Nvidia RTX gaming laptops are finally here! For my first video we’re going to compare
the new RTX 2080 against the GTX 1080 in 10 different games at all settings levels with
different resolutions. This will show you the performance difference between the two
and help you decide which to buy in your next laptop.
Let’s quickly take a look at how the laptop RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 differ in terms of specs,
note that things like clock speed and power will vary between specific cards and laptops,
these are just the reference specs for each. The 2080 has more CUDA cores, however according
to Nvidia's specs the base and boost clock speed ranges for laptops with RTX 2080 graphics
is lower than the 1080. Both also have 8GB of memory, although the 2080 has faster GDDR6.
The laptops that I’m testing with are as similar as I could get and also the best you
can get in terms of specs, they’re Clevo units from Metabox here in Australia. Both
have the Intel i9-9900K CPU with 32GB of dual channel memory, otherwise they’re very similar
with the key difference being the graphics. I’ve also got a lot more comparisons with
new laptop graphics on the way, so get subscribed for those. With all of this in mind let’s
check out the gaming results!
Let’s start with Battlefield 5, given it’s one of the only games currently supporting
RTX. While I obviously can’t compare ray tracing on with the 1080 as it doesn’t support
it, we can get an idea of how it performs in this best case scenario. I doubt we’ll
see a more powerful laptop than a 9900K with RTX 2080. With RTX on shown by the green bars,
at 1080p I still found it pretty playable at ultra settings, averaging just under 60
FPS, though if I’m honest not great considering that this is basically best case laptop hardware
and we’re only at 1080p.
With RTX off I’ve tested with Direct X 11, and in all following graphs the 2080 results
are in blue while the 1080 results are in purple. At 1080p with ultra settings the 2080
is performing 16% better than the 1080 in terms of average frame rate, and 13% better
for 1% low. Stepping up to 1440p and RTX on at ultra and high aren’t really playable
anymore, especially for a first person shooter game where you generally want higher FPS.
RTX on at 1440p went alright at medium settings, but in my personal opinion ultra settings
with RTX off both looks and performs better. Outside of RTX, the 2080 is performing 23%
better in average frame rate compared to the 1080 at ultra settings, and 22% better in
1% low, a decent improvement.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and at 1080p there
doesn’t appear to be too much difference overall. At ultra settings the 2080 is getting
10% faster average frame rates compared to the 1080, although the 1% lows were the same,
and actually slightly lower at lower settings. At 1440p the 2080 is still 10% ahead of the
1080 at ultra settings, but also further ahead at other setting levels now too. I’ll also
note that this was the lowest improvement I saw out of all 10 games tested at this resolution.
Far Cry 5 was also tested using the built in benchmark, at 1080p with ultra settings
the 2080 was 6% ahead of the 1080, though a larger 14% higher 1% low was seen here.
Going up to 1440p only saw a slightly higher 1% low at ultra while I actually had lower
results at the lower setting levels, and at ultra settings the average frame rate from
the 2080 was now 15% ahead of the 1080.
Rainbow Six Siege was another game that was tested with the built in benchmark. At 1080p
there was an 11% improvement to the average frame rate with the 2080 at ultra settings,
and a slightly higher 14% improvement to the 1% low. At 1440p the 2080 was now giving us
average frame rates 22% faster than the 1080 at ultra settings, and a 17% higher 1% low,
though being realistic either of these options are still providing crazy high results.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical benchmark, and with all settings maxed out at 1080p there
was only a small 4% improvement to the average frame rate with a larger 16% improvement to
1% low, and not too much difference with lower settings. Going up to 1440p there was a larger
14% improvement to average FPS with max settings in the same test as well as a 23% boost to
the 1% low, and then lower improvements at lower settings which seem to be less GPU demanding.
Fortnite was tested using the replay feature, and full disclosure here I’ve tested using
two different replay files. As there was a couple of weeks between my testing of the
1080 and 2080 the original replay I used with the 1080 expired and could not be used. I
always use the same test run though, so the results are as similar as I could get. With
that in mind, at 1080p I was seeing a 19% higher average frame rate with the 2080 at
epic settings, but a much higher 60% improvement to 1% low. Again not sure if this is due to
the difference in replay, as they were extremely similar. At 1440p the 2080 was now getting
20% higher average frame rates at epic settings, basically spot on with the average of all
games tested at 1440p so that’s looking more accurate.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, and with the highest
settings at 1080p there was a 13% improvement to average frame rate with the 2080 when compared
to the 1080, and then less of a difference at the lower settings. At 1440p there was
a larger 23% improvement to average frame rate at highest settings, and then this gap
got larger at the lower settings, with a 44% improvement at lowest settings with the 2080.
Watch Dogs 2 was tested as a fairly resource intensive game. At 1080p with ultra settings
the 2080 was getting 9% higher average frame rates, and a 7% higher 1% low. Given I can
play this game with a solid 30 FPS both options are performing very well here. At 1440p we’ve
got the largest improvement out of all 10 games tested here, with ultra settings on
the 2080 scoring 41% higher average FPS and a massive 59% higher 1% low, then less of
a difference as we step down in graphical settings.
Ghost Recon was another resource intensive game that was tested with the built in benchmark.
At 1080p with ultra settings the 2080 was 16% ahead of the 1080 in average FPS, and
had a 8% higher 1% low. With the higher 1440p resolution the 2080 was now 13% ahead of the
1080 with regards to both average FPS and 1% low.
PUBG was tested with the replay feature, and unlike Fortnite I was able to use the same
replay here as they generally last longer. At 1080p and ultra settings I had the lowest
improvement with the 2080 out of all games tested at this resolution, with just a 2%
boost to average FPS. At 1440p the difference between the graphics starts to have more effect,
with a much larger 28% improvement to performance at ultra settings, now making it the second
best game out of all 10 tested at 1440p, and with a 25% improvement to the 1% low as well.
I’ve also tested with some synthetic benchmarks, including Unigine’s Heaven, Valley, and
Superposition, as well as 3DMark’s Time Spy, Fire Strike and VRMark, just pause the
video for a detailed look at these results.
In terms of improvement, over all 10 games tested at the highest setting preset with
a 1080p resolution on average the RTX 2080 was performing 10.7% better than the GTX 1080
in terms of average FPS. There was an improvement in every title tested, though as we can see
here it really does vary between game. At 1440p on average over the same 10 games the
RTX 2080 was now performing 21% better than the GTX 1080 in terms of average FPS, again
at the highest setting presets as these tend to be more GPU demanding. There's quite a
decent performance improvement at 1440p compared to 1080p, as higher resolutions tend to be
less CPU bound and the differences between the graphics start to become more clear.
Unfortunately I don’t have any test data for 4K, this is because when I originally
tested the GTX 1080 laptop a couple of weeks ago for the review I didn’t consider that
I’d have the same specs but with an RTX 2080 any time soon to make this comparison,
if I'd known I definitely would have tested out 4K as well, but as the 1080 machine was
previously sent back I wasn't able to compare 4K. Based on what we've seen here, and with
what I've seen in the desktop 2080 and 1080 cards, I think we'd be likely to see a larger
performance improvement with the RTX 2080 at 4K.
It’s also important to consider that both of my laptops have a 9900K CPU, and while
this should help reduce CPU bottlenecks and improve performance, keep in mind that most
laptops with the RTX 2080 or GTX 1080 won’t have this level of power, so the results here
are only comparable against each other and not the best display of how most RTX 2080
laptops will perform at a more general level. Basically if it’s paired with something
else like an i7-8750H or even i9-8950HK CPU instead then expect lower results.
Now let’s discuss overclocking. Keep in mind that overclock results will vary based
on the specific laptop, things like the cooling solution and even the specific chip mean that
results will always vary here. I was able to boost the core clock speed of the 1080
by 120MHz and the 2080 by 70MHz using MSI Afterburner, any higher than that and I’d
get crashes. As I only tested 1080p overclocking in the full review of the 1080 laptop because
I was mostly focussed on CPU overclocks there I don’t have good gaming overclock examples
from the GTX 1080 laptop to compare with, I’d only be expecting a couple of extra
FPS though.
Now let’s take a look at temperatures and clock speeds. While both laptops I’ve tested
with were slightly different, for the most part they were quite similar in terms of the
cooling solution, though it’s worth noting the 2080 laptop was a 17” chassis while
the 1080 was a 15”, so that may skew results. These are the average clock speeds I got while
running the Heaven benchmark for 30 minutes each time. As we expected based on the specs
shown at the start of the video, the 1080 has higher clock speeds, although the 2080
was able to catch up to the stock 1080 speeds once overclocked, and as we’ve seen other
factors like the higher CUDA core count, better memory and the newer turing architecture are
putting it ahead.
These are the temperatures from the same tests, the 2080 was running around 10 degrees Celsius
cooler in this same test, while both rose slightly with the overclocks applied, but
again remember the 2080 laptop was 17”, however from what I can tell just looking
visually the heatsinks and heat pipes look very similar.
Now for the final difference, the price, check the links in the description for RTX pricing
as it becomes available. While price is definitely an important factor, at the time of recording
I don’t have exact numbers for this specific laptop, but I’ve been told the 2080 version
of this laptop will probably go for around $250 to $300 AUD more than the 1080 version,
so maybe around $200 USD doing a quick conversion. Is $200 extra worth a 10% improvement in 1080p
games, or a 20% improvement in 1440p games? It of course depends, but honestly if this
is accurate and you’re playing at higher resolutions, considering how much money 1080
laptops go for anyway it may be perfectly reasonable to go for the 2080 at 1440p or
above.
So which graphics card would you pick in your next laptop? The older but still capable GTX
1080, or newer RTX 2080? Realistically between these two cards I’d be more than happy with
either of them, when it comes down to it they both deliver impressive performance compared
to other laptop graphics options out there. Buying purely with ray tracing or DLSS in
mind at the moment is a bit of a gamble, at least based on the best case performance we
saw in Battlefield 5 with high end specs, hopefully that should improve in the future
and hopefully other games that will make use of these features will implement them better,
either way it’s too soon to really bank on it being a success.
Let me know which card you’d pick down in the comments, and get subscribed for more
upcoming GTX and RTX laptop comparisons, there are going to be quite a few on the way.