NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU (Codename GN21-X11) is a high-end laptop GPU. It is based on the AD103 chip as the desktop RTX 4080 and use the Ada Lovelace architecture. The AD103 chip offers a maximum of 10.752 shaders from which inly 9728 are used (e.g., the RTX 4080 Desktop uses 9.728) and a 256 Bit memory bus. The RTX 4090 mobile uses 16 GB GDDR6 dedicated graphics memory with a clock speed of 20 Gbps (effective). The TGP (Total Graphics Power) can be configured between 80 and 150 Watt (+ 15 Watt Dynamic Boost from the CPU) leading to different performance levels (the desktop RTX 4080 uses 320 Watt for comparisons). 

The performance depenends on the TGP settings which defines the maximum boost clock (1455 MHz for 80W and up to 2040 MHz for 150W). With 150W the performance should be in the region of the desktop RTX 4080 and therefore best suited for 4k60 or 2k with 120 fps for demanding games. For raytracing, lower resolutions or DLSS is needed.

In our reviews, an average RTX 4090 is clearly the fastest mobile GPU and bests the RTX 4080 Laptop GPU and mobile RTX 3080 Ti easily. 4090M GPUs with lower power limit can however loose up to 20% performance.

In games, fast RTX 4090 models allow gaming in 4k with maximum details. Adding Raytracing may lead to frame rates below 60 fps (e.g. F1 23) and therefore the use of DLSS or reduced settings are advised.

The AD103 chip of the RTX 4090 mobile is manufactured in an improved 5 nm process at TSMC (4N).

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop is a mobile graphics card from the Blackwell family for laptops, which was presented at CES 2025 and was commercially available in April 2025.

Architecture

The GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile utilizes the GB203 chip and employs 10,496 shaders/CUDA cores, which is the maximum of 10,752 that the chip supports. This makes the RTX 5090 Laptop more similar to the RTX 5080 desktop variant (same chip) than the Desktop RTX 5090 with 20,760 cores and higher clock rates.

As a novelty, Blackwell offers support for Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) with DLSS4, thanks to the 5th generation of Tensor cores.

Performance

As our tests show, performance gains over a 175W RTX 4090 Laptop GPU are barely noticeable in 3DMark tests. Still, when it comes to overall gaming performance, the card is 2-19% faster than the previous mobile flagship. The fastest laptop variant we tested is only 5% behind the RTX 5080 desktop. This means that the 5090L is usually capable to display full details at 4k fluently (see below). Furthermore, with the mentioned Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) you can get impressive frame rates, but keep latency in mind.

Power consumption

The GB203 chip is manufactured at TSMC in the 4N (custom 4NP 5nm) process. The maximum TGP of the card can reach 175 watts (150 watts + 25 watts Dynamic Boost).