AMD Radeon RX 5300M vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q

AMD Radeon RX 5300M

The AMD Radeon RX 5300M is a dedicated mobile mid-range graphics card for laptops. It uses the new Navi 14 chip (RDNA architecture) which is produced in 7nm. Is supports fast and expensive GDDR6 VRAM and when using it, it should be faster than a GeForce GTX 1650 (according to leaked benchmarks from AMD).

The Navi 14 chip uses the new RDNA (Radeon DNA) microarchitecture which is a successor the the GCN instruction set. It features a new processor design, a multi-level cache hierarchy and an improved rendering pipeline with support for GDDR6 memory.

The performance should be around the GeForce GTX 1650 according to AMD. Therefore, it is most suited for medium to high detail settings in full HD for demanding games in 2019.

The RX5300M uses the same amount of compute cores as the faster 5500M but at a lower clock rate that leads to a lower TDP of the chip of 65 Watt (versus 85W of the 5500M).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 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 1080 for laptops based on the cooling capabilities. The base frequency (1101-1290 MHz) is also much lower than on the regular GTX 1080 (1566 MHz, at least -18%) and the Boost (1278-1458 MHz) is also much lower compared to 1733 MHz (at least -16%) for the regular GTX 1080. The memory clock, however, is identical.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1080 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 is nearer to the normal (Max-P) GeForce GTX 1070 than to then GTX 1080 (at least in the Asus Zephyrus). Therefore, most demanding games should be playable in full HD and maximum detail settings (see game benchmarks below).

Features

The GP104 chip is manufactured in 16nm FinFET process at TSMC and offers a range of new features. DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP), improved H.265 video en- and decoders (for PlayReady 3.0) are only some of the improvements. See our detailed Pascal architecture article for more details.

The power consumption of the Max-Q design is notably lower than the normal GTX 1080 for laptops and ranges between 90 and 110 Watt (TGP) according to Nvidia.