We reported back in October that the GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU, the flagship mobile card in Nvidia’s RTX 50 Blackwell lineup, will have 24 GB of VRAM. We also informed at the time that the 24 GB of VRAM on a 256-bit wide bus requires 3 GB GDDR7 modules. Thanks to Chinese leaker Golden Pig Upgrade, we now have confirmation that Nvidia is indeed outfitting the RTX 5090 laptop with 24 GB of VRAM.
RTX 5090 laptop GPU VRAM capacity
Per Golden Pig Upgrade, the RTX 5090 laptop will be the first RTX 50 GPU to employ the 3 GB GDDR7 modules. This will enable the GPU to have a total of 24 GB of VRAM on a 256-bit wide bus. Interestingly, it appears that the RTX 5090 laptop will be the only RTX 50 mobile card to use these 3 GB modules and less powerful cards like the RTX 5080 laptop will stick with conventional memory configurations. The RTX 5080 laptop, for instance, is said to feature a 16GB memory buffer.
Moving on, Golden Pig Upgrade claims that the RTX 5090/RTX 5080-based gaming laptops will debut in February. Machines with the mid-range RTX 5070 and the RTX 5060 mobile will reportedly release a month later at the end of March 2025. This is quite expected since CES is usually the time OEMs unveil their next-gen gaming notebooks.
RTX 5090 laptop GPU specs and performance
When the RTX 5090 laptop GPU does come out, the card could rely on the GB203 Blackwell GPU, the same chip as the desktop RTX 5080, with a total of 10,752 CUDA cores, a 256-bit wide bus, and a total TGP of 175 W. For reference, the RTX 4090 laptop uses 9,728 CUDA cores, a 256-bit wide bus, and a maximum TGP of 150 W. While the CUDA core difference is not that big at 10.5%, the architectural improvements and increased power draw should allow the RTX 5090 laptop to offer a notable performance improvement.
So, what kind of performance can we expect out of the RTX 5090 laptop GPU?
If the RTX 4090 laptop board is anything to go by, we can expect the RTX 5090 laptop to match the mid-range RTX 5070 desktop GPU, as the RTX 4090 mobile performs similarly to the RTX 4070 Super. Of course, this is a crude performance estimation. So, the RTX 5090 laptop can be measurably faster.
Source(s)
Golden Pig Upgrade via VideoCardz, Teaser image: Nvidia, Ash Edmonds on Unsplash, edited