ASUS, a global technology leader renowned for continuously reimagining today's technologies for tomorrow, today announced ExpertBook B6 Flip (B6602F)—the first Expert-series flippable mobile workstation.

This high-performance mobile workstation with its versatile 360° hinge is designed specifically to help architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) companies running industry-leading software solutions like 3ds Max, MicroStation, and Vectorworks. With immense power packed in a slim and flippable form, ExpertBook B6 Flip handles complex workloads seamlessly across AEC disciplines. It helps users bring design concepts to life through BIM software like ArchiCAD, effortlessly transition from 2D sketches to 3D modelling and printing via tools like Creo and Solidworks, and handle data-intensive applications for deeper insights and better decision-making—delivering the edge that AEC companies need in today's competitive market.

It seemed has if NVIDIA was dropping the Max-P and Max-Q differentiators for their mobile graphics card, which would throw consumers into disarray and confusion as to what exactly was the performance of the graphics card built into their RTX 30-series laptop. In essence, due to the RTX 30-series configurable TGP (Total Graphics Power), as well as each laptop's own capability of supplying power and cooling to that chip, users might see themselves in situations such as their mobile RTX 3080 offering lower performance than a mobile RTX 3070, configured for a higher TGP. This meant that more attentive users would have to hunt for reviews of the laptops they were eyeing, or to be forced to count on system manufacturers to actually list specifications for the included graphics solution in their laptops. This would mean, more often than not, something akin to chaos, and could in truth impact NVIDIA's brand recognition and consumer confidence in expected performance.

NVIDIA, as a way to circumvent this, has decided to not only encourage, but actually require that manufacturers list their graphics cards' TGP as well as specific clock speed stats on their online product pages. Some manufacturers, such as Asus, Acer, Razer, Origin, MSI, Alienware, and Gigabyte have already updated some product pages - but not all. An NVIDIA spokesperson clarified to The Verge that "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." Perhaps that will help consumers make a more informed decision.

On a request from Tweakers, ASUS has decided to reveal full GPU specifications for the entire laptop GPU lineup. Having NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series GPUs in their laptops, companies were not committed to listing the TGP and whatever the GPU inside was a Max-Q or Max-P variant. That would confuse the average consumer and a GPU variant they got could be significantly slower than what they have expected. So to clear up the confusion, ASUS has decided to provide us with the table of GPU TGPs and frequencies found inside the company's laptops. Not only has ASUS published a table of TGPs and frequencies, but the company has also updated its website to reflect the exact TDP and exact frequency of any GPU used in a laptop to avoid any confusion and give consumers reassurance in their purchase. You can find the table of laptops with their exact GPU TGP and GPU clock speeds below.

NVIDIA has recently introduced its 3000 series of Ampere graphics cards designed for mobile/laptop devices. And usually, these GPUs in the past few years have been divided into two configurations: Max-P and Max-Q. The Max-P variant was a maximum performance configuration meant for more power usage and higher temperatures, representing a standard GPU configuration. The Max-Q design was, according to NVIDIA, "a system-wide approach to deliver high performance in thin and light gaming laptops. Every aspect of the laptop, chip, software, PCB design, power delivery, and thermals, are optimized for power and performance." Meaning that the Max-Q variants are more TGP limited compared to the Max-P configuration.


Update 23rd of January 11:35 UTC: NVIDIA spokesperson told Tom's Hardware that: "No, Max-Q branding is not going away. When we originally introduced Max-Q back in 2017, the brand was initially used in GPU naming since Max-Q referred to the GPU TGP only. Today, 3rd Generation Max-Q is broader, and is a holistic set of platform technologies and design approach to building powerful and thin laptops. In addition, to be more transparent about a laptop's exact capabilities, RTX 30 Series laptops now show more information than ever, listing exact TGP, clocks and features supported. You will find this in the control panel which now reports maximum power (TGP+Boost), and support for key features including Dynamic Boost 2, WhisperMode 2, Advanced Optimus, and others, all of which fall under the Max-Q umbrella. We strongly encourage OEMs to list clocks and other technologies a laptop supports, including Advanced Optimus, Dynamic Boost 2, and more. Ultimately, like all laptop features and specs, it is up to the OEM to market what their particular laptop configuration supports.)"

Apparently, specifications for NVIDIA's upcoming RTX 30-series mobile solutions have been made public. According to Videocardz via Notebookcheck, NVIDIA will introduce three mobile versions of their RTX 30-series graphics cards in the form of the RTX 3080, RTX 3070 and RTX 3060. Like past NVIDIA mobile solutions, these won't directly correspond, hardware-wise, to their desktop counterparts; NVIDIA has the habit of downgrading their mobile solutions' chips compared to their desktop counterparts. According to the leaked specifications, this means the mobile RTX 3080 will maker use of the company's GA-104 chip, instead of the GA-102 silicon found on desktop versions of the card.

The mobile RTX 3080 should thus feature a total of 6,144 CUDA cores, as present in the fully-enabled GA-104 chip (compare that to the 5,888 CUDA cores available on the desktop RTX 3070, and the 8,704 CUDA cores available on the RTX 3080). These CUDA cores would be clocked at up to 1.7 GHz. The memory bus should also see a cut down to 256-bit, which would allow NVIDIA to distribute as many as 4 versions of the RTX 3080 mobile: Max-Q (TGP 80-90 W), Max-P (TGP 115-150 W), with either 8 GB or 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. The RTX 3070 mobile keeps the GA-104 chip, 256-bit bus and GDDR6 memory subsystem (apparently with only 8 GB memory pool available), but further cuts down CUDA cores to 5,120 (Max-Q TGP 80-90 W, Max-P TGP 115-150 W). Finally, the RTX 3060 mobile should make use of the GA106 chip, set up with 3,072 available CUDA cores and a 192-bit memory bus across its 6 GB of GDDR6 VRAM pool (Max-Q TGP 60-70 W), Max-P (TGP 80-115 W). Expect these specs to be confirmed (or not) come January 12th.