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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q in 2025: Everything You Need to Know

Professional Review of the Graphics Card for Gamers and Creators

1. Architecture and Key Features: Turing and Innovations

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q is built on the Turing architecture, released in 2018, but remains relevant due to its support for modern technologies. Chips are manufactured using TSMC's 12nm process, providing a balance between performance and energy efficiency.

Key Features:

- RTX (Real-Time Ray Tracing): The first generation of real-time ray tracing. By 2025, many games are adapted to this technology, but comfortable gameplay at 4K requires DLSS.

- DLSS 1.0: AI-enhanced image upscaling with lower resource consumption. Modern games supporting DLSS 3.0 and higher are backward compatible, but efficiency is lower.

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR): An AMD technology that is supported in a hybrid mode on NVIDIA cards through drivers.

Why is Turing still relevant?

Despite the emergence of Ampere and Blackwell architectures, Turing remains popular for mid-range laptops due to its optimized power consumption and affordable price.

2. Memory: GDDR6 and Its Role

The RTX 2080 Max Q is equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus. It achieves a bandwidth of 384 GB/s, which is sufficient for most games and creative tasks in 2025.

Impact on Performance:

- In games with high-detail textures (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty), memory rarely becomes a bottleneck even at ultra settings in 1440p.

- For 3D rendering in Blender or Unreal Engine 5, 8GB is the minimum comfortable level, but complex scenes may require optimization.

3. Gaming Performance: From 1080p to 4K

Average FPS in Popular Games (Ultra settings, no ray tracing):

- Cyberpunk 2077: 1080p — 75 FPS, 1440p — 55 FPS, 4K — 32 FPS (with DLSS — up to 45 FPS in 4K).

- Apex Legends: 1080p — 144 FPS, 1440p — 110 FPS.

- Hogwarts Legacy: 1440p — 48 FPS (with RTX Medium + DLSS — 60 FPS).

Ray Tracing:

Enabling RTX reduces FPS by 30-40%, but DLSS compensates for the losses. For instance, in Control with RTX High and DLSS, the card delivers stable 60 FPS in 1440p.

Recommendations:

- Ideal for 1080p/1440p gaming.

- 4K is only feasible with DLSS or lowered settings.

4. Professional Tasks: Not Just Gaming

CUDA Cores (2944 units) accelerate rendering and computations:

- Video Editing: In Adobe Premiere Pro, rendering a 4K video takes 20% less time compared to the GTX 1080.

- 3D Modeling: In Blender, a BMW scene renders in 4.2 minutes compared to 6.5 minutes on the RTX 2060.

- Machine Learning: Supports TensorFlow and PyTorch, but for larger models, it's better to use cards with more VRAM.

Tip: For working with 8K materials or neural networks, consider the RTX 3080/4080, but for basic tasks, the RTX 2080 Max Q is sufficient.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP: 80-90 W — typical for Max Q mobile solutions.

Cooling Recommendations:

- Laptops with this card require a cooling system with 2-3 heat pipes and fans ≥ 45 dB.

- Use cooling pads for extended gaming sessions.

Chassis: Avoid ultra-thin laptops — they are more prone to throttling. Optimal models are around 18 mm thick (e.g., MSI GS65 Stealth).

6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 6700M (2023):

- Stronger at 1080p (+15% FPS), but weaker in ray tracing tasks.

- Price: $700-900 for new models.

NVIDIA RTX 3060 Mobile (2021):

- Comparable in performance, but the RTX 2080 Max Q has more VRAM (8 GB vs 6 GB).

- Price: $600-750.

Conclusion: The RTX 2080 Max Q excels over competitors from 2021-2023 in price balance and RTX support, but falls behind the new RTX 4050/4060 Mobile in energy efficiency.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply: Laptops with the RTX 2080 Max Q require a 180-230 W adapter. Check compatibility before purchase.

Compatibility:

- Supports PCIe 3.0 x16.

- Optimal platform: Intel Core i7-10xxx or AMD Ryzen 7 4800H and newer processors.

Drivers:

- Regularly update through GeForce Experience.

- For professional applications, use Studio Drivers.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Support for RTX and DLSS.

- Energy efficiency for mobile devices.

- Affordable price ($600-800 for new laptops in 2025).

Cons:

- Limited performance at 4K.

- Lack of hardware support for AV1.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Is the RTX 2080 Max Q For?

This graphics card is the optimal choice for:

- Gamers who value mobility and play at 1440p.

- Creators working with basic-level video editing and 3D tasks.

- Students looking for a balance between price and capabilities.

Alternatives: If your budget allows, consider the RTX 4060 Mobile. However, for those looking to save without losing key features, the RTX 2080 Max Q remains a reliable option even in 2025.

Updated in April 2025. Prices are current at the time of publication.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2019

Model Name

GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q

Generation

GeForce 20 Mobile

Base Clock

735MHz

Boost Clock

1095MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

13,600 million

RT Cores

Tensor Cores

Tensor Cores are specialized processing units designed specifically for deep learning, providing higher training and inference performance compared to FP32 training. They enable rapid computations in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and personalized recommendations. The two most notable applications of Tensor Cores are DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AI Denoiser for noise reduction.

368

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.

184

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

12 nm

Architecture

Turing

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

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

1500MHz

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.

384.0 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.

70.08 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.

201.5 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.

12.89 TFLOPS

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.

201.5 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.

6.576 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.

2944

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

4MB

TDP

80W

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 Ultimate (12_2)

CUDA

7.5

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.6

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

6.576 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

7810

Blender

Score

1605

OctaneBench

Score

193

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon RX 6700S

7.311 +11.2%

Arc A730M

6.893 +4.8%

GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q

6.576

GeForce RTX 2060

6.322 -3.9%

Radeon RX 580X

6.051 -8%

3DMark Time Spy

Radeon RX 6750 GRE

12617 +61.5%

GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile

9914 +26.9%

GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q

7810

GeForce GTX 980 Ti

5663 -27.5%

Radeon RX 480

4243 -45.7%

Blender

GeForce RTX 5070

6225.46 +287.9%

GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile

2829 +76.3%

GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q

1605

883.68 -44.9%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

442 -72.5%

OctaneBench

GeForce RTX 4090

1328 +588.1%

GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile

349 +80.8%

GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q

193

Quadro P3200 Max Q

87 -54.9%

GeForce GTX 960

47 -75.6%