Nvidia have published the specs for the new RTX laptop graphics which will be available
from the 29th of January, so just a few days away. The specs look pretty strange, let’s
take a look and discuss.
So the page for the new 20 series laptops is now publicly available, you can easily
find it searching for “Nvidia RTX Laptops” or similar in Google, I’ve got the link
in the description too. There’s the usual sort of information listing all the various
features available with Nvidia graphics, not too much new in that regard aside from RTX
of course.
The most interesting part is the specs. When I first saw this I was quite surprised by
the base and boost clock speeds and TDP listed for the RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 laptops, there
are some pretty big differences here, more so with the 2080.
According to this, you can get a laptop with RTX 2080 graphics and it may have a base clock
between 735MHz and 1,380MHz, a difference of up to 645MHz, quite large. What concerns
me is that with the differences being so large, it seems clear that actual speeds will vary
between laptops, perhaps depending on factors such as cooling solution or power brick size.
For example if these are hot chips we’d probably expect lower clock speeds in thinner
laptops, then higher speeds with thicker laptops, though both may still be marketed as RTX 2080
gaming laptops just the same which would make it hard to know what level of performance
you’re actually going to get. I’ll have some detailed benchmarks and comparisons coming
out over the coming weeks, so make sure you’re subscribed for those.
I’m guessing that these ranges include Max-Q graphics too, because Max-Q specs aren’t
listed anywhere else separately. If this is the case I’m not sure why all the specs
have been grouped together like this, the ranges are so big the information isn’t
really that useful. Just for comparison, on the 10 series laptop page seen here we get
the Max-Q specs clearly separated down the bottom, and this isn’t currently present
on the 20 series page.
With that strangeness out of the way let’s see how these laptop graphics stack up against
their desktop counterparts. The laptop RTX 2080, 2070 and 2060 all have the same amount
of CUDA cores as the desktop versions, though as expected we’re looking at lower clock
speeds and TDP all around with the laptops. The gap in clock speed between the desktop
and laptop options seems to be larger this time around compared to the 10 series as well,
so it will be interesting to see how they compare when we’re able to test them out.
Likewise the RTX-OPS and Giga Rays on the laptop cards are also reduced, so we should
be expecting less performance in ray tracing as well, again no surprises there.
The memory otherwise looks the same, although the 20 series laptops note up to 14Gbps for
the memory speed whereas the desktop ones just say 14Gbps.
I’m hoping that the table on the 20 series laptop page will be updated in the future,
with the Max-Q specs separated out, assuming that’s what’s going on here. The 10 series
laptop page just lists specific base and boost clock speeds, so you have a better idea of
what you’re actually getting, while the Max-Q specs are listed as a range, as clock
speed and power will vary between laptops. Even then the 10 series Max-Q spec sheet only
differed by around 200MHz at the most. The 20 series page though, as it currently stands
on the 26th of January, isn’t very useful for the RTX 2080 and 2070 graphics, if I have
two different 2080 laptops will one have the minimum 1095MHz boost clock speed while the
other may have the maximum 1,590MHz speed? How will I know this when buying a laptop
with 2080 graphics? Again I can only assume the lower end of the spectrum are the Max-Q
laptops as they aren’t currently listed anywhere else so it might not be quite that
big of a deal if they update this page, although the ranges listed still vary a lot more compared
to the 10 series, it’s a strange way to go about it and we effectively still don’t
really have a good idea on specs.
Anyway let me know what you guys think about these odd RTX laptop specs down in the comments,
there’s not too long now until the RTX laptops are available so hopefully this will become
clearer soon. If you’re new here make sure you get subscribed for all of my RTX laptop
testing coming up.