NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super Mobile vs NVIDIA RTX A5500 Laptop GPU vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super Mobile is the fastest mobile graphics card for laptops in early 2020. It is based on the desktop RTX 2080 Super, but most likely with reduced core speeds. According to early information it will be only slightly faster than a RTX 2080 with the same TGP setting (max. 200 Watt).

Features

NVIDIA manufacturers the TU104 chip on a 12 nm FinFET process and includes features like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Real-Time Ray Tracing (RTRT), which should combine to create more realistic lighting effects than older GPUs based on the company's Pascal architecture (if the games supports it). The RTX 2080 Super is also DisplayPort 1.4 ready, while there is also support for HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and H.265 video en/decoding (PlayReady 3.0).

Performance

The mobile RTX 2080 Super Mobile should perform only slightly better than the old mobile RTX 2080. Therefore, it should be able to run all demanding games in 4k with maximum details. Raytracing features however may reduce framerates a lot.

The power consumption of the card can be set with 150 or 200 Watt TGP according to early information. Therefore, the normal Max-P variant is only suited for thick and heavy gaming laptops. A Max-Q variant for thin and light laptops is also planned (most likely at 80 - 90 Watt as the RTX 2080 Max-Q with similar performance).

The NVIDIA RTX A5500 Laptop GPU or A5500 Mobile is a professional graphics card for mobile workstations. It is based on the GA103S Ampere chip and similar to the consumer GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU. It offers the same 7424 graphics cores, 58 RT cores, 232 Tensor cores, and 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 - 165 Watt (TGP) with different clock speeds (and performance). The GPU supports eDP 1.4b to connect the internal monitor and DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 for external connections.

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 raw performance should be similar to the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti laptop at the same TGP level. Both GPUs depend heavily on good cooling and a high TGP for good performance. At a similar power consumption level, the RTX A5500 should be clearly faster than the old RTX A5000 и Quadro RTX 5000. The desktop variant of the A5500 however, is a lot faster.

The GA103S chip offers 7424 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 3712 INT32 ALUs). With Ampere, 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 GA103S 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).

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super with Max-Q design is the power saving variant of the mobile GeForce RTX 2080 Super with reduced clock speeds, performance and of course power consumption. It is intended for thin gaming laptops and based on the same TU104 chip with 3,072 shaders, 8 GB GDDR6 memory and a 256 Bit memory bus.

Currently it looks like there are three variants with a TGP of 80, 85 and 90 Watt. The clock speed ranges from 735 - 975 MHz for the base clock speed and 1080 - 1230 for the boost.

With the refresh, Nvidia also reworked the Max-Q technologies for more efficiency. Low Voltage GDDR6 (lower clocked but more headroom for the GPU) and improved regulator efficiency should improve the performance per Watt. Two new optional features can also be implemented by the OEM. Max-Q Dynamic Boost is able to shift power from the CPU to the GPU on a per frame basis to increase overall performance. Furthermore, the laptop manufacturer can also implement Advanced Optimus with a dynamic display switch (hardware) to enable Optimus, G-SYNC and high refresh rate displays (up to 4K 120 Hz).

Features

NVIDIA manufacturers the TU104 chip on a 12 nm FinFET process and includes features like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Real-Time Ray Tracing (RTRT), which should combine to create more realistic lighting effects than older GPUs based on the company's Pascal architecture (if the games supports it). The RTX 2080 Super Max-Q is also DisplayPort 1.4 ready, while there is also support for HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and H.265 video en/decoding (PlayReady 3.0).

Performance

Due to the lower clock rates, the Max-Q variant is clearly slower than the mobile RTX 2080 Super. In our benchmarks with the first devices, the performance is very similar to the old RTX 2080 Max-Q and only on a level with the non Max-Q RTX 2070. Therefore, the performance is ideal for 1440p gaming at max details for demanding games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Control or Borderlands 3. Less demanding games like F1 2019 can be played in 4k with maximum settings. Detailed gaming benchmarks can be found at the end of this page.

The power consumption of the card is between 80 - 90 Watt TGP and therefore significantly lower than the RTX 2080 Super Mobile (150 - 200 Watt).