NVIDIA GeForce 940MX vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU vs NVIDIA GeForce 930MX

NVIDIA GeForce 940MX

The Nvidia GeForce 940MX is a mid-range laptop graphics card with DirectX 12 support (FL 11_0). It has been announced in the first quarter of 2016 and is the refresh of the GeForce 940M. Compared to the older card, the new one is based on the same chip but now supports faster GDDR5. Therefore, it is similar to the Maxwell GPU in the Microsoft Surface Book but with more memory and higher clock speeds. However, most notebook vendors will use the slower DDR3 version of the 940MX that clocks only a few percent faster than the old GeForce 940M (1122 versus 1072 MHz base clock e.g.). 

For the GDDR5 version of the 940MX there appears to be also a variant with the GM107-B chip with 512 shaders instead of the 384 but lower clock speeds. The 940MX in the Acer Aspire E5-774G e.g. featured 512 shader cores (GM107) clocked at 795 - 861 MHz. The Dell Inspiron 17 7778 version however had the GM108 chip with 384 shaders clocked at 1083 - 1189 MHz.

The performance greatly depends on the used graphics memory and chip. According to our benchmarks (see below), the DDR3 version is very similar to the old 940M (due to only minor increased clock rates). The GDDR5 version however pushes ahead 20% (even 30% if paired with a fast desktop quad-core, but we lack 940M reference scores). Therefore, demanding games from 2015 should run fluently in low to medium settings and WXGA resolution. 

The TDP of the card should be rated at about 15 to 30 Watt (depending on the version, clock speeds and memory). Therefore, the GPU is best suited for laptops from 13-inch and up.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU (Codename GN21-X4) is an high-end laptop GPU. It is based on the AD107 chip and uses the Ada Lovelace architecture. The RTX 4060 Laptop offers 3072 shaders and uses 8 GB GDDR6 dedicated graphics memory with a clock speed of 16 Gbps (effective) and a 128 Bit memory bus. The TGP (Total Graphics Power) can be configured between 35 and 115 Watt (+ 15-25 Watt Dynamic Boost from the CPU) leading to different performance levels. The boost clock speed ranges from 1470 MHz (at 35 Watt TGP) up to 2370 MHz (115W).

The performance in synthetical benchmarks of an average RTX 4060 is between a mobile RTX 3070 and a mobile RTX 3070 Ti. GPUs with lower power limit (e.g. 45 Watt variants) are ranking clearly lower (75% lower performance in some reviews). The average gaming performance of the RTX 4060 mobile is ideal for highest settings in 1920x1080 for demanding games. Less demanding games can easily run in QHD (like Baldurs Gate 3). See below for detailed benchmarks of our reviews. Enabling DLSS in supported games, can highly improve the framerate.

The RTX 4060 offers 80 tensor cores (4th gen) that enable DLSS 3 including frame generation for supported games. The 20 raytracing cores (4rd gen) on the other hand, will see less use as the RTX 4060 is not that powerful for demanding games to enable raytracing (other than in low resolutions).

The AD107 chip is manufactured in 5nm at TSMC (4N process).

NVIDIA GeForce 930MX

The Nvidia GeForce 930MX is an entry-level DirectX 12 graphics card for laptops that was announced in the first quarter of 2016. It is the refresh of the GeForce 930M and now supports GDDR5 graphics memory. It is based on the same GM108 chip and may feature slightly increased clock rates.

The performance will depend on the used graphics memory. With fast GDDR5 it should be similar or slightly faster than the Maxwell GPU in the Surface Book. With DDR3 it performs be somewhere between the old 930M and 940M. That means that only non demanding games of 2017 run fluently (in lowest detail settings) on the GeForce 930M. Games with low demands like Dota 2 or Path of Exile should run in higher detail settings and resolution.

The power consumption should be quite similar to the 930M and 940M and therefore also suited for smaller laptops.