Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop Analysis - Faster, but there is more to come

Ideally, games already support the new features, but Nvidia also offers a solution if that is not the case. This feature is called Nvidia Override Settings and you can overwrite the in-game settings directly in the GPU driver. Titles with frame generation support, for example, be used with multi frame generation via driver.

Nvidia also advertises improvements for gaming on battery with the battery boost technology. The AI analyses the on-screen activity when you play games and dynamically adjusts the frame rate to 30 fps. We tried the feature with Cyberpunk, but the result was not convincing (only around 22-24 fps). We will perform more tests in the next couple of days.

In order to get meaningful results, we compare the different GPU models in synthetic tests but also check the power consumption, which results in efficiency numbers. The consumption measurements are performed when the laptop is attached to an external screen, so we can eliminate different panel sizes and technologies as influences. The other components (especially CPU, RAM) can obviously influence the results as well.

We start with the synthetic benchmarks, where we see a mixed picture. The RTX 5090 Laptop in the Blade 16 usually has an advantage over the old RTX 4090 Laptop in the 3DMark tests, especially in Steel Nomad as well as Port Royal (~10 %). However, the two GPUs are sometimes also neck and neck. The advantage over the old GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is quite substantial at 61-91 %.

March 30, 2025 update: The 175W version of the RTX 5090 Laptop can take the first place within our comparison group in all of our synthetic benchmarks. Depending on the test there can be an advantage of around 15 % over the RTX 5090 Laptop in the Blade 16. The big surprise is the RTX 5080 Laptop running at 175 Watts, which performs really well and is even faster than the Blade 16's RTX 5090 Laptop in some tests.

The PugetBench creator benchmarks do not show a clear advantage over the old GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop, either. But even if the video export times are not faster, the additional VRAM (8 GB) can be a huge advantage especially when you edit videos. While editing our YouTube review videos, we often fill up 16 GB VRAM, which results in serious performance issues and a restart of our editing software is required.

The AI tests show the improved AI performance of the Tensor cores and the new RTX 5090 Laptop is ahead of the old RTX 4090 Laptop in the UL Procyon for Windows benchmark.

We also want to compare the fastest new mobile GPUs with their desktop counterparts. Whether you should do this before you pay thousands of dollars for a new gaming laptop is another question. The comparison is pretty sobering and once again shows that you simply cannot compare laptop and desktop GPUs, even if they both have the same name like RTX 5090. In the best case scenario, the new RTX 5090 Laptop can keep up with the desktop RTX 4080 and the Radeon RX 9070. The RTX 4070 Ti is often on par, but at least the RTX 4090 and RTX 3080 Ti are beaten by both the RTX 5080 Laptop as well as RTX 5090 Laptop.

When looking at gaming benchmarks, we differentiate between native gaming performance as well as results with upscaling technologies. The subjective impression of things like DLSS and frame generation can differ quite significantly depending on the game, so the native performance is still an important aspect.

Even though it might not be that important for buyers of an RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, we still start with the 1080p tests in combination with the highest settings. As expected, there are no problems and all frame rates are smooth, but you can clearly see the impact of the slower AMD Ryzen processor.

March 30, 2025 update: The 1080p gaming benchmarks show a massive performance difference, but this is also a result of the faster Ryzen 9 9955HX processor.

This changes as soon as we switch to the QHD resolution, where the RTX 5090 Laptops can beat all the rivals in almost very tested game. The performance is also sufficient for smooth frame rates without upscaling.

March 30, 2025 update: The fast RTX 5090 Laptop is once again at the top of the comparison chart in almost all games, the only two exceptions are the older titles GTA V (Legacy Edition) as well as Final Fantasy XV. The RTX 5080 Laptop once again performs very well and is on par with the RTX 5090 Laptop in the Blade across all tests.

Once you switch to the 4K resolution, the advantage for the RTX 5090 Laptop is even bigger in some titles (up to 30 % over the RTX 4090 Laptop). However, the frame rate will not be completely smooth in very demanding titles, so you will have to use upscaling for smooth gameplay, especially in combination with Ray Tracing (see next section).

March 30, 2025 update: The RTX 5090 Laptop in the XMG Neo 16 A25 is also the fastest GPU in the 4K tests. The other positions show some movements since the fastest RTX 5090 Laptop is beaten by the RTX 5090 Laptop in the Blade 16 in most games.

We use Cyberpunk 2077 to test the new multi frame generation features with maximum details, once with and once without Raytracing Overdrive (including Path Tracing). A look at the native performance quickly shows that even the new RTX 5090 Laptop is not powerful enough to manage smooth frame rates in the QHD resolution, let alone 4K. If you activate the new DLSS4, there is already a significant performance boost to playable ranges and the performance with frame generation is impressive. MFG2x boosts the fps to 100 in QHD and still around 70 fps in 4K. Once you activate MFGx4, the performance is basically doubled.

The implementation of the features worked very well in Cyberpunk, but in addition to the title itself it seems to depend a bit on the native performance. In QHD, for example, we did not have any issues, while there was some tearing during faster movements when we played in 4K on an external screen. Considering the huge performance gains, however, we gladly accepted this compromise.

We also performed additional DLSS & MFG tests with the faster versions of the RTX 5090 Laptop and RTX 5080 Laptop and compared the gaming results with one of the fastest gaming laptops from the last generation, the Asus Strix Scar 17 with the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D and the RTX 4090 Laptop.

The picture is pretty much the same as before, because the fast RTX 5090 Laptop is always on top. The RTX 5080 Laptop once again surprises and is often ahead of the RTX 5090 Laptop in the Blade 16, while the old Scar 17 is very respectable and only falls behind more noticeably in AC Shadows as well as Baldur's Gate 3.