Nvidia could probably change its laptop strategy over the next few months, especially when it comes to its discrete graphics cards, the MX series.
Our Chinese colleagues from ITHome, generally quite well informed, report that Nvidia will likely discontinue its MX series of discrete graphics cards, intended for ultra-thin laptops. The MX series usually complements graphics cards integrated into processors, but these have become so fast that Nvidia would have changed its plans.
At the end of 2021, Nvidia launched new MX550 and MX570, which have been found in many laptops so far. However, while the American giant plans to launch its mobile RTX 4000s soon, we have no trace of a new generation of MX graphics cardsaimed at people looking for a little power for productivity and very casual gamers.
No new MX650 would be planned
According to ITHome, Nvidia does not plan to release any new MX650s in 2023, simply because their usefulness is now in question. Indeed, formerly disparaged, graphics cards integrated into processors have gradually become quite powerful, enough to convince some users to do without dedicated graphics cards.
Intel and AMD already have powerful GPUs supporting the latest video codecs or even AI-accelerated workloads. Whether it’s the new Iris Graphics of the Intel Core 13e generation or even the iGPUs under RDNA 2 of the Ryzen 6000, all are even capable of allowing you to play occasionally at some less demanding games, even the latest AAA in 720p.
We are also expecting significant progress in this area thanks to the new Ryzen 7040s, which include a new Radeon 780M GPU under the RDNA 3 architecture. The latter would promise superior performance to fairly popular graphics cards, such as Nvidia’s RTX 2060. The MX series therefore offers much lower performance, and forces laptops to consume far more battery power than graphics cards integrated into processors. Faced with such competition, we would therefore not be surprised if Nvidia abandoned the series, which it will eventually replace with new entry-level 4000-series GPUs. In the meantime, we know that the mobile RTX 4090 should be as expensive as the desktop version, bad news for gamers.
