NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Mobile gets rid of Max-Q or Max-P

NotebookCheck heard NVIDIA is getting rid of Max-Q and Max-P variants of its mobile GPUs. The new GeForce RTX 30 series will offer laptop OEMs greater freedom in terms of configuration. NVIDIA says all mobile Ampere GPUs can offer third-generation Max-Q features. It will be at the OEM's discretion to decide which third-gen Max-Q specs and configurable TDP value should be used.

As the site points out, this will make it harder to compare laptops. For example, a higher Watt GeForce RTX 3060 could potentially outperform a constrained GeForce RTX 3080:

For instance, the flagship RTX 3080 "Laptop GPU", as NVIDIA would like to call it, offers a configurable TGP ranging from 80 W to 150+ W. The RTX 3070 Mobile offers an 80 W to 125 W range while the RTX 3060 Mobile can be tuned between 60 W and 115 W. These TGP ranges correspond to actual clocks. The RTX 3080 Mobile, for example, can offer up to 37% increased clocks at the higher-end of the TDP range compared to the base 80 W variant.

What this means is that a 115 W RTX 3060 Mobile can potentially outperform an 80 W RTX 3080 Mobile depending on the given workload. The lack of explicit power details in the laptop specs can potentially complicate matters for the end user, who would generally assume that mention of an RTX 3080 Mobile automatically implies higher performance.