NVIDIA Quadro P3000 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q

NVIDIA Quadro P3000

The Nvidia Quadro P3000 is a mobile high-end workstation graphics card for notebooks. Similar to the consumer GeForce GTX 1060 (Laptop), it is based on the GP106 chip with 1280 shaders. The graphics card is designed for the Kaby Lake generation and is the successor to the Quadro M3000M (Maxwell). However, the P3000 is equipped with 6 GB GDDR5 video memory (at a lower bandwidth), while GTX 1060 is available with 3 or 6 GB. The clock rates range from 1088 MHz (base) to 1215 MHz (typical Boost) to 1240 MHz (max.).

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.

Performance

The theoretical performance should be on par with the GTX 1060 (if the clocks did not take a massive hit), so the GPU should be significantly faster than the previous M3000M.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the Quadro P3000 is 75 Watts TGP (including memory) or 55.3 W TDP according to Nvidia, so the card is suited for 15-inch notebooks or larger.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with the Max-Q design is a mobile high-end GPU from the Pascal series. It is designed for thin and light laptops and about 10-15% slower than a regular GTX 1060 for laptops based on the cooling capabilities. The base frequency (1063-1265 MHz) is also much lower than on the regular GTX 1060 (1506 MHz, at least -16%) and the Boost (1341-1480 MHz) is also much lower compared to 1708 MHz (at least -13%) for the regular GTX 1060. The memory clock, however, is identical.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1060 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

The GP106 chip is produced in 16nm FinFET at TSMC and offers a range of new features, like DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and improved H.265 video de- and encoding (PlayReady 3.0). A list of improvements and features can be found in our article on the Pascal architecture.

The power consumption of the Max-Q design is notably lower than the normal GTX 1060 for laptops and ranges between 60 and 70 Watt (TGP) according to Nvidia.