That awkward moment when a GeForce RTX 3060 laptop can outperform some GeForce RTX 3070 laptops

Nvidia launched its GeForce RTX 3060 for laptops in early 2021. As of 2022, gaming laptops continue to be powered by the same Ampere chipset since Nvidia has yet to formally announce the mobile GeForce RTX 4000 series. As a result, PC makers must run these same chips on higher power settings for their 2022 gaming laptops in order to squeeze more performance year-over-year and incentive laptop gamers to upgrade.

The latest example is the 2022 Asus TUF Gaming F15 FX507ZM powered by the GeForce RTX 3060. The model uses the exact same GPU as the 20201 Asus TUF Gaming F15 FX506HM but at a higher TGP target of 140 W instead of 95 W. GPU clock rates when gaming are subsequently higher on the FX507ZM than on the FX506HM (1927 MHz vs. 1710 MHz). When accounting for other optimizations such as the faster DDR5 RAM and MUX switch, the FX507ZM can offer a 10 to 20 percent graphics boost over the FX506HM despite having the same GeForce RTX 3060 GPU.

The year-over-year performance uptick may seem relatively minor, but the boost is enough to put the FX507ZM over several other laptops running on the supposedly faster RTX 3070. The TUF Gaming A15 FA506QR, TUF Dash F15 FX516PR, ROG Zephyrus M16, and Acer Nitro 5 AN517 each come with RTX 3070 graphics and yet they perform consistently slower than our RTX 3060-powered FX507ZM because their RTX 3070 GPUs are each targeting much lower TGP ranges between 85 W and 100 W.

If you're in the market for a new gaming laptop, then checking the TGP ranges of certain models is going to be just as important as checking the GeForce RTX names themselves.