This site may earn chapter commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

geforce_mx150_chip

Laptops designed for gaming are more powerful than ever earlier thanks to newer GPU designs that work on either desktops or laptops. However, these machines are withal hefty and expensive. If you demand something in between integrated graphics and a GTX module, yous might go looking for a machine with an Nvidia MX150 dedicated GPU. However, information technology turns out non all MX150 systems offer the same version of the GPU. Some are much, much slower, and it'south hard to know which 1 is which.

Nvidia launched the MX150 dedicated laptop GPU in mid-2017. Previously, information technology had ditched the M-series mobile GPUs for laptops with the launch of the GeForce 1000-series. The GTX chips in laptops are at present almost identical to the ones y'all see in desktop GPUs, and then Nvidia filled the gap between integrated graphics and GTX graphics with the MX150. It claims the MX150 is upwardly to four times faster in games and 2.5 times faster editing photos than Intel integrated graphics. You tin play "lighter" PC games like Earth of Tanks or DOTA2 at 60fps on most MX150 systems. Not all of them, though, and that's the trouble.

The MX150 is based on the GP108 fleck, using the Pascal architecture, just at that place are two variants of the chip. Nvidia's internal model numbers are N17S-G1-A1 and N17S-LG-A1. The G1 variant has a 25W TDP and a clock speed betwixt 1,486 and i,531MHz. The LG fleck is significantly slower with a 10W TDP and clock speeds betwixt 936 and 1,037MHz.

The LG variant comes with a significant drop in performance compared with the full-speed version, just information technology's aimed at thinner laptops with smaller batteries. You can't always tell from a spec sheet which version of the MX150 a laptop uses, though. Sometimes the data only isn't provided, and other times it uses a unlike naming scheme — you might also meet it identified as the 1D12 chip.

The ZenBook 13, one of the laptops with the slower MX150 chip.

NotebookCheck has plant the slower MX150 in the Lenovo IdeaPad 320S-13KBR, Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UN, Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UA, Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13.3 2022, and HP Envy 13-ad006ng. The manufacturers of these systems don't explicate the stardom between the slower MX150 they've used and the faster one that Nvidia touts.

Meanwhile, Tom's Hardware reports that the MX150 variants are most likely the same hardware with firmware modifications from Nvidia. It does also mention on the product page that GPU implementations will vary by manufacturer. However, there is a large difference between the N17S-G1-A1 and N17S-LG-A1. Using different user-facing model numbers would have been prudent.