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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Max-Q

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Max-Q: Power in a Compact Format

Analysis of the graphics card for gaming and professional tasks — April 2025

Architecture and Key Features

Ada Lovelace: Efficiency and Innovation

The RTX 4060 Max-Q is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture, crafted using TSMC's 5nm process technology. This provides a high transistor density and energy efficiency. The maximum clock speed reaches 2.4 GHz in turbo mode, which is 15% higher than the RTX 3060 Max-Q.

Technologies for Realism and Speed

- DLSS 3.5: Artificial intelligence enhances image quality and increases FPS by generating additional frames through a neural network. For example, in Cyberpunk 2077 Ultra, DLSS 3.5 offers an increase of up to 40% compared to DLSS 2.0.

- Ray Tracing 3.0: Hardware acceleration for ray tracing improves reflections, shadows, and global illumination.

- NVIDIA Reflex: Reduces input lag to 18 ms in games like Valorant.

The card also supports AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution, which is beneficial for cross-platform projects.

Memory: Speed and Capacity

GDDR6: Balance Between Power and Energy Consumption

The RTX 4060 Max-Q comes with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus. The bandwidth is 288 GB/s (18 Gbps). This is sufficient for gaming at 1440p, but 4K may face limitations due to buffer size.

How Does Memory Affect Performance?

- In Hogwarts Legacy (1440p, Ultra, RTX On), the graphics card delivers 56 FPS, but with DLSS 3.5 enabled, it rises to 78 FPS.

- For professional tasks (such as rendering in Blender), 8 GB is the minimum comfortable amount.

Gaming Performance: From Full HD to 4K

1080p: The Perfect Environment

- Apex Legends (Ultra): 144 FPS.

- Alan Wake 2 (High, RTX On + DLSS 3.5): 68 FPS.

1440p: The Golden Mean

- Starfield (Ultra): 48 FPS (without DLSS), 72 FPS (with DLSS 3.5).

- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare V (Extreme): 89 FPS.

4K: Only with Optimization

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Medium, RTX On + DLSS 3.5): 42 FPS.

- For smooth 4K gameplay, it's recommended to lower settings or use DLSS.

Professional Tasks: Not Just for Gaming

CUDA and AI Acceleration

- Video Editing: In Adobe Premiere Pro, rendering a 4K video takes 30% less time compared to the RTX 3060 Max-Q.

- 3D Modeling: In Blender, the BMW Render test is completed in 4.2 minutes (compared to 6.1 minutes with the RTX 3060).

- Scientific Calculations: CUDA and OpenCL support makes the card useful for machine learning in small projects.

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP 80 W: Energy Efficiency First

The RTX 4060 Max-Q is optimized for thin laptops. Its TDP is 20% lower than that of the desktop RTX 4060, but its performance is about 85% of the desktop version.

Cooling Recommendations

- Laptops with this card should have at least two fans and heat pipes.

- Ideal chassis thickness is from 18 mm (for example, ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2025).

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT:

- Pros: 10 GB GDDR6, higher performance in 4K.

- Cons: Weaker in ray tracing, no equivalent to DLSS 3.5.

Intel Arc A770M:

- Cheaper ($350), but drivers are still lagging in optimization for older games.

Conclusion: The RTX 4060 Max-Q stands out due to DLSS, ray tracing, and driver stability.

Practical Tips

Power Supply and Compatibility

- For laptops: choose models with a power supply of at least 180 W.

- For mini-PCs: compatible with processors up to Ryzen 7 7840HS or Intel Core i7-13700H.

Drivers and Optimization

- Update through GeForce Experience: for example, driver 555.20 improved stability in Star Wars: Eclipse.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Energy efficiency.

- DLSS 3.5 and improved ray tracing.

- Support for professional applications.

Cons:

- 8 GB of memory is a bit low for 4K.

- Price: from $1100 in laptops (the GPU itself is priced at $400-500).

Final Verdict: Who is the RTX 4060 Max-Q For?

This graphics card is an ideal choice for:

1. Gamers who need a thin laptop for 1440p gaming.

2. Designers and editors who value portability.

3. Students balancing study and entertainment.

If you’re willing to sacrifice 4K performance for portability and quieter operation, the RTX 4060 Max-Q will be a reliable companion.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2023

Model Name

GeForce RTX 4060 Max-Q

Generation

GeForce 40 Mobile

Base Clock

1140MHz

Boost Clock

1470MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x16

Transistors

Unknown

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.

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

TSMC

Process Size

5 nm

Architecture

Ada Lovelace

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.

128bit

Memory Clock

2000MHz

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.

256.0 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.

70.56 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.

141.1 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.

9.032 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.

141.1 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.

9.213 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.

3072

L1 Cache

128 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

32MB

TDP

35W

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

8.9

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.7

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

9.213 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Tesla P100 DGXS

10.398 +12.9%

Radeon RX 5700 XT

9.949 +8%

GeForce RTX 4060 Max-Q

9.213

Radeon RX 6800S

8.774 -4.8%

Quadro RTX 5000 Max Q

8.46 -8.2%