This is Nvidia’s best laptop GPU from 2023, and this is their best from last year, so how
do they compare? I’ve tested both in 25 games at 3 resolutions to show you all the differences!
The RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 4090 laptop GPUs both have 16 gigs of GDDR6 memory with
the same sized memory bus, but the 4090’s memory has more bandwidth and is faster.
The 4090 has 31% more CUDA cores, and it’s able to reach much higher boost clock speeds despite
having the same 80 to 150 watt power range, thanks to the new architecture.
Technically both GPUs can max out at 175 watts with dynamic boost,
which is the case from both of these laptops here.
So this is a best case comparison with the best RTX 3080 Ti and best RTX 4090.
Lower performance is expected from laptops that have these GPUs but with lower power limits,
as you can see here. I’ve measured the 3DMark TimeSpy graphics score at different power levels,
and apart from seeing the more power equals a better score,
it clearly shows that the 4090 is performing better at all power levels. The 4090 at just
80 watts is scoring higher than the 3080 Ti at its full 175 watts, quite a big difference.
Both laptops have Intel HX CPUs, however the RTX 4090 is paired with a newer 13th
gen chip with more cores and faster memory. That’s just a legitimate platform difference
between 2022 and 2023 gaming laptops, so some of the performance difference will be due to this,
but that’s also just the way it is. It would have been preferable if I also had
a GT77 Titan with the 3080 Ti, but I wasn’t able to get one and Lenovo’s Legion 7i is
still a great performing laptop capable of running the 3080 Ti up to 175 watts.
So the size difference between these two laptops shouldn’t really be a factor for this comparison.
Both were tested with Windows 11 22H2 fully up to date, core isolation off,
resizable BAR enabled, with the same Nvidia driver and an external screen, so no Optimus bottleneck.
Let’s jump straight into the 25 game comparison at 3 different resolutions, then after that we’ll
compare price difference, cost per frame value and some content creator workloads.
Let’s start out with Cyberpunk 2077. I’ve got the 1080p results down the bottom,
1440p in the middle and 4K up the top, with the RTX 3080 Ti below the RTX 4090. The 3080 Ti was
still able to get us close to 60 FPS at 1440p ultra settings, but the 4090 was reaching a 55%
higher average frame rate. I’ve also tested this game with the ray tracing ultra preset,
but with DLSS set to quality mode this time. There’s a slightly larger 57% lead from the
4090 at 1440p now, but the bigger boost comes from Nvidia’s new frame generation feature,
which only works with RTX 40 series GPUs. Frame generation increased the average frame rate of
the 4090 by 57%, giving it a massive 147% lead compared to the 3080 Ti - of course assuming
that it’s even fair to compare generated frames when the visuals won’t be exactly comparable.
Hogwarts Legacy was tested in Hogsmeade. This game had one of the smaller differences out
of the 25 titles tested, with the 4090 laptop just 20% faster at 1080p, 37% higher at 1440p,
and then 30% at 4K. Both laptops are able to get a boost if we turn on DLSS,
at least at 1440p and 4K, the results at 1080p were much the same as the last graph
without DLSS. Again the big gains aren’t seen unless we count the frame generation results,
which seem to be offering more performance at lower resolutions.
Microsoft’s Flight Simulator is a CPU heavy game, which is why it had
the smallest difference between the two GPUs out of all games tested at 1080p and 1440p.
Again turning on DLSS doesn’t change the results too much at 1080p, or even 1440p,
presumably because we’re CPU limited. Frame generation is still able to offer
an improvement in CPU bound scenarios like this, which explains why even the dips in performance,
as measured by the 1% lows, are higher than the average FPS with just standard DLSS only.
Spider-Man is another CPU heavy game, which is why the differences here are also smaller
compared to most other games. The 4090 was still 44% faster at 4K, which doesn’t sound bad at all,
but that makes it the third smallest difference at this resolution out of all 25 games tested.
Turning on DLSS didn’t really help at 1080p and 1440p, same as the last game, but it was able to
give us a 20 to 30 FPS boost at 4K. Again frame generation gives an even bigger improvement,
particularly at lower resolutions, it didn’t really seem to help in 4K with this game.
The Witcher 3 was tested with its next gen update using the ray tracing preset. For some reason
there’s only a small difference in average FPS at 4K, with the 4090 just 6 FPS higher,
however its 1% low was much better, so a more stable experience. The 3080 Ti was struggling
here, especially at 1440p where the 4090 saw its biggest win at this resolution out of all
25 games tested with a 72% higher average frame rate. Again we’re able to boost the
frame rates from both laptops by enabling DLSS. I used to test this game with FSR,
but with FSR on quality both laptops ran at about 30 FPS 4K. Not sure what the deal is, but DLSS
clearly performs better, so it makes sense to use it. Anyway this game also has frame generation,
which gave the 4090 frame rates in excess of 140% higher compared to the 3080 Ti at all resolutions.
Dead Space wasn’t far off the magic 60 FPS sweet spot at 4K max settings on the 4090,
putting it 53% ahead of the 3080 Ti. Both laptops see poor 1% lows in this game,
as they’ve got HX processors, something I’ve noticed recently in this title. Turning on
DLSS was able to give a reasonable improvement to average frame rates,
now getting the 3080 Ti to 60 FPS at 4K, though the 1% lows hardly changed.
A Plague Tale Requiem was more than 57% faster at all resolutions with the 4090,
and even its 1% lows were higher than the average FPS coming out of the 3080
Ti. Enabling DLSS was able to help both GPUs at all resolutions in this one,
but again frame generation was able to push the 4090 further.
Apex Legends was doing considerably better with the 4090 laptop, 57% faster than the 3080 Ti at
1080p and 62% faster at 1440p. I’m sure some of this would be a result of the CPU change,
but it’s still a nice uplift compared to the best CPU and GPU combo of last year.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is in a similar situation,
with the 4090 laptop delivering 57% more FPS on average at 1080p and 59% at 1440p.
Metro Exodus Enhanced had some of the biggest gains from the 4090 out of all games tested,
likely because the extreme preset uses ray traced reflections, and the newer 40
series GPUs seem to see a larger boost with RT. Even at 1080p where the GPU
traditionally matters less in many games, the 4090 was 72% faster than the 3080 Ti.
Alright the RTX 4090 is clearly quite a bit faster than the 3080 Ti,
you get it. Instead of wasting your time talking through the rest of the 15 games that I’ve tested,
I’ll instead just quickly skip through the rest of the results on screen now,
so feel free to pause the video if you want a closer look at any of the other games tested.
I think it’s important to test a wide selection of games so that we can get an accurate picture
of the average performance differences to make the fairest possible conclusion. In other words,
more data equals more better. Let’s look at those average differences next.
On average over all 25 games tested, at 1080p the RTX 4090 laptop GPU was 44% faster when
compared to the RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU. As we can see, results really vary and depend
on the specific game. The most CPU heavy games like Flight Simulator and Far Cry
6 down the bottom saw the smallest amount of improvement with the 4090 laptop, while
best case Metro Exodus Enhanced was 72% faster, again probably due to the ray tracing effects.
Stepping up to the higher 1440p resolution and the RTX 4090 laptop now had a larger 53% lead
when compared to last year’s best laptop GPU, the RTX 3080 Ti. Best case The Witcher 3 was
72% faster in this one, but again I’ve tested it with ray tracing enabled, and given Metro
isn’t far behind, it’s clear that RT titles are seeing bigger gains at this resolution.
Again the most CPU bound games are seeing the smallest performance boost with the 4090.
The RTX 4090 laptop was still 53% ahead at the higher 4K resolution. The Witcher 3 saw the
biggest difference at 1440p, but for some reason at 4K both laptops were performing extremely
close together, at least when not taking frame generation or upscaling like DLSS into account.
For brief comparison, when I compared 25 games between the RTX 4080 and 3080 Ti,
the 4080 was 27% faster, so the 4090 is definitely offering a nice further boost.
Here’s how frame rates look if we instead take the average of all 25 games at all resolutions
at max settings. I think this better allows us to visually see how much better the 4090 laptop
is in a quick and easy summary. The 3080 Ti is definitely still a respectable GPU, it’s not
going anywhere any time soon, it’s just that the 4090 is able to offer a decent gen-on-gen uplift.
Here’s how the difference looks if we instead compare the RTX 4090 with DLSS on quality mode
and frame generation enabled against the RTX 3080 Ti with DLSS on quality mode - so DLSS 3 vs DLSS
2. The 3080 Ti does not support frame generation, this feature is only able to offer a boost to the
4090. At 1080p the 4090 was 133% faster than the 3080 Ti, 119% faster at 1440p, and 108% faster at
4K, so interestingly it seems to make a bigger difference at lower resolutions in most games.
Bit strange that frame generation seems to do better at lower resolutions like 1080p,
because I can’t imagine a whole lot of people are going to be buying a 4090 laptop for 1080p gaming.
Just before we compare prices, let’s look at some content creator workloads,
it’s not all just about gaming!
The Blender Monster test was scoring 130% higher with the RTX 4090 laptop,
a massive difference, while other tests like Classroom were still 87% better,
a bigger difference than what we saw in the games.
It’s a similar deal in V-Ray, which was scoring 96% higher in the CUDA test,
not bad considering the 4090 has 31% more CUDA cores, so goes to show what the rest of the
differences such as newer architecture are able to offer. There’s a smaller,
but still decent 83% boost in the ray tracing test.
DaVinci Resolve was just 14% better with the RTX 4090,
though unlike the last two tests, the processor plays more of a role here,
so some of this difference could also be simply from going from Intel 12th to 13th gen.
Let’s discuss the price difference next. The price of both of these laptops will of
course change over time, so refer to the links below the video for current updates and sales.
And speaking of sales, make sure you check out my website gaminglaptop.deals to get
the best deal on your next gaming laptop! We update it daily to include the latest deals.
At the time of recording, Lenovo’s Legion 7i gaming laptop with RTX 3080 Ti graphics that I’ve
tested here goes for $3200 USD, while MSI’s Titan GT77 with RTX 4090 goes for $5300.
Although these are what I’ve tested with, they’re not exactly the best value options,
so we’ll also look at MSI’s GP66 with 3080 Ti for $2100, and their GE78 with 4090 for $4000,
both of which have full powered GPUs and should perform similarly to what I’ve tested here.
From a cost per frame perspective, the 3080 Ti is better if we look at the specific laptops I’ve
tested, but it can depend. If we compare the 3080 Ti in the Legion 7i that I’ve tested, well MSI’s
GE78 with the 4090 actually ends up with slightly better value, despite the fact that it costs $800
more. Of course if we consider the cheaper 3080 Ti machine, then that offers the best value by a fair
margin, so it depends on the specific laptop and how much it costs as to which offers better value.
Look, I’m not saying that you need to buy the RTX 4090 in your next gaming laptop,
it’s clearly super expensive, but the fact remains that it is able to offer a nice performance uplift
compared to the best GPU available last year. And let’s be real, after I compared the RTX 4070
against the RTX 3070 Ti, I’m happy just to see any kind of improvement! And the bonus cherry on
top is that the improvement is still pretty decent even if we completely disregard frame generation.
Although the RTX 4090 laptop GPU is certainly capable, as you’ve just seen, it’s still nowhere
close to an RTX 4090 desktop graphics card. Check out this video next to see all the differences.
Despite them both having the same product name, they’re completely different chips,
and the performance is also completely different too. Not to mention you can usually build a
desktop PC for less money than a laptop, so if you don’t need portability then check out that one!