Want laptop graphics power specs? They might not be easy to find.

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ISSUE 19.21 • 2022-05-23 PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston Some well-known manufacturers of laptops make it a little hard to discover the power rati
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3 million is way too few. 3 billion way too many. (We suppose Statista asserted the 3 billion, don’t know that for sure since I didn’t bother to register for their ‘free’ account).

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For those who are unable to obtain a readout of maximum power draw (usually in Watts) there’s a simple way to get a close approximation. Look at the printing on the laptop’s charger/power brick.

Failing that, check the maker’s website accessory store or Amazon.com.

One of our laptops is an ACER E5-575G. (It comes with Intel HD Graphics 520, and Nvidia Geforce 950M. It auto-switches between the two.) HWInfo doesn’t show any maximum power rating or spec for either graphics chip. The power brick only shows volts & amps – not watts!

The ACER store and Amazon both offer a 65-watt suitable for our model.

We also have a Lenovo gaming laptop which has a massive 180-watt power brick, presumably to support its dual Nvidia G-chips!

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Volts times amps will give you a general idea of watts

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That wouldn’t necessarily work either.

My G3 came with a 120w adapter. Under load, it easily exceeds that, and the laptop switches to battery for the additional load. Dell calls this “hybrid power,” like it is some kind of feature, but the real name for it is “Dell was too cheap to put a bigger adapter in the box.” Switching to the battery for the remaining power needs isn’t some neat feature… it’s what laptops do when they have an inadequate power supply.

I bought a Dell replacement 180w adapter and it never switches to battery anymore under load.

The best way to compare different gaming PCs in terms of GPU performance is to test them. The benchmark results of nearly every model are available online somewhere (in many different places), and that will tell you more than the marketing name of the GPU (e.g. GTX 1060 Max-Q) or the power draw. The actual performance is what matters, and that’s a sum of several things, only one of which being the power limit for the GPU (though the power limit should have been chosen by the manufacturer to closely match the capacity of the laptop’s cooling system).

If the laptop’s cooling system is not up to the task of keeping the GPU under the slowdown limit, the GPU will reduce performance to keep cool even if the power limit is not reached. Gaming laptops generally have the CPU and GPU coolers as a singular unit, so a CPU that gets really hot also limits the GPU’s performance potential if the cooling is marginal (by laptop standards). The only sure way to know how it all works together is to test it.

A recent GPU will attempt to raise its clock rate to the maximum boost clock, which should be stated in the nVidia control panel (I only have the Linux one handy, but it’s there too). If it reaches the power limit before it gets to the maximum boost clock, it will not boost any higher, and it will adjust the boost clock as needed to remain within the power limit.

Independently of the power limit, it is also monitoring the GPU temperature. If it reaches the slowdown point, the GPU will throttle to keep it within the limit. My max temp on my 1050ti is 97C, and is shown in the driver dialog.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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My Nvidia 1050ti control panel doesn’t have power rating.

NVIDIA System Information report created on: 05/23/2022 22:11:16
System name: DESKTOP-6OS0VQ1

[Display]
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit
DirectX version: 12.0
GPU processor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Driver version: 512.59
Driver Type: DCH
Direct3D feature level: 12_1
CUDA Cores: 768
Core clock: 1493 MHz
Memory data rate: 7.01 Gbps
Memory interface: 128-bit
Memory bandwidth: 112.13 GB/s
Total available graphics memory: 12224 MB
Dedicated video memory: 4096 MB GDDR5
System video memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 8128 MB
Video BIOS version: 86.07.66.00.09
IRQ: Not used
Bus: PCI Express x16 Gen3
Device Id: 10DE 1C8C 39FD17AA
Part Number: 2904 0001

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Just another Forum Poster, WSDKS01

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My ASUS Zephyrus S17 GX701LV with an NVIDIA GTX 2080 GPU does not show any power draw in Control Panel, either. The power supply is 240 watts.

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Alex5723 wrote:

My Nvidia 1050ti control panel doesn’t have power rating.

Neither does my Nvidia GTX 1060.

My PSU is rated for 750W so power shouldn’t be a problem.

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Regarding the Nvidia 1050Ti (or Geforce GTX-1050Ti as they are wont to call it), we have the benefit of their designed power limit of 75 watts. Supposedly, this comes from the fact that in a PC you plug your 1050Ti into a PCIe X16 slot on the motherboard. By design, no additional cable from the power supply is necessary (and there’s no socket on the card for an extra cable); thus, the power limit is the maximum wattage that the PCIe socket can deliver on its own which is 75 watts. Various tech site reviews have confirmed this, and the 1050Ti remains an outstandingly capable non-power-hungry choice even now. One can only surmise that a 1050Ti in a laptop would have the same maximum designed power, or possibly a little less since mobile graphics often run at lower power than their PC counterpart.

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Certainly the power limit on a 1050ti mobile would not be more than for the desktop version (which is the same actual silicon, as far as I know, with the lowest-power binned examples being made into mobile versions), but it could be less than that. That’s the question here, whether any given laptop GPU is full-power or something less than that. Less power used means a smaller cooling system is needed, and laptops are short on space, so many will not have full-powered versions.

In my case, benchmarking has shown that my 1050ti in my G3 can hold its own, running a Windows benchmark (Furmark) in Linux, against a desktop with a 1050ti in actual Windows, and without breaking 70C. I was pretty happy with that result, as you might guess!

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Excellent article. Thanks!

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I’ve got an older ASUS laptop in here that draws more amperage than my refrigerator!

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cyberSAR wrote:

I’ve got an older ASUS laptop in here that draws more amperage than my refrigerator!

Ah, yes, but can your laptop make ice cubes or keep the beer cold?

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Ah, yes, but can your laptop make ice cubes or keep the beer cold?

I suppose it can’t, but it may be able to cook an omelet or boil a cup of tea.

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Ha! Not sure it can keep my beer cold or cook me an omelete. As far as tea, not so sure I’m there yet! ::-)

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