NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop) vs AMD Radeon R7 M360 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 is an entry level graphics card for desktops based on the Pascal architecture. It uses the same GP107 chip as the GTX 1050 Ti, but with only 640 instead of 768 shaders. The chip is manufactured at Samsung in 14 nm (opposed to the 16 nm TSCM based Pascal chips of the 1060 and up). The performance and specs should be similar to the GTX 1050 laptop version, that will be released later (early 2017). Compared to the faster GTX 1050 Ti, the 1050 offers less shaders (640 instead of 768) and only 2 GB of GDDR5 (instead of the 4 GB of the 1050 Ti).

Gaming benchmarks by Nvidia state that the GTX 1050 is about 30% faster on average than the Radeon RX 460 with 2 GB VRAM. The 4 GB version of the RX 460 should be about 10% slower and the older GTX 950 should reach a similar performance level as the new GTX 1050. Therefore, the GTX 1050 should be ideal for 1080p gaming with high detail settings (but not max settings).

AMD Radeon R7 M360

The AMD Radeon R7 M360 is a dedicated lower-mid-range graphics card for laptops that was announced in mid 2015. It is based on a new derivative of the Tonga chip and therefore supports DirectX 12, Vulkan and FreeSync. The core is clocked at relatively high 1015 MHz, however, the bottleneck may be the use of slow 64-bit DDR3 graphics memory.

Performance

The performance of the R7-M360 is slightly above the slower clocked Radeon R7 M260 (64-bit model) and silimar to a GeForce 920M. Therefore, very demanding modern games like Dragon Age: Inquisition or Evolve are only playable at the lowest graphics settings.

The 384 shaders can be used with OpenCL 1.2 for general-purpose calculations (as 10 compute units).

Features

Features of the R7-M360 include video decoding for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Flash directly by the AMD GPU. Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos are compatible as well.

The R7 series also supports automatic graphics switching between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU. Called Enduro, the technology supersedes AMD's Dynamic Switchable Graphics and is similar to Nvidia's Optimus. Furthermore, the M375 can directly support multiple monitors using the Eyefinity Technology if Enduro is disabled.

Other features include ZeroCore for a reduced power consumption when the display is turned off and Power Gating to power down areas of the chip that are not used. 

The integrated HD audio processor is able to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g., for Blu-Ray videos). Additionally, it allows audio output simultaneously and in parallel to multiple devices with the new Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) feature.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 with Max-Q design is a mainstream GPU based on the Pascal architecture and was announced in January 2018. Contrary to the faster models, the GTX 1050 uses the GP107 chip, which is manufactured in a 14 nm process at Samsung.

The clock is not the only difference compared to the regular GTX 1050 though. The drivers for the Max-Q version were optimized for efficiency (and not performance; only for Max-Q models), there are optimized voltage converters for 1V operation, high-end cooling methods, and a 40 dB limit for the fan noise (with clock adjustments to ensure this at all times).

Features

The GP107 chip is manufactured in a 14 nm FinFET process at Samsung and offers a number of new features, including support for DisplayPort 1.4 (ready), HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) as well as improved H.265 video de- and encoding (PlayReady 3.0). A full list of improvements and the new Pascal desktop GPUs is available in our dedicated Pascal architecture article.

Performance

The performance of the GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q should be around 10-15 % below a regular GTX 1050 for laptops. This means the GPU is most suited for full HD gaming at high settings (not maximum).

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q is rated at 34 to 40 Watt and therefore significantly lower than the normal laptop GTX 1050 (53 Watt). Therefore, the Max-Q variant is also suited for thin and light laptops.