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.
3DMark 11 - 1280x720 Performance GPU | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition | |
KFA2 GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SG | |
MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI | |
Razer Blade 16 Early 2023 |
Geekbench 5.5 - OpenCL Score | |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition | |
MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI | |
KFA2 GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SG | |
Razer Blade 16 Early 2023 |
GFXBench | |
3840x2160 4K Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen | |
MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI | |
Razer Blade 16 Early 2023 | |
2560x1440 Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen | |
MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI | |
Razer Blade 16 Early 2023 |
Looking at the core specifications for each of the GPUs reveals why the discrepancies exist. As shown by the table below, the mobile RTX 4090 shares the same number of pipelines, TMUs, ROPs, RT cores, and tensor cores as the desktop RTX 4080. Meanwhile, the mobile RTX 4080 has its specifications truncated across the board including even its memory bus width.
If you're in the market for a new GeForce 40 gaming laptop with the performance of a desktop RTX 4080, then you should absolutely consider a laptop with the mobile RTX 4090 and not the mobile RTX 4080. There is a strong argument for renaming the mobile RTX 4080 and mobile RTX 4090 to the mobile RTX 4070 and mobile RTX 4080, respectively, based on their performance results thus far. The more straight-forward naming could potentially help laptop buyers better gauge how the models can perform against a desktop with a similar graphics card.
Specifications | GeForce RTX 4090 Founder's Edition | Mobile GeForce RTX 4090 | GeForce RTX 4080 Founder's Edition | Mobile GeForce RTX 4080 | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Core Clock | 2235 - 2520 MHz | Up to 2040 MHz | 2205 - 2505 MHz | Up to 2280 MHz | 2310 - 2610 MHz |
Memory Clock | 1313 MHz | 1250 MHz | 1400 MHz | 1250 MHz | 1313 MHz |
Pipelines | 16384 | 9728 | 9728 | 7424 | 7680 |
TMUs | 512 | 304 | 304 | 232 | 240 |
ROPS | 176 | 112 | 112 | 80 | 80 |
RT Cores | 128 | 76 | 76 | 58 | 60 |
Tensor/AI Cores | 512 | 304 | 304 | 232 | 240 |
Memory Bus Width | 384-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit |
VRAM | 24 GB GDDR6X | 16 GB GDDR6 | 16 GB GDDR6X | 12 GB GDDR6 | 12 GB GDDR6X |