What Is Nvidia Max-Q?

Traditionally, gaming laptops have been hulking machines with big screens and short battery lives.

- Matthew Buzzi

They were meant to stay put on a desk. The cooling systems required to run the discrete graphics cards have typically makes standard gaming laptops large and heavy.

Significant strides have been made in the past few years to solve this problem— Razer, for one, deserves a tip of the hat for its sleek and slim Blade line. But if you want a slim gaming laptop, you’ll need to make some sacrifices. The best graphics you can get in the 14-inch Razer Blade is an Nvidia GTX 1060 card, which is a moderate performer when it comes to gaming.

But Nvidia is aiming to help solve the problem with its Max-Q initiative. The term Max-Q is borrowed from the aeronautics industry, where it refers to the maximum amount of aerodynamic stress an aircraft can sustain. In the world of graphics cards, it means the sweet spot between graphics performance and heat production. Max-Q versions of the standard high-end graphics cards utilize a combination of hardware and software modifications to put a cap on performance, but they can fit in much smaller spaces.