NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q vs GTX 1070 Max-Q – battle of the Max-Qs

NVIDIA uses all possible tricks with their Max-Q technology. Its main aim is to reduce heat output, making it possible for smaller laptops to integrate more powerful graphics cards.

You can check out our Top Laptop Graphics Ranking to see these two graphics cards and many more.

Specs overview

Spec-wise both graphics cards are a bit different from each other – the newer one uses the 12nm manufacturing process of the Turing architecture, whilst the older Pascal GPU is built around a 16nm one. This helps the GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q to use 60W of power, compared to the 80-90W of the GTX 1070 Max-Q. Additionally, the GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q uses 1536 CUDA cores, compared to 2048 for the older GPU. In theory, this should provide the GTX 1070 Max-Q with a huge advantage, especially given the fact that both of the GPUs are working at similar clock speeds – 1140-1335 MHz for the GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q and 1215-1379 MHz for the GTX 1070 Max-Q, respectively.

Not only that, but the latter features 8GB memory with a 256-bit bus and a Bandwidth of 256.3 GB/s, while the former has “only” 6GB of VRAM at a 192-bit bus and a Bandwidth of 192 GB/s.

Benchmarks

Interestingly, the difference is below 10% in most of the benchmarks, except in Unigine Heaven 3.0, where it is a massive 25%.


Gaming tests

Real life gaming showed similar results to the ones from the synthetic benchmarks.

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q88 fps81 fps76 fps
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q88 fps82 fps79 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, MAX (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q109 fps55 fps36 fps
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q113 fps63 fps41 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q70 fps61 fps40 fps
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q77 fps68 fps45 fps

Conclusion

Even though the difference between the two was small, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q managed to beat its opponent. It shows superior performance in both benchmarks and gaming. However, we are expecting the GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q to be a lot more comfortable to work with, especially given it uses 25% less power than its competitor.

All laptops equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q (6GB GDDR6)

All laptops equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q (8GB GDDR5)

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