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NVIDIA GeForce MX450 30.5W 8Gbps

NVIDIA GeForce MX450 30.5W 8Gbps: Overview and Analysis for 2025

April 2025

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce MX450 30.5W 8Gbps is a compact discrete graphics card designed for laptops and small PCs. Despite its age (the model was released in 2020), it remains popular in the budget segment due to its balance of price and energy efficiency. In this article, we will analyze what the MX450 is capable of in 2025 and who it is best suited for.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The MX450 is built on the Turing architecture (a modified version for mobile devices) but lacks the functionalities found in the RTX series. The manufacturing process is 12 nm, which is considered outdated in 2025 but explains its low power consumption.

Unique Features:

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

- NVENC: Hardware acceleration for video encoding (relevant for streamers and video editors).

Missing:

- RT cores and Tensor cores, so ray tracing (RTX) and DLSS are not available.

Conclusion: The MX450 is a simplified version of Turing, focused on basic tasks rather than innovations.

2. Memory: Type, Size, and Bandwidth

- Memory Type: GDDR6.

- Size: 2 GB (rarely available as 4 GB in high-end configurations).

- Speed: 8 Gbps per lane.

- Bus: 64-bit, which limits the bandwidth to 64 GB/s (64 bits × 8 Gbps ÷ 8).

Impact on Performance:

For games in 2025, 2 GB of VRAM is critically low. For example, in Hogwarts Legacy 2 at low settings (1080p), there may be lags due to insufficient memory. However, this is adequate for using office applications or older projects (e.g., CS:GO).

3. Gaming Performance

Average FPS (1080p, low/medium settings):

- Fortnite: 50-60 FPS (without shadows and post-processing).

- Apex Legends: 45-55 FPS.

- Cyberpunk 2077: 20-25 FPS (only in less demanding scenes).

- The Sims 5: 60 FPS.

Resolution Support:

- 1080p: Optimal for most tasks.

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

Ray Tracing: Not supported due to the lack of RT cores.

4. Professional Tasks

- Video Editing: In Premiere Pro, rendering 1080p videos is accelerated due to NVENC, but 4K materials are processed slowly.

- 3D Modeling: In Blender, simple scenes are rendered in an acceptable time (CUDA cores speed up the process), but complex projects require a more powerful GPU.

- Scientific Computing: Support for CUDA/OpenCL allows the MX450 to be used in basic machine learning tasks, but for neural networks, it's better to choose cards with Tensor cores.

Conclusion: The card is suitable for students and beginners but not for professionals.

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 30.5 W — one of the main advantages of the model.

- Cooling: Passive or with a small fan. Noise levels are minimal (up to 25 dB).

- Case Recommendations: Compact solutions with at least one exhaust fan are suitable (e.g., SilverStone ML09).

Important: In laptops, the MX450 often suffers from thermal throttling under prolonged load. Use cooling pads.

6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 6400:

- Pros: 4 GB GDDR6, support for FSR 3.0, higher gaming performance (+15-20%).

- Cons: TDP of 53 W, priced from $220 (MX450 starts at $160).

Intel Arc A30M:

- Pros: Modern architecture, support for XeSS.

- Cons: Drivers are less stable, priced from $180.

Conclusion: The MX450 excels in energy efficiency and price but falls short in performance.

7. Practical Tips

- Power Supply: A 300 W power supply is sufficient (for PCs). For laptops, ensure the adapter is rated for 65 W and above.

- Compatibility: PCIe 3.0 x4. Supported on Windows/Linux.

- Drivers: Regularly update through GeForce Experience. Avoid beta versions — the MX450 rarely receives optimizations for new games.

Tip: Activate "Max Performance" mode in power settings for gaming.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low power consumption.

- Quiet operation.

- Affordable price ($160-200).

Cons:

- 2 GB of VRAM is insufficient for 2025.

- No support for DLSS/FSR or ray tracing.

- Weak performance in modern games.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Should Choose the MX450?

This graphics card is a choice for those who:

1. Work with office applications and browsers — sufficient power for multitasking.

2. Play older or less demanding games (e.g., Minecraft, Dota 2).

3. Seek a budget solution for a compact PC or laptop with moderate heat output.

Do not choose the MX450 if:

- You need comfortable gaming in AAA titles.

- You engage in 3D rendering or editing in 4K.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce MX450 30.5W 8Gbps is a "workhorse" for basic tasks. By 2025, it is no longer impressive but remains one of the most affordable options for office work, study, and light gaming. If your budget is limited to $200 and high FPS is not critical, the MX450 is worth considering.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

August 2020

Model Name

GeForce MX450 30.5W 8Gbps

Generation

GeForce MX

Base Clock

1035MHz

Boost Clock

1275MHz

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

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.

64bit

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.

64.00 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.

40.80 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.

71.40 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.

4.570 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.

71.40 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.

2.239 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

2.239 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

1976

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon HD 8970M

2.35 +5%

GeForce GTX 1050 3 GB

2.285 +2.1%

GeForce MX450 30.5W 8Gbps

2.239

GRID M6 8Q

2.174 -2.9%

Quadro K5000 SYNC

2.126 -5%

3DMark Time Spy

Arc A550M

5182 +162.2%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

3906 +97.7%

Radeon 780M

2755 +39.4%

GeForce MX450 30.5W 8Gbps

1976

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

623 -68.5%