A long time ago, NVIDIA made the promise of bringing desktop-class performance to laptops and while they have made progress in leaps and bounds on that front, the new RTX 3070 mobility will settle this debate once and for all. If the VRAY benchmark (via Videocardz) is anything to by (and it is), the card doubles the performance of the RTX 2080 SUPER (well, 90% uplift to be precise) and offers almost the same graphics horsepower as a desktop-class RTX 2080 Ti!
NVIDIA RTX 3070 mobility almost as powerful as a desktop RTX 2080 Ti
We exclusively revealed NVIDIA's mobility lineup a while ago and we know the company is planning up to an RTX 3080 to roll out with Intel and AMD's brand new CPUs in March 2021. Keep in mind, however, that the new RTX series has higher TGP envelopes and will consume more power than the last generation - although you will get much higher absolute performance from the same.
Without any further ado, here are the benchmarks for the NVIDIA RTX 3070 laptop:
As you can see, the RTX 3070 laptop GPU gets a score of 1394 on VRAY. In comparison, the older RTX 2070 manages a score of 701 vrays and the RTX 2080 SUPER manages a score of 733 vrays. The desktop RTX 3070 gets a score of 1861 vrays so this is a reduction of just 25% when going from the power-hungry desktop platform to laptops. According to videocardz, the estimated TGP (not TDP) of the RTX 3070 will be between 80 to 90W while the RTX 3080 will slot in at 115W to 150W (which is absolutely massive for a mobility GPU).
NVIDIA RTX 3080 and 3070 mobility GPUs landing in January 2021 in ASUS and MSI laptops, rest to follow in April
Let's start with NVIDIA's complete mobility lineup and roadmap for the first half of 2021. The company is planning to introduce RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 GPUs to replace its SUPER lineup and the RTX 2060. For the first half of 2021, NVIDIA does not plan to replace the GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 1650 Ti, and the GTX 1650. The full-stack and the parts they will replace is given in the slide below (all slides in the article have been recreated on a 1-1 basis to remove those pesky Fourier transform watermarks):
We have been told that the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 mobility GPUs will be fast-tracked to land in January 2021, however, the GPUs will initially only be available in ASUS and MSI flavors. HP, Dell, and Lenovo have reportedly decided to wait until April to support these new GPUs as they want to pair it with launches that are happening then. Because of this, RTX 2080 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER mobility GPUs are expected to be EOL-ed in January 2021 (no word on the RTX 2070 mobility for now).
The GTX 1650 Ti and GTX 1660 Ti in 1H 2021 do not appear to be identical to the ones shipping now (notice NVIDIA chose to put them in a new box as opposed to the same box for the GTX 1650) although we are not at this time sure what the changes are going to be. My source also mentioned that they expect the RTX 30 mobility series to have a very short life cycle (considering there are rumors of NVIDIA planning to shift to 7nm TSMC for its SUPER variants of the RTX 30 lineup).
Gaming performance is going to get cheaper in laptops above the $999 mark thanks to NVIDIA's RTX 30 mobility series
Now let's talk about the pricing a bit. NVIDIA expects laptops priced at or around $699 to have the GTX 1650, with the GTX 1650 Ti and GTX 1660 Ti coming in at units priced at $799-$899, RTX 3060 to take over above the $999 mark, RTX 3070 at $1299 and the RTX 3080 at $1999. Keep in mind these are only the manufacturer *suggested* pricing and there is no guarantee that we will actually see these in real-world pricing for all NVIDIA-based laptops.
However, according to my source, retailers that get significant subsidies from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel (like Walmart) should be able to hit these prices fairly easily. Anyway you slice it however, gaming performance per dollar is going to come down after the $999 mark and you will see actual SKUs that hit these prices (likely from Walmart) in early 2021. Prices for the rest of the retailers, however, are likely going to be expensive at launch and won't normalize till the other vendors enter the ring in April 2021.
NVIDIA's high-end mobility GPUs will finally be supporting AMD CPUs
NVIDIA has also provided recommended specifications (laptops) for its mobility GPUs in the presentation and one major announcement here is the support for the next generation of AMD Ryzen with its high-end GPU lineup. Because of the PCIe bottleneck on Renoir, you could only get up to an RTX 2060 with an AMD CPU. Once the AMD 5000 series (Cezzane-H) lands, however, this is going to change with NVIDIA high-end GPUs freely available equally on AMD and Intel parts (TigerLake H). This is going to result in a lot more sales for both NVIDIA and AMD as people who want an AMD CPU coupled with an NVIDIA GPU (in the high-end segment) can finally do so.
We have also heard from these AIBs that they want to get rid of the excess inventory of RTX 2000 series (especially the high end), so we might see some great deals in the holiday season (especially around Black Friday and Cyber Monday) as AIBs try to get rid of the excess inventory before the RTX 30 series lands in January 2021 - so if you are looking for a discount deal, be sure to check them out. One thing is clear: 2021 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for tech enthusiasts - especially those looking to upgrade their laptops.
