Nvidia no longer wants to see the denomination “Max-Q / Max-P”

At the cost of significant marketing efforts, Nvidia had managed to get us to integrate the use of the MAX-Q designation on laptops. This Max-Q and Max-P marking has now been in use for years. With these elements, it allows us to differentiate a product with lower frequencies in order to reduce the energy consumption and thus reduce the heat generated, while Max-P models are synonymous with maximum performance, so these variants will always be more powerful than the Max-Q versions, which makes it compulsory to use a different chassis (thicker, bigger, heavier).

With the launch of the RTX 30 series for laptops, it seems that Nvidia wants to do without these logos to inform its customers. Indeed, all the notebook manufacturers who have started to sell their latest models are free not to specify whether the integrated GPU is a Max-Q or Max-P. The brands limit themselves only to putting the model of GPU they integrate and leave it up to the end customers to understand whether they are dealing with a low-power version with reduced performance or the variant with maximum performance.

Max-Q or Max-P on RTX 30 mobiles?

To better understand, this simply means that for the RTX 3080 laptop version, the manufacturer can modulate the TGP from 80 W to more than 150 W. Obviously, with a TDP of over 150W, the RTX 3080 delivers a frequency that is 37% higher than its 80W configuration. This simply means that a 115 W RTX 3060 Mobile can potentially outperform an 80 W RTX 3080 Mobile depending on the given workload. As noted by Noteboocheck who conducted the survey, “The lack of explicit power details in the laptop specifications can potentially complicate matters for the end user, who would generally assume that mentioning an RTX 3080 Mobile automatically implies higher performance” The crux of the matter is that there is no way for end users to find out how their potential purchase is limited by simply referring to the data sheet. What is the real performance of the RTX 3070 in this Asus Zephyrus notebook?

Get advice and seek independent tests

This “particular” trend is becoming widespread and is worrying from our point of view. With Nvidia’s (and others’) choices to exercise more and more control over its communication, it becomes all the more imperative for future clients to invest time in good research. We are going to take part in this process by looking into laptops, an area that we were not dealing with, in the near future. With the transparency and frankness that you now know.