Friday, March 23rd 2018
NVIDIA Sneaks Less Powerful GeForce MX150 Variant Into Ultrabooks
NVIDIA quietly launched the GeForce MX150 mobile GPU in May of last year. The team at Notebookcheck discovered that there are actually two variants of the GeForce MX150 in the wild - the standard 1D10 variant and the much slower 1D12 variant. Normally, this wouldn't raise any alarms. However, neither NVIDIA or the manufacturer distinguish the two variants from each other. Buyers who purchase an ultrabook or notebook with a GeForce MX150 are basically playing the lottery. They have no idea which variant is inside the product until they run an utility like GPU-Z to find out. But just how significant is the performance difference between the two variants? Let's look at Notebookcheck's findings.
Starting with the GeForce MX150's specifications, the standard 1D10 variant has a 1469 MHz core clock, 1532 MHz boost clock, and 1502 MHz memory clock. Notebookcheck first saw this variant in the MSI PL62 and Asus Zenbook UX430UN. They later discovered the underclocked 1D12 variant in the Lenovo IdeaPad 320S, ZenBook 13 UX331UN, Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13.3, HP Envy 13, and ZenBook UX331UA notebooks. The 1D12 variant has a 937 MHz core clock, 1038 MHz boost clock, and 1253 MHZ memory clock. Right off the bat, that's a 36 percent reduction in the core clock alone. According to the 3DMark and 3DMark 11 tests, consumers can expect anywhere from a 20 to 25 percent performance hit with the less powerful variant. The charts don't lie. Of the 13 notebooks tested by Notebookcheck, the five models equipped with the 1D12 variant of the GeForce MX150 are at the bottom of the list. Nvidia's move to sneak the 1D12 variant into thin and light notebooks was probably to meet the 10W TDP envelope as opposed to the original variant's 25W. Luckily, the 1D12 variant has only appeared in 13-inch notebooks.
Source:
Notebookcheck
Starting with the GeForce MX150's specifications, the standard 1D10 variant has a 1469 MHz core clock, 1532 MHz boost clock, and 1502 MHz memory clock. Notebookcheck first saw this variant in the MSI PL62 and Asus Zenbook UX430UN. They later discovered the underclocked 1D12 variant in the Lenovo IdeaPad 320S, ZenBook 13 UX331UN, Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13.3, HP Envy 13, and ZenBook UX331UA notebooks. The 1D12 variant has a 937 MHz core clock, 1038 MHz boost clock, and 1253 MHZ memory clock. Right off the bat, that's a 36 percent reduction in the core clock alone. According to the 3DMark and 3DMark 11 tests, consumers can expect anywhere from a 20 to 25 percent performance hit with the less powerful variant. The charts don't lie. Of the 13 notebooks tested by Notebookcheck, the five models equipped with the 1D12 variant of the GeForce MX150 are at the bottom of the list. Nvidia's move to sneak the 1D12 variant into thin and light notebooks was probably to meet the 10W TDP envelope as opposed to the original variant's 25W. Luckily, the 1D12 variant has only appeared in 13-inch notebooks.
95 Comments on NVIDIA Sneaks Less Powerful GeForce MX150 Variant Into Ultrabooks
Im now leaning towards Nvidia forcing them to add Max-Q to GPU description.
www.anandtech.com/show/12565/nvidia-silently-rolls-out-slower-mx150-for-ultrabooks
Further investigation on our part does reveal that there is a documented understanding that they are different parts, at least from an OEM perspective. By way of the official Ubuntu Certified hardware database, PCI ID ‘1D10’ is documented as the ‘GP108’ MX150 variant of the ThinkPad T480, while ‘1D12’ is recorded as the ‘GP108M’ variant of the ThinkPad T480s. In this case, although ‘GP108’ and ‘GP108M’ may not be NVIDIA’s own terminology, the Ubuntu Certified process involves OEMs directly working with Canonical to test their hardware. Canonical’s differentiation strongly implies that the OEMs are aware of MX150 variant.
I like annandtech but that stinks , why would you use the desktop variant gpu, why would it then not be marketed different ,it would game different.
Sounds like someone made a laptop for reviews and one to actually sell or something , no clarity, no good.
EDITTo the un-informed buyer, those two use the "same" GPU so the cheaper one is better ... right?
I mean, look at this sh!t: www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-630/specifications
www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-730/specifications
To me, a little outrage needs to be directed towards nVidia for not properly listing the minimum specs on their website. However, the majority of the outrage should be directed at these laptop manufacturers that are putting these dedicated GPUs in machines with cooling so bad they can't even maintain the base clock for any amount of reasonable time.
NVIDIA, the company that people love to hate.
Now at 750 pounds reduced from 850 that's the Acer swift 3 with i7-8250u cpu which is like twice as fast as the pos pentium 4415u in the ideapad 320s around 450 pounds. 7651 passmark points vs 3190 points...that's 2.39 times faster and with a non handicapped mx 150 !!!
Lenovo don't even offer a sorting option based on gpu on their website that's how little they care about the consumer and gpu preferences.
So where is this ideapad 320s with mx150 at 475 pounds ????????
Look
www3.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/ideapad/300-series/Ideapad-320S-13/p/88IP30S0902
The only Ideapad 320s on the lenovo site shows up with ''upto mx150'' and a whole other bunch of ''up to'' like ''up to 8th gen i7'' but when you click on it and then click view models it only has one model with i3-7100u which is slightly better than pentium 4415u as it has 3800 passmark points vs 3190 in 4415u, but not even close to i5-7200u 4646 points in Acer swift 3 at 620 pounds and 4600 passmark and proper mx150. AND this Ideapad 320s has a intel HD 620 gpu.
SO AGAIN ...where's this ideapad 320s with mx150 at 475 pounds ?????