Nvidia possibly abandoning entry-level laptop GPU line
GPU market leader Nvidia may possibly be looking into abandoning its MX series of discrete GPUs for laptops.
Nvidia’s MX series has been a boon for people looking to buy an entry-level laptop but still wanted to have the advantages of a discrete GPU over an integrated one. These are often seen better not just for games, but for other workloads, such as rendering, AI acceleration and video encoding.
However, both Intel and AMD have made huge leaps in their integrated GPUs, with support for the latest video codecs and even supporting AI-accelerated workloads. Even for gaming, integrated GPUs have become able to run not just casual games and MMOs, but even more advanced titles at lower resolution. The biggest proof of the latter would be the increased use of integrated GPUs in portable, handheld gaming consoles and computers such as Valve’s Steam Deck.
It’s with this in mind that Chinese news outlet ITHome reports that Nvidia may be giving up on the MX series and entry-level discrete laptop GPUs in general. The outlet points to the fact that no new entry-level laptop with a discrete Nvidia GPU was shown at CES 2023 earlier this month. Instead, what was shown was a host of entry-level laptops running on integrated Intel and AMD graphics
Nvidia itself has not released any new entry-level laptop GPUs since 202a’s MX570 and MX550.
Of course, the company could just be biding its time working on a new line of MX-series GPUs. However, its recent moves seem to indicate otherwise. CEO Jensen Huang famously stated back in September of 2021 that high prices for discrete GPUs were “here to stay.” Meanwhile, the suggested retail prices of its new RTX 40 series GPUs remain high—even if the company did lower the price of the 12GB RTX 4080 after it relaunched it as the RTX 4070 Ti.
It seems more likely then that Nvidia is more than happy to cede the entry-level laptop GPU market, where any advantage its discrete MX series GPUs had looks to be eroding in the face of better integrated GPUs from its competitors.
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