Nvidia recently announced that it will be letting OEMS mention the Max-Q branding and will let OEMs decide on whether to advertise this. It without a doubt left a grey area in comparing performance levels.
When the 10-series launched Nvidia made an unspoken promise that the performance between the notebook and desktop would not be more than 10% however, this number has skewed over the years, and with the introduction of Max-Q SKUs, the difference widened quite a bit more.
Now coming to the 30-series there is no way to tell the difference, however, some OEMs like Asus have stepped up to mention if the GPUS in the laptop lineup would have the TGP and clock speeds mentioned on their product pages.
Most of the pro-consumers would research these things but the average buyer who relies on sales associates to get their information could be the victims of aggressive upselling.
We also know that some OEMs have indicated that it would be “difficult to update” their product pages and an Nvidia spokesperson had the following to say to the Verge:
“We’re requiring OEMs to update their product pages to the Max-Q technology features for each GeForce laptop, as well as clocks and power — which communicates the expected GPU performance in that system,”
This is a welcomed move as this could have had quite a few repercussions such as a loss in user confidence or even boycotts which would have severely impacted Nvidia’s reputation. We hope Nvidia takes more such actions in the future.
