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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max Q

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q: Review of an Obsolete Solution for Thin Laptops

April 2025

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q is the mobile version of the flagship Pascal generation graphics card, released in 2017. Despite its venerable age, this model can still be found in used laptops and budget segments. As of 2025, it is no longer relevant for modern tasks, but it deserves analysis as an example of the technology of its time.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Pascal Architecture: Energy Efficiency as a Priority

The GTX 1080 Max-Q is built on the Pascal architecture (2016), manufactured using TSMC's 16nm process. Its key feature is optimization for mobile devices: reduced core frequencies (approximately 1100–1300 MHz compared to 1600 MHz for the desktop GTX 1080) and lower voltages to reduce TDP.

Lack of Modern Features

It's important to understand that the GTX 10 series does not support ray tracing (RTX), DLSS, or FidelityFX. These technologies were introduced in later architectures, Turing (2018) and Ampere (2020). Max-Q here refers to only the design approach for thin chassis, rather than a generational label.

2. Memory: Speed and Limitations

GDDR5X: An Outdated but Reliable Standard

The card is equipped with 8GB of GDDR5X memory with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth is 256 GB/s (compared to 320 GB/s for the desktop version due to a reduced memory frequency of 8 Gb/s).

Impact on Performance

By 2025, this amount of memory is sufficient for gaming at low to medium settings at 1080p resolution, but the narrow bus and low speed will become a "bottleneck" in modern projects with detailed textures.

3. Gaming Performance: The Reality of 2025

Average FPS in Popular Games (1080p, Medium Settings):

- Cyberpunk 2077: 25–35 FPS (without ray tracing);

- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare V: 40–50 FPS;

- Fortnite: 60–70 FPS (dropping to 45 FPS in combat mode);

- EA Sports FC 2025: 55–60 FPS.

Supported Resolutions:

- 1080p: Acceptable for undemanding games;

- 1440p and 4K: Not recommended—FPS will drop below 30.

Ray Tracing: Impossible due to lack of RT cores.

4. Professional Tasks: Outdated but Functional Tool

CUDA Cores: Limited Potential

With 2560 CUDA cores, the card can handle basic tasks:

- Editing in Premiere Pro: rendering 1080p video at 50–60% of CPU time;

- 3D modeling in Blender: simple Cycles scenes take 3–5 minutes per frame;

- Scientific calculations: supports OpenCL/CUDA, but speed is 4–5 times lower than that of RTX 3060.

Conclusion: The GTX 1080 Max-Q is suitable for students or beginner professionals, but not for professional workflows.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Generation

TDP and Cooling

The TDP is reduced to 90–110 W (compared to 180 W for the desktop version). For stable operation, the laptop requires:

- A cooling system with 2–3 heat pipes;

- A chassis with thoughtful ventilation (avoid ultrabooks thinner than 18 mm).

Tip: Regularly clean fans and replace thermal paste—overheating leads to throttling.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Analogues from 2017–2018:

- NVIDIA GTX 1070 Max-Q: 15–20% weaker, cheaper by $100–150;

- AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 Mobile: Comparable in performance, but with higher power consumption.

In 2025: Even budget NVIDIA RTX 3050 Mobile (2021) is 40% faster and supports DLSS/RTX.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply: Laptops with GTX 1080 Max-Q require a 150–180 W adapter.

Compatibility:

- Platforms: only outdated laptops (Intel 7–8 Gen, AMD Ryzen 2000);

- Drivers: official support ceased in 2023. Use community-modified drivers to run new titles.

Important: Check for DisplayPort 1.4 for connecting 4K monitors at 60Hz.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Energy efficiency for its class (2017);

- Sufficient performance for older games and office tasks;

- Low price in the second-hand market ($150–250 for laptops).

Cons:

- No support for RTX/DLSS;

- Outdated drivers;

- High heat output in thin chassis.

9. Final Verdict: Who Should Consider GTX 1080 Max-Q?

This graphics card is a choice for those who:

- Are buying a used laptop for basic tasks (office, web browsing, older games);

- Are looking for a temporary solution until an upgrade;

- Have a limited budget ($200–300).

Why Not to Buy in 2025:

Even budget new laptops with RTX 3050 or AMD RX 6600M offer better performance, support for modern technologies, and warranties.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q is a relic of the Pascal era, reminding us of the progress in the gaming industry. In 2025, it should only be considered as an emergency option, not as a primary solution. For comfortable gaming and work, opt for a GPU that supports DLSS 3 and RTX.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

June 2017

Model Name

GeForce GTX 1080 Max Q

Generation

GeForce 10 Mobile

Base Clock

1290MHz

Boost Clock

1468MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

7,200 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.

160

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

16 nm

Architecture

Pascal

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR5X

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.

256bit

Memory Clock

1251MHz

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.

320.3 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.

93.95 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.

234.9 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.

117.4 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.

234.9 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.

7.366 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.

2560

L1 Cache

48 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

150W

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

7.366 TFLOPS

OctaneBench

Score

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Quadro RTX 4000 Mobile

8.147 +10.6%

Quadro P5200 Max Q

7.872 +6.9%

GeForce GTX 1080 Max Q

7.366

Quadro M6000 24 GB

6.981 -5.2%

Tesla M40 24 GB

6.695 -9.1%

OctaneBench

GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile

273 +2630%

Quadro P5200 Max Q

123 +1130%

Tesla K40m

69 +590%

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

36 +260%

GeForce GTX 1080 Max Q