NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti vs GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q – what’s the difference?

LaptopMedia.com Comparisons NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti vs GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q - what's the difference?

From: Alex Iliev 02 June 2019 / 08:08 0

NVIDIA’s GTX 1660 Ti, as we saw, is a pretty efficient graphics card, that compares very well with the RTX 2060 for example. However, what should you do if you need that much of graphics power in a machine that is barely the size of an ultrabook? Yup, you guessed it right – just get the Max-Q version, and you are set and done. Let’s see if that is really the way to go in such situations.

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

Specs overview

Both of these graphics cards are built on the N18E-G0 chip, which has 1536 CUDA cores and a 12nm manufacturing process. Expectedly, the Max-Q version uses less power – 80W vs 60W and works at a significantly lower clock speed – 1140-1335 MHz for the Max-Q version and 1455-1590 MHz for the full-blown laptop GPU.

Aside from that, their memory modules have the same 192-bit bus and 6GB capacity of GDDR6 type. As far as bandwidth is concerned, though, the GTX 1660 Ti pulls clear from its Max-Q counterpart with 288 GB/s vs 192 GB/s.

Benchmarks

There is a 15% decrease in performance going to the Max-Q version in synthetic benchmarks.

Gaming tests

Around the same performance gap is found in gaming, as we saw in the benchmarks.

Far Cry 5	Full HD, Normal (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti	101 fps	94 fps	88 fps
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q	88 fps	81 fps	76 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	125 fps	66 fps	44 fps
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q	109 fps	55 fps	36 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)	Full HD, Medium (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Highest (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti	84 fps	79 fps	50 fps
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q	73 fps	67 fps	42 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Very High (Check settings)	Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti	81 fps	72 fps	74 fps
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q	70 fps	61 fps	40 fps

Conclusion

From what we saw in our test, the GTX 1660 Ti was consistently better than its Max-Q counterpart with around 15-20%. However, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q was never intended to beat its more-powerful brother. Quite the opposite – it was built in order to provide similar performance at a lower power and heat output, which it does perfectly.

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

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