Nvidia RTX 4070 gaming laptops are not worth buying compared to the higher tier RTX 4080.
Yeah, a gaming laptop with a 4080 inside is going to cost more money,
but it performs so much better in most games that it’s worth spending the extra money.
I’ve compared both GPUs in 25 games at 4K,
1440p and 1080p resolutions to show you how crazy the difference is! This is
critical information that anyone considering an RTX 4070 laptop needs to pay attention to!
But first, Gigabyte have sponsored this part of the video.
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Back to the comparison. The higher tier RTX 4080 laptop GPU has 61% more CUDA,
tensor and ray tracing cores compared to the lower tier RTX 4070 - a massive difference. The 4080
also has 50% more VRAM capacity with a bigger memory bus, more memory bandwidth, and faster
memory. The 4080 can also hit higher boost clock speeds, as it’s got a higher maximum power limit.
In theory, both of these laptops can run with an extra 25 watts with Nvidia’s dynamic boost,
but in the real world with an actual game running,
4070 laptops hit a voltage limit in most games at around 100 watts or so,
which means there’s no FPS boost beyond this point as it can’t actually run above 100 watts.
This is not a problem for the 4080, and FPS in games continues to scale at higher power levels.
This graph shows the 3DMark Time Spy graphics score from each GPU at different power levels.
The 4070 can run lower, making it better for thinner and lighter gaming laptops,
while the 4080 can use more power, which is why it can be found in bigger laptops with
more cooling. With both GPUs running at 60 watts, the 4080 was scoring 20% higher than the 4070,
but if we limit both at 140 watts, well the 4080 has a much larger 49%
lead. And then it gets even further ahead at its maximum 175 watt limit.
I’m comparing both of these GPUs at their max,
so we are expecting a pretty big performance difference. So expect a smaller change to what
we’re going to see here in smaller laptops with lower power limits.
I’m using XMG’s Neo 16 laptop to do this testing, so we’ve got the exact same CPU,
RAM, SSD and water cooling for a fair comparison. They’ve both
got the same sized batteries too, and with a game running,
the 4070 laptop lasted 20% longer with both on battery power and limited to a 30 FPS frame cap.
The 4070 laptop uses less power. When measuring both at the wall with the charger connected,
the 4080 was drawing 19% more power in Control at 4K high settings,
and 24% more power in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K ultra settings.
Yeah, the 4080 offers more FPS, as you’ll see soon,
but from a performance per watt perspective, the 4070 ends up more
power efficient. The 4080 hits higher frame rates, but it needs more power to do so.
The 4070 was also running a little cooler in these games too. The 4080 uses a physically larger die,
so in theory it has more surface area for cooling,
but again it’s using around 20% more power too, and more power results in more heat.
The clock speed difference wasn’t that big,
with the 4070 actually clocking higher in Control. The 4080 has 61% more CUDA cores,
but with 19% more power it doesn’t seem that it can clock them quite as high.
With all that in mind, let’s move into our 25 game comparison, starting with Cyberpunk 2077. I’ve got
the 1080p results down the bottom, 1440p in the middle, and 4K up the top, with the 4070 results
underneath the 4080 results. Despite the small difference seen in the clock speeds, the 4080’s
61% more CUDA cores are clearly being put to work here, as it’s reaching a 64% higher average frame
rate at 4K, though the 1080p difference was smaller with a 26% lead over the 4070.
Some games like Apex Legends had massive performance differences at 1080p though.
The 4080 was 65% faster than the 4070, the biggest difference at this lower resolution
out of all 25 games tested. Even the dips in performance on the 4080, as shown by the 1% lows,
were higher than the average FPS coming out of the 4070 - a big difference.
Then on the other hand, games that are more CPU heavy like Microsoft Flight Simulator barely had
much difference at all at 1080p. There’s a bigger 36% lead with the 4080 at 1440p,
but this is still the smallest difference out of our 25 game
selection at this resolution. By the time we get up to 4K, the 4080 was 54% faster,
because the more powerful GPU can better stretch its legs when we’re more GPU bound.
Now although the 4070 has done relatively alright at 4K so far, it starts to fall apart in Far Cry
6. Its 8 gigs of VRAM just isn’t enough at this resolution with ultra settings and HD textures on,
though you could of course lower the settings to reach a higher frame rate. My point here is that
the extra 4 gigs of VRAM available to the 4080 do help it out in some games at higher resolutions.
This is also seen in Forza Horizon 5 with the highest extreme setting preset. At 4K the 4080
has a massive 92% higher average frame rate - almost double the FPS of the 4070,
crazy stuff. At 1440p the 4080 was 49% faster, which sounds great,
but it’s actually a below average result out of the 25 games tested.
Watch Dogs Legion can be fairly VRAM heavy at ultra settings too,
which would explain why the 4080 was 77% faster at 4K, one of the biggest differences from the
25 games tested. Even at 1440p and 1080p, the 1% lows from the 4080 were still better
than the average FPS from the 4070, which just means the 4080 is more stable and consistent.
It’s a similar deal in Dying Light 2 as well, the 4080 has a 77% lead over the 4070 at 4K,
but then on the other hand, there’s almost no difference in average FPS in The Witcher 3 at
4K with the ray tracing preset enabled. This is a weird result that I’ve seen with a number of
laptops in this game, with ray tracing on once it gets too hard to run it seems to just cap out
at 30 FPS. Even 1080p was 59% faster on the 4080, the third biggest difference at this resolution.
Metro Exodus also enables some RT effects with the highest setting preset,
which probably explains why we’re seeing the same 59% improvement with the 4080 at
1080p. Tracing those rays just needs more GPU horsepower, even at this lower resolution.
The differences in Hogwarts Legacy were below average compared to most other games tested,
and although the 4070 was only reaching 30 FPS at 4K max settings, don’t forget that both GPUs
could see a nice improvement by making use of features like DLSS and frame generation.
Alright after 10 games I think you’ve got the general idea, the 4080 is significantly better
in most cases. I’ll just quickly skip through the rest of the 15 games tested on screen now,
instead of wasting your time talking through the results from each individual game. 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. As I always say,
more data equals more better. Let’s look at those average differences next.
On average over all 25 games tested, at 1080p the higher tier RTX 4080 laptop GPU
was 44% faster compared to the lower tier RTX 4070 laptop GPU. This graph shows how
much faster each game was on the 4080, and as you can see, results really vary
depending on the specific game. CPU heavier games like Flight Simulator and Spider Man
were 5 to 10% faster on the 4080, while a number of others were closer to 60% faster.
If we step up to the higher 1440p resolution where we’re more GPU bound,
the RTX 4080 was now 55% faster than the 4070 on average. This time even the smallest difference
was 36% faster with the 4080, while in the best case, we’re seeing up to a 70% lead in Dead Space.
The gap gets bigger at the higher 4K resolution, where we’re even more GPU dependent, and the VRAM
difference starts to matter more in some games. The 4080 is now 69% faster than the 4070, nice,
although if we treat that massive Far Cry 6 result at the top as an outlier,
then the 4080 was instead 59% ahead on average.
Here’s how frame rates look if we instead take the average of all 25 games. I think
this better allows us to visually see the overall differences as a quick summary. It lets us easily
see that even over a wide selection of games, the 4080 has a big performance uplift over the 4070.
Alright, so the 4080 performs way better compared to the 4070,
but is it worth spending more money to get the 4080?
Prices of both will change over time,
so refer to the links below the video for updates and current sales.
And if any 4070 or 4080 gaming laptops do go on sale, we’ll be sure to add them to
our gaminglaptop.deals website. We update that every day with all of
the latest sales so you can save money on your next gaming laptop!
Alright, I’ve got a few examples. The ASUS ROG Strix G18 costs $2300 USD for
the RTX 4070 model, while the 4080 is only $200 more, or 9% more money.
Razer’s Blade 16 certainly costs a whole lot more money overall,
but it’s still only 9% more money to go for the better performing 4080.
If we actually use XMG’s Neo 16 with liquid cooler that I’ve tested in this video,
we’re looking at 25% more money to go from the 4070 up to the 4080. This same model is also sold
in the US by Eluktronics, and we’re looking at a similar 21% extra money for the 4080.
The 4080 ends up way better from a cost per frame perspective compared to the 4070
in all three of these examples, so for the ASUS ROG Strix G18, Razer Blade 16,
and XMG Neo 16 / Eluktronics Mech-16 GP. Yeah, the 4080 costs a few hundred dollars more,
but it performs so much better in games that it ends up being worth it by offering better value.
It’s a bit different with something like the ASUS Zephyrus M16. There’s a much bigger
$750 price gap between the 4070 and 4080 options, so 38% more money for the 4080,
and unlike the last three laptops, the M16 is a thinner design,
so the 4080 is power limited to 120 watts plus dynamic boost. This means it won’t perform as
well as the 4080 results shown previously in this video, so I can’t fairly do the cost per
frame calculation with my data, but it’s an example where the 4080 may make less sense.
Based on the big performance differences between the 4070 and 4080,
it kind of feels like Nvidia have just left a space for a 4070 Ti next year.
But that’s just me speculating based on the big differences between these two.
Honestly, I don’t really think that a 4070 laptop should be considered if your goal is
4K gaming. To be fair, as we saw in many of the games, you can certainly get away with
it. Especially if you’re willing to turn down the settings a bit or make use of features like FSR,
DLSS or frame generation. But ultimately for 4K gaming with higher setting levels,
I’d recommend the 4080 for its extra power, but also the 50% extra VRAM capacity.
Even for 1440p gaming, spending a few hundred dollars extra if
you can afford it for the 4080 just feels like a no-brainer. Which kind
of makes me wonder if the 4070 only exists to entice people to spend more on the 4080.
Now to be fair, the 4070 does make more sense in thinner and lighter laptops as
that GPU is pretty efficient at lower power levels compared to last gen. But
when we’re talking about max powered options for the best FPS in games,
the 4080 wins hands down and is worth the extra money in most cases.
But if you’re going to spend RTX 4080 money,
is it worth spending more and going all the way up to the RTX 4090? Check out this video
next where I’ve compared those two GPUs in the same 25 games at 3 resolutions!