AMD Radeon RX 580 (Desktop) vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q vs AMD Radeon RX 560X (Laptop)

AMD Radeon RX 580 (Desktop)

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.

AMD Radeon RX 560X (Laptop)

The AMD Radeon RX 560X for laptops (RX 560X Mobile) is a mid-range Polaris 11 / 21 gaming graphics card for laptops. Compared to the slightly older Radeon RX 560 for laptops (see for benchmarks), the RX 560X features only slightly altered clock speeds but should perform quite similar. Offers 1024 shader cores and a usual clock speed of 1175 - 1275 MHz. More information on the Polaris architecture and its features can be found here.

Currently AMD sells the mobile Radeon RX 560X with 4 GB GDDR5 (128 Bit) and a TDP of 60 - 80 Watt for around 50 - 60 Dollars to laptop manufacturers.