AMD Radeon RX Vega 9 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q

AMD Radeon RX Vega 9

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 9 is an integrated GPU for notebooks. It is used for the Ryzen 5 APUs, which were launched in the end of 2019. The GPU is based on the Vega architecture (5th generation GCN) and has 9 CUs (= 576 of the 704 shaders) clocked at up to 1300 MHz (Ryzen 5 3580U). The performance depends on the configured TDP (12-25 W at launch), the clocks, the cooling, and the memory configuration). The GPU should benefit from fast dual-channel DDR4-2400 RAM (contrary to DDR4-2133 single-channel, which is also possible).

The Vega architecture offers some improvements over the Polaris generation and now supports DirectX 12 Feature Level 12_1. More information is available in our dedicated article about the Raven Ridge architecture.

The performance of the integrated graphics card should be between the Vega 8 and Vega 10. Therefore, demanding games like Control or Borderlands 3 should be playable in lowest settings and 720p. Less demanding games like Fifa 20 or League of Legends can be played fluently in 1080p and highest settings. See e.g. our Vega 8 page for additional benchmarks.

Thanks to the 14nm process and clever power-saving features, the power consumption is comparatively low (according to AMD), so the graphics card can also be used for slim and light notebooks.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 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 1070 for laptops based on the cooling capabilities. The base frequency (1101-1215 MHz) is also much lower than on the regular GTX 1070 (1433 MHz, at least -10%) and the Boost (1265-1379 MHz) is also much lower compared to 1645 MHz (at least -6%) for the regular GTX 1070. The memory clock, however, is identical.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1070 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 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 1070 for laptops and ranges between 80 and 90 Watt (TGP) according to Nvidia.