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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q: Review of an Outdated, Yet Affordable Solution for Compact Systems

April 2025

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q is a mobile graphics card from 2017, designed for thin laptops. Despite its venerable age, it still appears in budget devices and leftover stock. In 2025, its relevance is debatable, but it remains a viable option for certain tasks. Let’s explore who this model is suited for today.

Architecture and Key Features

Pascal Architecture: A Modest Foundation

The GTX 1050 Max-Q is built on the Pascal architecture (2016), manufactured using a 14nm process. This is the first generation of NVIDIA optimized for energy efficiency, which explains its selection for the Max-Q format—a stripped-down version for ultrabooks.

Lack of Modern Technologies

Being part of the GTX series, this card does not support ray tracing (RTX), DLSS, or FidelityFX. Its features include Adaptive Shading and optimization for DirectX 12. In 2025, these specifications are insufficient for new releases, but they are adequate for older projects.

Memory: The Minimum for Survival

GDDR5 and 4GB: A Weak Point

The GTX 1050 Max-Q comes equipped with 4GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus. Its bandwidth is 112 GB/s. For comparison, even the budget RTX 3050 Mobile (2021) offers 128 GB/s with GDDR6.

Impact on Performance

This amount of memory is sufficient for games up to 2018-2020 at medium settings in 1080p. However, modern projects with high-resolution textures (such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield) will struggle with VRAM shortages, leading to stutters and FPS drops.

Gaming Performance: Modest Results

1080p: Only for Less Demanding Games

- CS2 (Dust II): 60-70 FPS at medium settings.

- Fortnite (Epic, without RT): 40-50 FPS at low settings.

- GTA V: 55-60 FPS on high settings.

- Hogwarts Legacy: 20-25 FPS on minimum (uncomfortable).

1440p and 4K: Not Recommended

Even in lighter games, resolutions above 1080p will require lowering settings to a minimum. For instance, Rocket League will yield about 40 FPS at 1440p.

Ray Tracing: No Support

Without dedicated RT cores and DLSS, running ray-traced games is impossible.

Professional Tasks: Limited Capabilities

Video Editing and 3D Modeling

With 640 CUDA cores, the card can handle basic tasks in Adobe Premiere Pro or Blender, but rendering complex scenes will take significantly longer compared to the RTX 3050.

Scientific Calculations

For machine learning or simulations, the GTX 1050 Max-Q is weak: the absence of Tensor Cores and limited memory hinder its applicability.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP 34–40W: Ideal for Thin Laptops

Low power consumption allows the card to be used in compact cases with passive or single-fan cooling. Even after several years, it rarely overheats, unless the vents are clogged.

Cooling Recommendations

- Regularly clean the laptop of dust.

- Use cooling pads during extended loads.

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 5500M (2019)

- Pros: 8GB GDDR6, better performance in modern games.

- Cons: TDP 65W, requiring more substantial cooling.

NVIDIA RTX 2050 Mobile (2022)

- Supports DLSS and RTX, 4GB GDDR6.

- Price: $250-300 compared to $100-150 for the GTX 1050 Max-Q (new old stock).

Conclusion: The GTX 1050 Max-Q falls short even against budget models from the 2020s, but it is cheaper.

Practical Tips

Power Supply

A standard adapter rated at 90-120W is sufficient for a laptop with this card.

Compatibility

- PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.

- Support for Windows 10/11 and Linux, but drivers are updated infrequently.

Drivers

Use Game Ready Driver 511.23 (2022)—the last stable version for Pascal. Newer versions may not work correctly.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($100-150 for new old stock).

- Energy efficiency.

- Suitable for office tasks and older games.

Cons:

- 4GB GDDR5 is insufficient for modern games.

- No support for RTX/DLSS.

- Outdated architecture.

Final Conclusion: Who Is the GTX 1050 Max-Q Suitable for in 2025?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget Users needing a laptop for work and occasional gaming (for example, Dota 2 or Minecraft).

2. Owners of Older Devices looking for a replacement for a burned-out discrete card.

3. Retro Game Enthusiasts who do not require modern technologies.

However, if your budget allows for an additional $50–100, consider looking for a used RTX 3050 or new Intel Arc A380—they will offer better capabilities for gaming and creative work.

In Summary: The GTX 1050 Max-Q in 2025 is a niche solution. It is not for gamers, but for those who value silence, compactness, and minimalism.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2018

Model Name

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

Generation

GeForce 10 Mobile

Base Clock

1000MHz

Boost Clock

1139MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

3,300 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

Samsung

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

Pascal

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1752MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

112.1 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

18.22 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

45.56 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

22.78 GFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

45.56 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.487 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

640

L1 Cache

48 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

75W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

CUDA

6.1

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.487 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

2037

Blender

Score

160

OctaneBench

Score

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 580

1.613 +8.5%

Radeon R9 M380 Mac Edition

1.537 +3.4%

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

1.487

GeForce GTX 860M

1.417 -4.7%

Radeon HD 6770

1.387 -6.7%

3DMark Time Spy

Arc A550M

5182 +154.4%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

3906 +91.8%

Radeon 780M

2755 +35.2%

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

2037

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

623 -69.4%

Blender

GeForce RTX 2060

1506.77 +841.7%

Arc A550M

848 +430%

Quadro T1000 Mobile GDDR6

415 +159.4%

GeForce GTX 880M

194 +21.3%

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

160

OctaneBench

GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile

273 +658.3%

Quadro P5200 Max Q

123 +241.7%

Tesla K40m

69 +91.7%

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

GeForce GTX 1080 Max Q

10 -72.2%