Nvidia's Pascal architecture marked a step-change in gaming laptop technology. No longer would users have to put up with cut-down GPUs, slower memory and reduced clocks. A notebook GTX 1080, 1070 or 1060 offers almost all of the power of the desktop iterations in a fully portable form-factor. But what if instead of targeting maximum performance from the silicon, manufacturers aimed for peak efficiency instead? The end result is the new Nvidia Max-Q technology, seen at its zenith in Asus's new Zephyrus laptop.
It's a remarkable piece of technology - the sort of product that shows that the PC space is the place to be for the latest and greatest innovations. In short, Asus has crammed a quad-core Intel i7 alongside the Max-Q version of the GTX 1080 into a 15-inch laptop. It's light at 2.24kg and certainly thin enough at just 17.9mm. We've never seen so much gaming performance integrated into such a small product - so it makes sense that Nvidia boss Jen-Hsun Huang would proudly display the Zephyrus at Max-Q's Computex reveal just a few weeks ago.
There's plenty that makes the Zephyrus special, but to begin with, let's nail down what Max-Q is all about. Put simply, desktop versions of the GPUs push frequencies close to the max in order to extract maximum performance. However, there's no linear relationship between power consumption and performance - dropping clocks by 400-500MHz obviously sees lower frame-rates compared to the desktop parts, but the efficiency savings are huge, enough to move the GTX 1080 down to a remarkable 90-110W TDP. And that's exactly what's happening here - we noted GPU boost topping out at around 1340MHz, whereas our desktop GTX 1080 can hit highs in excess of 1800MHz.
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