NVIDIA T550 Laptop GPU vs Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 96EUs vs NVIDIA Quadro T1000 Max-Q

The Nvidia T550 Laptop GPU (formerly known as Quadro T550 Mobile) for laptops is a professional mobile graphics card that is based on the Turing architecture (TU117 chip). It is based on the consumer GeForce MX550 and features the same 1024 cores and a 64 Bit memory bus. The card offers 4 GB GDDR6 with a maximum bandwidth of 112 GB/s and no dedicated display outputs (iGPU display outputs used via Optimus). The chip is manufactured in 12nm FinFET at TSMC. 

The professional 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.

The Turing generation did not only introduce raytracing for the RTX cards, but also optimized the architecture of the cores and caches. According to Nvidia the CUDA cores offer now a concurrent execution of floating point and integer operations for increased performance in compute-heavy workloads of modern games. Furthermore, the caches were reworked (new unified memory architecture with twice the cache compared to Pascal). This leads to up to 50% more instructions per clock and a 40% more power efficient usage compared to Pascal. In contrary to the faster Quadro RTX cards, the T550 does not feature raytracing and Tensor cores.

The Intel Xe Graphics G7 (Tiger-Lake U GPU with 96 EUs) is a integrated graphics card in the high end Tiger-Lake U CPUs (15 - 28 Watt). It is using the new Xe architecture (Gen12) and was introduced in September 2020. The GPU clocks with a base clock speed (guaranteed) of 400 MHz in all CPUs and can boost up to 1340 MHz (i7-1185G7). The slowest variant offers only 1100 MHz boost (i5-1130G7, 12 Watt TDP).

The performance depends on the TDP settings of the laptop and the used cooling. First informations show that the chip can be configured at 12 and 28 Watt TDP default (as the Ice Lake-U chips) and the performance should be around a dedicated GeForce MX350 in 3DMark benchmarks. For gaming we are expecting a bit worse performance due to the missing dedicated graphics memory and driver support. Many games e.g. had problems when testing the various laptops (e.g. Horizon Zero Dawn or Cyberpunk 2077 did not start or were crashing - see list below). Less demanding games like the Mass Effect Legendary Edition ran in medium settings fine. Compared to the older Ice Lake Iris Plus G7 GPU, the new Tiger Lake GPU should be approximately twice as fast. Therefore, the iGPU is still only for lowest graphical settings and low resolutions in demanding games.

The Tiger Lake SoCs and therefore the integrated GPU are manufactured in the modern 10nm+ (10nm SuperFin) process (improved 10nm process) at Intel and therefore should offer a very good efficiency.

The Nvidia Quadro T1000 with Max-Q Design is a professional mobile graphics card that is based on the Turing architecture (TU117 chip). Compared to the consumer GTX 1650, the Quadro T1000 features less CUDA cores / shaders (768 versus 896). The chip is manufactured in 12nm FinFET at TSMC. Compared to the normal Quadro T1000, the Max-Q variants are clocked lower and work in a more efficient state. Currently, we know of two variants with different clock speeds and power consumptions (35 and 40 W).

The Quadro T1000 is a mobile graphics card that is based on the Turing architecture (TU116 chip). Compared to the faster RTX 2000 GPUs (e.g. RTX 2060), the T1000 integrates no Raytracing or Tensor cores. Due to the same boost clock as the mobile T1000, the Max-Q variants can perform similar with sufficient cooling.

The Turing generation did not only introduce raytracing for the RTX cards, but also optimized the architecture of the cores and caches. According to Nvidia the CUDA cores offer now a concurrent execution of floating point and integer operations for increased performance in compute-heavy workloads of modern games. Furthermore, the caches were reworked (new unified memory architecture with twice the cache compared to Pascal). This leads to up to 50% more instructions per clock and a 40% more power efficient usage compared to Pascal.

Thanks to the low power consumption, the Max-Q T2000 GPU can be used in thin and light laptops. The used TU116 chip is manufactured in 12nm FFN at TSMC.