NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Max-Q vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 6GB Laptop GPU

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Max-Q (for laptops, GN20-E7 Max-Q) is the former name for a RTX 3080 Laptop GPU with Max-Q technologies. In previous generations, the Max-Q name was used for low power versions. With the RTX 3000 series, every TGP-version can now use Max-Q technologies and all GPUs are called RTX 3080 Laptop GPU (80 - 150W+).

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 6GB Laptop GPU (mobile, GN20-P0-R, 2023 Refresh) is the refresh of the RTX 3050 4GB Laptop GPU (slowest RTX 3000 mobile card) and also based on the GA107 Ampere chip. The 6GB variant offers more CUDA cores (2,560, +25%) but a cut down memory bus to 96 Bit. The clock speed depends on the TGP variant and can range from 713 - 1530 (base) and 1058 - 1740 (boost) for the TGP variants of 35 to 80 Watt (see table below).

The performance is between the old 4GB RTX 3050 and the RTX 3050 Ti and therefore best suited for full HD gaming (1920 x 1080) in medium to high graphic settings. The performance is not sufficient to enable Raytracing in most games, but the Tensor cores can be used for DLSS in some games (and get performance boost with slight quality reduction). Beware, that the low TGP variants will offer a significantly lower performance.

The GA107 chip offers 3,072 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 1,536 INT32 ALUs). The RTX 3050 however maybe won't use all ALUs on the chip. With Turing all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. 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).