Nvidia Max-Q is a technology for gaming laptops to make them thinner and quieter. If you are in the market looking for a gaming laptop and wish to have one with a slim design and long battery life, then the Max-Q technology might be just what you’re looking for.
The term Max-Q is inspired by aerospace designs, but it’s no rocket science to understand in this context. Max-Q designs for mobile GPUs were first introduced by Nvidia in 2017 when they released their GTX 10 series GPUs based on the Pascal architecture.
Max-Q made it possible for laptop manufacturers to embed the flagship Nvidia GPUs belonging to the mid-range and high-end segment in their laptops that too in an improved and smaller form factor. The power-packed performance of the high-end cards was now available in a new avatar.
The natural question that comes to our mind after reading about the Max-Q technology: How the hell does it work?
We’re going to answer this question for you but before that, let’s take a moment and understand the benefits of the Max-Q design properly.
Benefits of Max-Q technology
Slim design: The first thing that you notice about a laptop is its design and build. Most of the gaming laptops that you see in the market are built like a tank. The robust build quality is responsible for handling the intense games that you throw at them. Such gaming laptops can tolerate temperatures up to a solid 100°C.
Laptops using the Max-Q design are very sleek. Definitely a lot more than their Non-Max-Q counterparts. The Max-Q laptops have a smaller cooling system which drastically reduces the size of their chassis.
Better power efficiency: Max-Q laptops have excellent battery life. The laptops that support this design are perfect for work and play.
Less noise (<40dB): Max-Q laptops are super quiet. Fans of an average gaming laptop make around 60 dB of noise when under full load. Since dB is measured on a logarithmic scale, the difference that comes in a change of every 10 DB is huge.
The amount of noise perceived at 50 dB is almost half of what 60 dB feels like. Dropping down under 40 dB is again half of what 50 dB sounds.
How does Nvidia Max-Q work?
Nvidia optimizes the GPUs for peak efficiency. To understand how it works, let us look at the graph of the incremental performance plotted against the amount of power consumed.
The graphic cards are made to operate at a point of their maximum efficiency. Instead of going all out against the performance requirements, the graphic cards adjust the clock speeds and voltages to deliver the best performance with given thermal constraints.
This is entirely different from underclocking. It should be very clear that the cards belonging to the Nvidia Max-Q series lineup are NOT the regular GPUs underclocked to cap the performance.
There are a lot of other considerations that go into making this kind of tech. The thermal and electrical design of the cooling system plays a significant role in how well the laptop handles heavy tasks.
Acer and Asus have come up with laptops having chassis designed especially for the Max-Q GPUs whereas other manufacturers have just slapped a Max-Q GPU in their standard laptop chassis.
Out of all the new features announced with the Max-Q Gen 2, Dynamic Boost and Advanced Optimus are the most interesting ones.
Dynamic Boost: The power is shared between the CPU and GPU in proportions to suit the kind of work going on. If a graphically intensive process is going on, the power demand of the GPU is more. Dynamic boost makes it possible for the system to relocate the surplus power that is being fed to the CPU.
Advanced Optimus: The Optimus technology was introduced by Nvidia over ten years ago, which allowed laptops to switch between their integrated GPU and the dedicated GPU depending on the kind of work being done on the device. This resulted in massive power savings.
Advanced Optimus is a refinement of the same tech which now lets users enable the G-Sync technology while saving power.
Here’s the catch!
Everything comes at a price. Here, the price that you have to pay is in terms of performance (and of course, money). The performance of Max-Q-based laptops does take a hit. The difference is present in the benchmarks and becomes a lot more apparent in gaming performance.
Back in 2017, when the Max-Q technology was in its early stages, the performance of a Max-Q GTX 1080 was almost at par with a GTX 1070. When overclocked, the GTX 1070 even outperformed its big brother in some cases.
Similar is the case with the Max-Q laptops of the current generation. Why would anyone spend money to buy a top-of-the-line device when it doesn’t perform like one?
Final words
The whole point of buying a laptop is for their portability. But things are not that simple. Gaming laptops are for gaming. Trading off performance for portability was never a good option.
Instead of spending an excessive amount of money on these devices, it’s better to get a laptop with a 1660 Ti (non-Max-Q). It will run most of the games at 1080p resolutions after adjusting a few settings. The laptop will be rather slim and won’t burn a hole in your pocket.
We’ll have to wait until Manufacturers come up with a solid design for laptops that is not only portable, quiet, and efficient but can also compete for head to head with their desktop counterparts in terms of performance.
Until then, it is a good idea to stick to regular bulky laptops with a non-Max-Q GPU.
It is true that Nvidia has worked a lot on the technology to bring it to the level where it currently is. The Max-Q laptops are now much more powerful than they once were.
Laptops with the Max-Q variants of the RTX 30 series GPUs are all set to hit the market real soon. It’s not like the company will bring a breakthrough change in the technology so soon but still, there are hopes that they will come up with something great someday.
However, it seems like the technology still has a long way to go. Slim gaming laptops are a myth. At least for now.
