4090 laptop GPU is a big jump over 3080ti

Tried to get a 4090 machine this morning but the one I want was sold out immediately.


Though if this is true, this is pretty remarkable performance from a laptop
 
Embargo has been lifted


Rtx4090 and 4080 laptop reviews are out

My estimate of performance was nearly spot on, it's very slightly slower than I expected. I expected the 4090 laptops to match a desktop 3090ti, but they only match a desktop 3090 in raster and desktop 4070ti in Ray tracing.

Still extremely impressive numbers for a 150w laptop. The 4090 laptop only runs at 2ghz under load, that's significantly less than desktop cards but the huge core count is where its performance comes from.

The 4080 laptop is far less impressive, like Nvidia did on desktop, the 4080 series got the nerf stick and so the 4090 laptop is about 70-80% faster than the 4080 laptop


 
As expected performance is extremely impressive it’s just the pricing that is out of whack. Tim on HUB detailed it is roughly parity between performance and price increase vs 3xxx gen laptops. So effectively no progress even if the raw performance uplift is there. He also highlighted the once against large disparity you will see betwee. Different TGP 40xx laptops. I see this with my Legion 7 vs my wife’s G15. Is the delta between the 3080’s is around 25% for the ~40w different in TGP.
 
I guess it depends on your needs and circumstances but the idea odd spending big money £3-4k on a high end having laptop scares me!

I’d be nervous of the hardware in it failing or needing to be upgraded. At least with a high end desktop you can easily swap out components to upgrade and replace them as required.
 
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As expected performance is extremely impressive it’s just the pricing that is out of whack. Tim on HUB detailed it is roughly parity between performance and price increase vs 3xxx gen laptops. So effectively no progress even if the raw performance uplift is there. He also highlighted the once against large disparity you will see betwee. Different TGP 40xx laptops. I see this with my Legion 7 vs my wife’s G15. Is the delta between the 3080’s is around 25% for the ~40w different in TGP.

Tim is right.

I was doing some testing yesterday on my desktop 4090 and found that the sweet spot for clock speed on rtx4000 is around 2.1ghz, going over 2.1ghz requires a lot more TDP for little gain. And the reverse applies as well, going under 2ghz drops performance far more than TDP savings.

So for the best performance per watt you want to keep the rtx4090 laptop running at around 2ghz, going over is a waste of TDP and going under tank's performance hard.

And Tim's 150w 4090 was able to get 2.1ghz, I'd be very careful getting lower TDP models as the 150w model is already in that sweet spot and users might find that a theoretical 110w 4090 runs 25% slower because it has to drop clocks to 1.6ghz


For reference my testing results with the desktop 4090. Baseline 100% TDP used is 400w:

100% TDP, clocks 2.9ghz, performance 100% of baseline

85% TDP, clock 2.5ghz, performance 96% of baseline

70% TDP, clock 2.1ghz, performance 91% of baseline

60% TDP, clock 1.8ghz, performance 70% of baseline


You can see when the clocks drop under 2ghz the performance starts to tank
 
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At least with a high end desktop you can easily swap out components to upgrade and replace them as required.

Usually I'd agree and I much prefer desktops to gaming laptops. Last one I owned was probably over 10 years ago now (Alienware M14x r2 with a 3GB GT555m) but I now find myself in the situation where a gaming laptop is the viable solution over a desktop for myself. At least for the next 3 years or so.

I've ordered a 4090 laptop from OCUK but it's just the noise aspect that worries me. Not necessarily for myself but for my partner if I'm using it in the same room
 
Both desktop GPU and laptops are a little crazy right now.
I think I'm gonna build a new PC in about a year but keep my 3080 Ti and evaluate from there.

I have a 2070 laptop and since I tend to use that solely on the laptop 1080p screen that should hold me for a couple of years then get something to replace it.
 
Embargo has been lifted

I have posted elsewhere but some takeaways which are making me think I should hold on until I see more 2023 games released.

The Intel chips are still pumping out too much heat and so I think the AMD laptop CPU's will be worth the extra wait
16GB Ram might not be enough
The Asus ROG 4090 laptop has coil-whine at sub 40db fan settings.

I don't game at 4k so the 12GB 4080 with 32GB Ram should be enough, the 4070 8GB/16GB configs are looking like its not enough for 1440p.
 
I have a 2070 laptop and since I tend to use that solely on the laptop 1080p screen that should hold me for a couple of years then get something to replace it.

I got a MSI Raider 17" with a 2070 back in feb 2019, i'm only at the point now where i'm starting to fancy an upgrade. But i think looking at the limited reviews and availability of the 40 series, now is probably not the sensible time to upgrade. I'll keep an eye on things but for the equivalent teir point the 2070 was back in 2019 you are looking at a 4080 series, so 3-3.5k which is very high, my 2070 back in 2019 (just after launch) was the second highest spec MSI did the in raider and was £2.2k. Inflations been high, but 33% more for equivalently tiered spec? Hmm.
 
It just grinds my gears that Nvidia nerf there cards so often. I was looking back at my current gpu (a basic gtx 1060m) and I figured 3 generations on and a tier higher would get me good performance but looking at the 4070 it's bascially got a smaller bus size than my old card with ram that isn't going to handle triple A gamers at great graphics without a few bottlenecks down the road. It feels like the obstacles and overpricing of chopped down parts is too obvious. The laptops themselves look awesome, they're doing ever more to keep them cool, adding mini led or other high quality displays, better build quality etc. (except lenovo which took a slight step back). It's literally just the gpu's that are not giving value.

I've settled on 4080 as minimum and can but I don't want to buy into Nvidia's rip off generation if they're just tightening the screws and ripping off the weak willed. This feels like a scalping generation for them, I totally bailed on the 30 series cards because they wasn't hitting the lasting performance I wanted but 40 series (outside of frame generation) looks similar, might have been a bit optimistic in that regard but I was glad I waited as the new frame generation would add some value but I'm still not wanting bottlenecks or poor raster performance to be excused by that. I'm looking at 3k minimum price to get a 4080 laptop and the specs don't live up to what I imagined for the price. All in all they look good enough for now but make me worry about having a purchase last a decent time for the new prices. I'll play at 1440p and a 4090 looks to be another option as I like the sound of being around a 4070 desktop card performance but then you're spending 4k and you look at the desktop 4090 whipping your butt. I'm wondering if they'll do a 4080 ti with more realistic pricing down the line and with more vram / bus to be a good option. Wouldn't trust Nvidia to price it right and sadly AMD seems to be lost in the water on this race for high end laptops. I would have been happy to give them a try but I've already waited over 2 years sitting out the 30 series and now the 40 series is here and I can't even predict the wait will be worth the while. Still could wait on the 50 series cards :)
 
I don’t think any laptop part has been near its desktop counterpart ever.

I’m curious why he didn’t compare it to say a 4080 or 4070ti

Purely to highlight the issues around using the exact same naming convention on Mobile vs Desktop parts. It has always been a problem* but the last 2-3 generations have been more noteworthy due to the hiking power requirements on the desktop side (a 4090 Desktop SKU is not going to work in a laptop for both power and cooling reasons).

All Nvidia need to do is put an 'M' at he end of the product name.... Job done. The numbers can they replicate the same point in the product stack as the desktop parts, 4050M<4060M<4070M<4080M<4090M etc.

*IIRC Pascal 10 series wasn't too bad as the TDP of the desktop (non 1080Ti) cards was relatively low.
 
While the 4090 mobile is fast it is a lot slow and cut down than it's desktop counterpart.

Wait, How Much Slower!? - RTX 4090 Desktop vs RTX 4090 Laptop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx8H0936YdY

This is why I'm surprised at the 4 grand starting price tag, the laptops are using a 4080 AD103 die with 16gb vram which even though overpriced costs £1200 so this would imply the rest of the laptop minus the GPU is £2800.
 
Still could wait on the 50 series cards :)

This is the folly with trying to future proof a purchase, you never make that purchase as there is always something else coming, this time next year it'll be the 40..Ti's then the 50.. series it never ends. I do wonder if at least in laptops were hitting a point where there is nowhere to improve, other than the same performance for < energy and cooler temps.

As far as laptops go, i don't think most people need 4k performance which pushes desktops, who really needs a laptop to dock on a desk and attach a 4k monitor, i'd imagine 95% of people just use the laptop screen on their laptop which seems to have setttled on 1600p as the optimum. Even desktops have little need for more at this point, yes there is better raytracing performance to reach for but that ends at some point too. Framerates have a limit to how high they can go to be meaningful.

Maybe the 50series tag line will be just as fast but with real frames not AI?

I don't know maybe i'm wrong maybe people do sit their 3k laptop on a desk, attached a keyboard and 4k monitor and expect it to perform like a desktop...

I've had 4 good years from my RTX 2070 that cost me £2400, so that's 50 quid a month, and it's still a capable machine so will continue to provide value, even if it's just my wife playing harry potter on it...
 
This is the folly with trying to future proof a purchase, you never make that purchase as there is always something else coming, this time next year it'll be the 40..Ti's then the 50.. series it never ends. I do wonder if at least in laptops were hitting a point where there is nowhere to improve, other than the same performance for < energy and cooler temps.

As far as laptops go, i don't think most people need 4k performance which pushes desktops, who really needs a laptop to dock on a desk and attach a 4k monitor, i'd imagine 95% of people just use the laptop screen on their laptop which seems to have setttled on 1600p as the optimum. Even desktops have little need for more at this point, yes there is better raytracing performance to reach for but that ends at some point too. Framerates have a limit to how high they can go to be meaningful.

Maybe the 50series tag line will be just as fast but with real frames not AI?

I don't know maybe i'm wrong maybe people do sit their 3k laptop on a desk, attached a keyboard and 4k monitor and expect it to perform like a desktop...

I've had 4 good years from my RTX 2070 that cost me £2400, so that's 50 quid a month, and it's still a capable machine so will continue to provide value, even if it's just my wife playing harry potter on it...
I agree, you can never truly future proof but the 30 series wasn't hitting the mark for me personally. I want amazing performance if I'm going to spend 3 or 4 grand and the 40 series I'm generally happy with but just feel like it's been deliberately held back by Nvidia themselves. Cheaping out on ram / bus size etc. forces you to go to higher cards than needed in order to avoid bottlenecks and that's not a generational issue, it's a Nvidia issue. Waiting for at least the 40 series turned out to be a great decision still, I saw ray tracing in a state that was okay but needed more performance to truly deliver it on a laptop card with lasting performance. The frame generation and better ray tracing performance on this series definitely brings it closer to what I had in mind but it's still just the Nvidia greed that is causing value to be questionable. I look at the 4070 laptops and a decent one costs around 2k whereas getting a decent 17" or higher 4080 jumps you up to 3k on the price. That seems rather steep climb up just to fix the ram issue so I'm holding on reviews.

I'm wanting the Asus 18" laptops with 1600p as well, I agree that's around the best resolution for a laptop in my mind too but it's still something I want to last several years like yourself. I'll keep it for around 5 years or so and that's why I want high performance but the price still seems on the rough side. 50 series is only being considered for value for money as I reckon they will drop prices then due to feedback and low sales volume but it's far more likely that any nudge in the price on the 40 series will just convince me to get these instead.

Like I said, I have a 1060 laptop atm, I know the limits of laptops but running 1600p and frame gen, it's not really bad performance at all. That simpe compromise of not attempting to run 4k means you can get good performance nowadays and good visuals. We've got 3 people in the same gaming room, can't fit 3 full size computers but I can fit a laptop and happy to pay for a good one if it feels worth it. I've got a good OLED TV and a PS5, I play tons of games without being obsessed with graphics but I do appreciate good graphics as well. I'm just not desperate for a new laptop if it feels like they're under delivering on core parts or overcharging for the high end bits. For me it's basically 4080 or 4090 that are the options so just waiting on reviews. It's only the little things bugging me though. I had the Asus g18 in mind and can't see the 18" model with a 4080 for example. Meaning I'd need to get a 4090 at £4,000 if I want it. In this situation it feels like I'm spending more than initially expected or compromising with a different system that I'm less in favour of. I'd be likely to buy it as soon as I see around £300 shift on price or I may just settle on the 4080 with the acer helios. I definitely could get the 4090 but I feel guilty spending that much just for myself. You even said it yourself, you won't get the performance of a desktop on a laptop regardless, that's where you realise you've creeped up to a £4,000 budget with half the performance of desktop. There's a compromise of wanting performance but paying too much to get it, that's why the 4090 is my dream card and I've saved for it but equally I'm disenfranchised with the cost relative to performance with desktop. It's still good though and equivalent to 4070 is something I'd be happy with, just again, you get to that £4,000 price to achieve this.
 
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The most annoying thing is the review embargo, releasing high spec machines first, with no idea how much better they are compared to the 4050/60/70s. At least it doesn't seem to have worked the 4080s/90s are all in stock everywhere so no need to rush until a fuller picture is available as to what exactly you get for the extra £1000 for the 80s and 90s compared to the lower spec performance. Guess we'll start to find out tomorrow.

Even then i don't think too many review machines have gone out as very few actual reviews are coming out for these machines. I'd like to know what the difference between the I7s and I9s is with the 4080 for example, I'd like to see what you get for 200 quid price difference. From the limited timespy stats it seems like not a lot, a couple of %. But things like thermals might be different, i'd pay the 200 quid if it ran cooler/quieter of vice versa if the I7s were cooler/quieter i'd happily sacricfice the 1% performance in day to day usage.
 
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