NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU vs Apple M2 Max 38-Core GPU vs Apple M2 10-Core GPU

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU (codename GN21-X2) is a mid-range laptop GPU. It is based on the AD107 chip and uses the Ada Lovelace architecture. The RTX 4050 Laptop offers 2560 shaders and uses 6 GB GDDR6 dedicated graphics memory with a clock speed of 16 Gbps (effective) and a 96 Bit memory bus. The TGP (Total Graphics Power) can be configured between 35 and 115 Watt (+ 10-25 Watt Dynamic Boost from the CPU) leading to different performance levels. The boost clock depends on the TGP settings and ranges from 1605 MHz (35 Watt) to 2370 MHz (115 Watt). The performance therefore is also highly depending on the laptop and TDP settings.

In our benchmarks, the RTX 4050 stays slightly behind the older mobile RTX 3060 but is clearly faster than the mobile RTX 3050 Ti. Therefore, it is best suited for 1920x1080 gaming at high to ultra settings depending on the game (see benchmarks below).

The RTX 4050 offers 80 tensor cores and therefore supports DLSS 3 including frame generation that can have a big impact in supported games. The raytracing cores however will see less usage, as the RTX 4050 does not offer enough performance for high detail settings and raytracing in demanding games.

The AD107 chip is manufactured on 5nm at TSMC (4N process).

Apple M2 Max 38-Core GPU

The Apple M2 Max 38-Core-GPU is an integrated graphics card by Apple offering all 38 cores in the M2 Max Chip.

The graphics card has no dedicated graphics memory but can use the fast LPDDR5-6400 unified memory with a 512 bit bus (up to 400 GBit/s).

Thanks to the additional cores and architectural improvements, the M2 Max GPU should clearly best the old M1 Max GPU with 32 cores and therefore be the fastest iGPU currently available.

The GPU is intended to use Apple Metal 2 API and could still be based on the older PowerVR architectures (last used in the Apple A10). A new feature in the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 of 2023 is the support for HDMI 2.1 and 8k output.

The Apple M2 Max is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC. According to the internal powermetrics tool, the GPU uses up to 53.6 Watt (performance mode) and the whole chip (including the CPU) up to 89 Watt.

Apple M2 10-Core GPU

The Apple M2 GPU is an integrated graphics card offering 10 cores designed by Apple and integrated in the Apple M2 SoC. It uses the unified memory architecture of the M2 SoC (up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 with 100 GB/s bandwidth) and should offer 160 execution units.

According to Apple it offers a 25% higher performance at slightly higher power consumption. The theoretical performance is rated at 3.6 Teraflops and therefore 1 TFLOP higher than the M1 8-core GPU. In our benchmarks, the GPU was able to top the M1 with up to 40%, but still stays behind the 14-core GPU in the M1 Pro. Compared to other iGPUs from AMD and Intel, the M2 benefits greatly from the unified memory architecture and the high bandwidth.

The M2 chip is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC (most likely N5P). The power consumption is around 13.5 Watt (in our tests under load of the MBP13) and up to 15W according to Apple.