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NVIDIA GeForce MX450 30.5W 10Gbps

NVIDIA GeForce MX450 30.5W 10Gbps: A Compact Graphics Card for Basic Tasks and Light Gaming

Current as of April 2025

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce MX450 30.5W 10Gbps is a mobile graphics card designed for thin laptops and devices with limited thermal budgets. Although by 2025 it is no longer considered cutting-edge, it can still be found in budget models and ultrabooks. This article will explore who this model is suitable for, the performance it provides, and what compromises users may need to consider.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The MX450 is based on the Turing architecture, which was introduced by NVIDIA in 2018. This means that the card does not support hardware-accelerated ray tracing (RTX) or DLSS technology, which emerged in later generations (Ampere, Ada Lovelace).

Process Technology: 12 nm (Samsung). As of 2025, this is considered outdated, as modern GPUs utilize 5–7 nm processes.

Unique Features:

- NVENC: Hardware video encoding for streaming and editing.

- Optimus: Dynamic switching between integrated and discrete graphics to save energy.

- Support for DirectX 12, Vulkan, and OpenGL 4.6.

What’s Missing:

- RT Cores and Tensor Cores — No ray tracing or DLSS available.

- AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) works, but less effectively than on RDNA cards.

Memory: Modest Specifications for Basic Tasks

Type and Size: GDDR6 with 2 GB (4 GB is rarer in top versions). For 2025 gaming, this is insufficient—high-quality textures may not fit in the buffer even at Full HD.

Bandwidth:

- Memory bus: 64 bits.

- Speed: 10 Gbps per channel.

- Total: 80 GB/s (for comparison, the RTX 3050 Mobile offers 192 GB/s).

Impact on Performance:

- In gaming: Frequent FPS drops due to a lack of VRAM.

- In professional applications: Limited handling of large projects in Premiere Pro or Blender.

Gaming Performance: Only for Light Projects

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

- Counter-Strike 2: 90–110 FPS.

- Fortnite (without Ray Tracing): 45–55 FPS.

- Apex Legends: 50–60 FPS.

- Cyberpunk 2077 (FSR Performance): 25–30 FPS.

Resolution Support:

- 1080p: The primary mode for comfortable gaming.

- 1440p and 4K: Only for less demanding indie games (e.g., Stardew Valley).

Ray Tracing: Unavailable due to lack of RT Cores.

Professional Tasks: Minimum for Beginners

Video Editing:

- In Adobe Premiere Pro, rendering 1080p video takes 30–40% less time than on integrated graphics.

- NVENC support speeds up H.264/H.265 exports.

3D Modeling:

- In Blender, simple scenes are rendered via CUDA, but complex projects with textures >2 GB will encounter issues.

Scientific Computing:

- CUDA and OpenCL support allows MX450 to be used in basic machine learning, but the speed is lower than specialized GPUs.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP: 30.5 Watts — allows the card to be installed in ultrabooks with passive or compact active cooling.

Case Recommendations:

- Laptops with at least one fan and copper heat pipes.

- Avoid models with completely passive cooling — throttling under load is possible.

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 6400 Mobile:

- Pros: 4 GB GDDR6, support for FSR 3.0.

- Cons: Higher power consumption (35 W).

- Price: $250–300 (similar to MX450).

Intel Arc A350M:

- Pros: Better support for new APIs, XeSS.

- Cons: Driver issues in older games.

Conclusion: The MX450 wins in energy efficiency but loses in performance and memory size.

Practical Tips

Power Supply: A standard 65–90 Watt adapter is sufficient for a laptop with MX450.

Compatibility:

- Optimal processors: Intel Core i5/i7 12–13th generation, AMD Ryzen 5 7000.

- Be sure to update drivers through GeForce Experience — this will improve stability in new games.

Drivers:

- Avoid "experimental" builds — MX450 receives only critical updates.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low power consumption.

- Suitable for thin laptops.

- Accelerates video editing and simple 3D tasks.

Cons:

- Only 2 GB VRAM.

- No support for DLSS and ray tracing.

- Weak performance in modern AAA games.

Final Conclusion: Who is the MX450 Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for those who:

1. Are looking for an affordable laptop ($500–700) for work and study.

2. Play older or less demanding games (CS2, Dota 2, indie projects).

3. Need basic graphics acceleration for editing or 3D modeling.

By 2025, the MX450 is no longer relevant for gamers or professionals but remains one of the most accessible discrete GPUs in the budget segment. If your tasks are more demanding, consider the RTX 2050 Mobile or Intel Arc A370M.

Prices are current as of April 2025. They reflect new devices in retail chains in the USA.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

August 2020

Model Name

GeForce MX450 30.5W 10Gbps

Generation

GeForce MX

Base Clock

1395MHz

Boost Clock

1575MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x4

Transistors

4,700 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

TSMC

Process Size

12 nm

Architecture

Turing

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

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.

64bit

Memory Clock

1250MHz

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.

80.00 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.

50.40 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.

88.20 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.

5.645 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.

88.20 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.

2.766 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.

896

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

31W

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

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

2.766 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

2082

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 880M

2.989 +8.1%

GeForce GTX 760 OEM

2.868 +3.7%

GeForce MX450 30.5W 10Gbps

2.766

FirePro V9800

2.666 -3.6%

GeForce GTX 760 Ti OEM

2.581 -6.7%

3DMark Time Spy

Arc A550M

5182 +148.9%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

3906 +87.6%

Radeon 780M

2755 +32.3%

GeForce MX450 30.5W 10Gbps

2082

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

623 -70.1%