Having seen some of the synthetic and gaming benchmarks, one thing is certain — the MX150 is definitely an improvement over its Maxwell predecessor and could soon be the GPU of choice for entry-level gaming laptops. NVIDIA's claims of performance increase (about 33%) are reflected in our benchmarks as well. Although the percentage increase is significant, the actual empirical difference is quite modest. This does not come as a surprise though, given that the MX150 basically shares the same number of CUDA cores and similar VRAM bandwidth with the 940MX. It should definitely be appreciated that the MX150 shows increased performance whilst maintaining similar TDP values as the 940MX. This clearly shows that the Pascal architecture is very efficient even in the lower tier GPUs. As OEMs have the option of tweaking the core clocks, more energy efficient notebooks can be expected to be based on the MX150. The performance gains we see could be very well attributed to the increase in ROP counts, higher core clocks and the architectural advantages of Pascal. Further information on how each card performed in other gaming benchmarks can be found in our product benchmark pages of the MX150 and the 940MX.

Gaming performance aside, the MX150 also appears to be a veritable GPU for professional applications such as video and 3D rendering as evidenced by the DirectCompute and OpenCL performance, which is on par with the Quadro M1000M. The Quadro has more CUDA cores and a higher memory bandwidth but the MX150 benefits form higher clock speeds and support for to-the-metal APIs like DirectX 12. Hence, the MX150 can very well appeal to prosumers on a budget, provided it is paired with the right CPU.

It must be kept in mind that NVIDIA is offering these GPUs as an alternative to the integrated GPU solutions found in most ultrabooks and entry-level laptops. When compared to such iGPU solutions, the MX150 advantage quickly becomes evident.

Even though the new generation affords increased performance, there's a caveat. Unlike the CPUs used in this comparison, more often than not, ultrabooks and budget gaming laptops would be mostly powered by the 15W Intel U-Series CPUs which are relatively under-powered to maximize battery life and minimize heat dissipation. OEMs can also dial down the core clocks of the MX150 as well in order to keep the temperatures down. Therefore, the actual performance that can be elicited out of the GPU could be variable.



