MAY 2020 PCWorld 25allowed for typical Max-Q designs, 25
percent of that is dedicated to driving the
memory. Meanwhile, another 15 percent of
those 80W are pure voltage loss to heat.
Fortifying these subsystems lets Nvidia drive
more power to the GPU itself, which in turn
means more performance in your games.
DYNAMIC BOOST
The new Dynamic Boost feature is what really
gives your GPU more juice when needed
most. Dynamic Boost sounds a lot like AMD’s
SmartShift technology (go.pcworld.com/
stsf), which debuted in Ryzen 4000 laptops
(go.pcworld.com/ryzr). No matter what you
call it, it sounds wonderful.
Essentially, when the GPU is performing a
task that requires more horsepower, the
laptop shifts power from the CPU, and
vice-versa when the CPU needs some extra
oomph. Yes, please! Aevermann says
Dynamic Boost can give you up to 10 percent
more performance in games, though that’s
the high-water mark. Its effect varies greatly
depending on what’s actually going on in the
specific scene of the specific game you’re
playing. And yes, we mean “game”
specifically, as Dynamic Boost currently hooks
into DirectX and Vulkan. Nvidia didn’t rule out
the idea of expanding it to function with other
types of software in the future.
The new feature functions on a variety of
levels to make its power adjustments, including
the hardware level. Unfortunately, that means
Dynamic Boost won’t be coming to prior
versions of GeForce laptops. The technology