NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 for laptops is a mobile graphics card that is based on the Turing architecture (TU117 chip). Compared to the faster RTX 2000 GPUs (e.g. RTX 2060), the 1650 integrates no Raytracing or Tensor cores. The performance should be slightly faster than the old GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. Compared to the desktop version, the mobile GTX1650 can use all 1024 shaders of the TU117 chip, but there are also versions with 896 shaders.

Starting March 2020, the GTX 1650 Mobile is also available with fast 12 Gbits GDDR6 graphics memory (N18P-G61, 896 shaders) as a refresh.

The Turing generation did not only introduce raytracing for the RTX cards, but also optimized the architecture of the cores and caches. According to Nvidia the CUDA cores offer now a concurrent execution of floating point and integer operations for increased performance in compute-heavy workloads of modern games. Furthermore, the caches were reworked (new unified memory architecture with twice the cache compared to Pascal). This leads to 50% more instructions per clock and a 40% more power efficient usage compared to Pascal.

Compared to the bigger Turing chips (like the TU116 of the GTX 1660 Ti and the RTX lineup), the TU117 does not include the new NVENC encoder but an older one similar to the one used in Pascal and Volta.

The power consumption of the 1650 for laptops is specified at 50 Watt TGP (Total Graphics Power) by Nvidia and therefore 15 Watt higher than the efficient (and slower) Max-Q variant of the 1650. The TU117 chip is manufactured in 12nm FFN at TSMC.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU or 3080 Mobile (for laptops, GN20-E7) is the fastest graphics card for notebooks in early 2021. It is based on the GA104-775-A1 Ampere chip and offers 8 or 16 GB GDDR6 graphics memory with a 256 Bit memory bus. It supports PCIe 4.0 and will be available in different variants from 80 - 150 Watt (TGP) (80, 90, 115, 125, 135, 145 and 150+ Watt). As package the notebook graphic card uses GB5-256 and the chip size is 40x40mm. The GPU supports eDP 1.4b to connect the internal monitor.

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q technologies (Dynamic Boost, Whispermode).

The performance depends on the TGP setting and cooling of the laptop. At the same TGP level the RTX3080 should be faster than the old top model, the RTX 2080 Super Mobile and similar to the desktop RTX 3070. This means, the GPU should be well suited for 4k gaming or QHD with high frame rates. The similar named RTX 3080 desktop card is significantly faster.

The GA104 chip offers 6,144 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 3,072 INT32 ALUs). With Turing all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).

The GA104 chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip).