz).

Currently it looks like there will be two variants, a low power 80 Watt variant with 735 - 1095 MHz core clock and a faster 90 Watt variant with 990 - 1230 MHz core clock).

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular RTX 2080 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).

Features

NVIDIA manufactures 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 RTX 2080 Max-Q should be slightly faster than a regular mobile RTX 2070 and therefore a high end gaming graphics card. It should be able to run all demanding games in 4k with maximum details. Raytracing features however may reduce framerates a lot.

The Nvidia RTX A2000 Desktop GPU is a professional graphics card for small workstation PCs. It is based on the GA106 graphics chip, which is used in the GeForce RTX 3050 or GeForce RTX 3060 consumer graphics cards, among others. However, the GA106 only works with 3,328 active shader units, as well as 26 RT cores and 104 tensor units. The VRAM comprises 12 GB GDDR6 and communicates via a 192-bit memory interface. This results in a memory bandwidth of 288 GB/s.

The professional graphics cards from Nvidia offer certified drivers that are optimized for stability and performance in professional applications (CAD, DCC, medical, prospecting, visualization applications). This results in many advantages over consumer graphics cards.

Compact design and flexibility:

The RTX A2000 is designed in a low-profile form factor, making it ideal for smaller workstations or systems where space is a limited resource. Despite its compact size, the Nvidia RTX A2000 offers considerable computing power.

The graphics card is ideal for 3D modeling, CAD applications, video editing and visual effects where high precision and speed are paramount. Thanks to the combination of CUDA, Tensor and Raytracing cores, the Nvidia RTX A2000 offers significant performance improvements in the areas of real-time rendering and AI-supported image processing.

Energy efficiency and power consumption: