NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti for laptops is a mobile graphics card that is based on the Turing architecture (TU116 chip). Compared to the faster RTX 2000 GPUs (e.g. RTX 2060), the 1660Ti integrates no Raytracing or Tensor cores. The performance is similar to the old GTX 1070 (laptop) but at a reduced TGP of 80 Watt (versus 115 Watt). Compared to the desktop GTX 1660 Ti, the clock speeds are reduced (3% lower base, 10% lower boost).

In April 2020 Nvidia refreshed the GTX 1660 Ti with the new codename N18E-G0-A1 with similar specs and pin compatible to the refreshed RTX chips (e.g., RTX 2070 Super Mobile).

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 up to 50% more instructions per clock and a 40% more power efficient usage compared to Pascal.

The power consumption of the 1660Ti for latops is specified at 80 Watt TGP (Total Graphics Power) by Nvidia and therefore 20 Watt higher than the efficient (and slower) Max-Q variant of the 1660 Ti. The TU116 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).