NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPUs Also Come With Three M.2 Interfaces Instead of MXM

NVIDIA's entry-level GeForce RTX 4050 GPU has an interesting interface on laptops, making use of the M.2 interface instead of MXM.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 is the most entry-level graphics card that you can get within the RTX 40 "Ada" lineup on laptops. The unfortunate thing is that the RTX 4050 never came to the desktop segment despite certain manufacturers showing readiness for this particular model. Currently, the NVIDIA RTX 3050 and its derivatives serve the entry-level segment in the sub-$200 US category but there's no Ada option available in this range.

Starting with the specifications, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 GPU for laptops is based on the low-end AD107 die with 2560 cores, and packs up to 6 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 96-bit interface. The GPU has a maximum TGP of 50W and clocks up to 1755 MHz. This graphics chip is decent for entry-level gamers but users shouldn't expect too much.

This specific graphics card is designed around the MXM form factor interface and features a PCIe Gen 4x4 or Gen 4x8 connection but on certain laptops, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 GPU comes with a unique triple M.2 interface. One such laptop featuring this unique connection is the Lenovo series which houses the first motherboard with such an interface to support these discrete GPUs.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU comes with three M.2 NVMe interfaces, each rated at PCIe Gen4 x4 and so does the motherboard. What's interesting is that you can run the dGPU on just two M.2 slots leaving an additional M.2 slot on your laptop for expanded storage capabilities in addition to the dedicated SSD slot. This is quite a unique approach and we have seen these PCIe x8 or PCIe x4 GPUs being engineered in a way to utilize the remaining lanes on an x16 slot.

The SSDs make use of a Gen x4 interface and since the additional x8 interface of the PCIe x16 slot. ASUS is one of the manufacturers who are making use of such an implementation.