An MSI RTX 2060 laptop is 20 to 25 percent slower than an MSI RTX 2060 desktop graphics card

Nvidia uses the exact same GeForce GPU naming convention for both laptops and desktops despite the massive differences in size and power consumption between the two products. Consequently, someone shopping for a laptop with RTX 2080 graphics may assume that it would run the same as a desktop also equipped with RTX 2080 graphics. Unfortunately, the laptop will almost always be the slower performer.

Just how much slower will the laptops run when compared to their desktop equivalents? When testing both the MSI GL73 laptop and MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z desktop graphics card, we discovered that the MSI RTX 2060 desktop version can run 23 to 34 percent faster than the MSI RTX 2060 laptop version according to 3DMark benchmarks. Performance differences between the MSI RTX 2070 laptop and MSI RTX 2070 desktop GPUs can be observed as well, albeit at smaller deltas of about 17 to 19 percent.

Perhaps the most noteworthy find is that the desktop RTX 2060 can be almost on par with the laptop RTX 2070 when running DX12 titles and the same can be said for the desktop RTX 2070 and laptop RTX 2080. The results are rather disappointing as the laptop versions appear to be one step lower in SKU in terms of gaming performance when compared to their desktop counterparts.

It's important to note that our data below compares MSI desktop graphics cards to MSI laptop graphics cards only without taking into account any Max-Q GPUs. Other OEMs may implement Turing GPUs differently than MSI for potentially different results. Nonetheless, the trend we're seeing between these RTX laptops and RTX desktops is certainly difficult to deny.