Wide performance differences between the mobile and desktop GeForce RTX 4090 show how power constrained gaming laptops have become ^↺

After officially unveiling the GeForce 40 series for laptops at CES 2023, Nvidia is now ready to ship them to the world for gamers everywhere. Some of our first test samples include the Razer Blade 16 and MSI GT77 equipped with the 175 W mobile GeForce RTX 4080 and mobile GeForce RTX 4090, respectively, each already available for pre-order. These two models give us an excellent opportunity for comparisons against the desktop RTX 4080 and desktop RTX 4090. After looking more closely at what the four GPUs have to offer, however, it's clear that the mobile versions could have been better named.

One might expect the mobile RTX 4080 to perform more similarly to the desktop RTX 4080, but that is not the case at all. According to our 3DMark benchmarks below, the mobile RTX 4090 is much closer to the desktop RTX 4080 while the 175 W mobile RTX 4080 can be around 35 percent slower. Furthermore, the mobile RTX 4080 can be specced at much lower TGP envelopes of just 100 W for even wider performance deficits.