Upcoming Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q GPU Is The Secret Weapon That Will Be Used To Take On Vega Mobile GL

According to the release notes of a Linux display driver update (version 384.111) that released on 4th January, Nvidia seems...

According to the release notes of a Linux display driver update (version 384.111) that released on 4th January, Nvidia seems to be working on Max-Q variants of their popular mid-range gaming GTX 1050/1050 TI graphics cards. The Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q will have a clock speed of around 1450 Mhz and thus provide an estimated 2.2 TFLOPs of graphical power.

The Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q cards seem to be a deliberate move by Nvidia to compete with AMD’s inbuilt discrete RX Vega M GL graphics chip powering the new 8th generation Intel Kaby Lake G series of processors.

Max-Q variants of cards try to find the optimal balance between GPU and CPU power consumption and thermals, making trade-offs in GPU clock speeds and game settings to enable powerful graphics solutions to fit into ultra-portable notebooks for some light to mid-range gaming and light graphical work.

Besides lower power consumption, Max-Q designs also improve cooling solutions, helping make the graphics cards run quieter. Nvidia also went one step further and introduced ‘WhisperMode’, a new power-efficient mode to let your plugged in laptop be quieter while gaming.

It’s important to note that the AMD RX Vega M GL offers more raw graphical power than the Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q, providing around 2.6 TFLOPs of performance. A whole 0.4 TFLOPs more than the Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q. The AMD RX Vega M GL also uses an HMB2 memory solution, which is said to provide faster texture and pixel rates than GDDR5 VRAM.

Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q

However, that does not necessarily mean games will perform better on the AMD RX Vega M GL, with Nvidia having known to provide better FPS on games even with lesser theoretical FP32 performance when compared to competing AMD cards.

What do you think of Nvidia’s latest upcoming offering, will it be enough to beat AMD’s competitive RX Vega M GL cards? Let us know in the comments.

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Ali is a passionate RPG gamer. He believes that western RPGs still have a lot to learn from JRPGs. He is editor-in-chief at SegmentNext.com but that doesn't stop him from writing about his favorite video ...