Is it worth paying more money for an RTX 3080 gaming laptop,
or should you instead save the cash and stick to a cheaper RTX 3070? I’ve
compared both in 17 different games at 2 resolutions as well as thermals,
power draw, battery life, content creator workloads and more to help you decide!
These are the differences in specs between these two laptop GPUs. The higher tier RTX 3080 has 20%
more CUDA cores and the same memory speed, and while both can have 8 gigs of GDDR6 memory,
the 3080 also has a higher 16 gig option. The 3080 has a higher boost clock speed,
though this would be due to the higher maximum power limit that’s possible,
which will of course vary depending on the specific laptop it’s in.
To do this testing I’m using the XMG Neo 15 from XMG in Europe for both laptops, also known as the
Eluktronics Mech-15 G3 in the US market. Both laptops have an 8 core Ryzen processor, however
the 3080 is paired with a higher tier 5900HX, but I’ll explain shortly why this doesn’t matter much.
Both laptops have a MUX switch to disable optimus and get the best performance,
so all testing has been done with optimus disabled.
Both were also tested with the exact same physical kit of memory installed,
16 gigs of DDR4-3200 CL22 x8 memory in dual channel.
Both laptops also run their GPUs up to the highest power limits specified
by Nvidia. So 125 watts for the RTX 3070 with up to 140 watts with dynamic boost,
while the 3080 runs up to 150 watts and up to 165 with dynamic boost.
Of course expect smaller differences between a 3070 and 3080 if they have
say the same 80 or 100 watt power limit. The goal of this comparison is
to compare best case 3070s and 3080s, well, a better case 3080 let’s say,
because thicker laptops might be able to boost it even higher than this one.
Right now the price of the 3070 model is about 2200 Euro,
while the 3080 upgrade is a 397 Euro upgrade, or 18% more money, and this is about $450 USD more.
There might be some small differences between these two laptops due to the
CPU change, but as I’ve shown in this video here,
generally the differences between the Ryzen 7 5800H and Ryzen 9 5900HX aren’t that big.
With this particular laptop chassis, we’re seeing about the same CPU clock speed on both
laptops when under a combined CPU plus GPU stress test anyway, as per the darker bars,
while the 3080 GPU was 110MHz higher than the 3070 in this test, as per the lighter bars.
The CPU temperatures were the same, and I believe actually thermal throttling
here despite the fans being maxed out, granted this is a worst case stress test,
most games won’t max out both components like this. The 3080 was a little warmer than the 3070,
just a couple of degrees under Nvidia’s thermal throttle limit.
Higher temperatures on the GPU are expected given the 3080 is using
more power. Interestingly the CPU TDP of the 5900HX in the 3080 laptop was
lower compared to the 5800H in the 3070 laptop, which I believe is owing to it
being a better binned part, as both were otherwise reaching the same clock speed.
If we stop the CPU stress test though and just run a GPU only stress test, we can see that both GPUs
are able to boost higher with dynamic boost. Again this results in the 3080 GPU running slightly
warmer than the 3070, and also reaching a slightly higher clock speed in this particular test.
The CPU difference shouldn’t matter too much because games have been tested with
high setting presets which are generally more GPU bound. Plus in addition to 1080p we’re also
looking at the more demanding 1440p resolution because both of these laptops have 1440p screens.
So let’s compare both GPUs in 17 games at 2 resolutions. Then after the games
we’ll look at things like power draw, battery life, content creator workloads
and finally cost per frame to find out if the 3080 is worth spending more money for.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested in the same part of the game on both laptops. I’ve got the 1080p
results below and 1440p results above, with the lower tier RTX 3070 below and the higher
tier RTX 3080 on top. At 1080p the 3080 laptop was reaching a 10% higher average frame rate,
and a slightly larger 12% improvement at the higher 1440p resolution. This game has
DLSS support, and by turning this on it’s possible to get fairly decent performance
boosts with both laptops. At 1080p they’re both above 100 FPS now at high settings.
I was curious about Watch Dogs Legion, because the game’s benchmark warns that 8 gigs of VRAM is
borderline enough at max settings, so I thought perhaps the 3080 would do better here owing to
it having double the VRAM capacity. At 1080p the 3080 was about 7% faster, a below average result,
however at 1440p the 3080 was now reaching 16% higher average FPS, but the 1% low was also 39%
higher with the 3080, and I believe this is starting to show the limits of the 8 gigs
available to the 3070. This game also has DLSS support, and while the 1080p
frame rates hardly change, we’re seeing bigger improvements at the higher 1440p resolution.
Call of Duty Warzone had some of the largest improvements with the 3080 out of all 17 games
tested. At 1080p we’re looking at a 14% higher average frame rate with the 3080, while at 1440p
the 3080 was 18% ahead of the 3070, the biggest difference at this resolution out of all games,
though the 3070 was absolutely still playable at 100 FPS. This game also has DLSS support,
so it’s possible to boost the performance of both laptops even higher by turning this on.
The Red Dead Redemption 2 results are kind of weird, we triple checked this and it was
reproducible, the 3080 was slightly worse at 1080p for some reason. This is the only
game out of 17 where the 3080 was behind, and I suspect that it might be due to the
CPU power limit. When under heavy CPU plus GPU workloads, the 5900HX would run at 30 watts,
and xmg said this is because the 230 watt power brick can’t otherwise run the GPU at 150 watts,
and for most games the GPU power matters more to performance, but I’m guessing in this game that’s
not the case. I tried lowering the GPU power limit and increasing the CPU power limit for this test,
but it didn’t help. 1440p was slightly ahead on the 3080, presumably as the CPU matters less,
and even with DLSS enabled we’re not seeing this change anything,
though both laptops were able to get a little performance increase with it.
I’ve compared Control with ray tracing and DLSS, but let’s start off with neither,
so just stock standard gameplay. This game is typically quite GPU heavy, though
at both resolutions the performance difference between both GPUs was below the 17 game average.
At 1080p we’re looking at an 8% higher average frame rate on the 3080 and 12% higher at 1440p.
This is yet another game with DLSS support, and this was able to give
a fairly big performance boost to both. Even the 3070 is above 100 FPS at max settings 1440p now,
an excellent result. I’ve also tested both with ray tracing on, and while enabling DLSS would of
course increase performance here, I wanted to see the differences in just straight up ray tracing.
At 1080p there’s now a larger 12% higher average frame rate with the 3080, compared to 8%
with ray tracing off, so it would seem that RT does a bit better on the 3080.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was tested with the game’s benchmark, and had some of the biggest
differences. At 1080p for instance, the 3080 was 15% ahead of the 3070, the biggest difference out
of all 17 games tested at this resolution, while 1440p was close to 18% higher FPS on the 3080.
The differences in Microsoft Flight Simulator on the other hand were below average. The 3070
was still around 60 FPS at high settings 1440p, so definitely not bad at all. The 3080 was 9%
higher in terms of average FPS, though as we can see this equates to like 5 frames,
granted there is a larger 12% boost seen in the 1% lows on the 3080.
As an eSports title, you could argue that higher frame rate is more important in Fortnite compared
to most other games that I’ve covered. The 1% lows at 1080p hardly saw a difference at all,
while the average FPS was just 7% higher on the 3080, with a larger 12%
boost at the higher 1440p resolution. This game gets fairly big gains by turning on DLSS,
but again there’s not really that big of a difference between the two GPUs.
Borderlands 3 was tested with the game’s benchmark, and had above average gains with
the 3080 graphics. Again the 3070 is by no means unplayable with above 60 FPS at 1440p
on ultra settings, but the 3080 was doing better with a 14% higher average frame rate.
Instead of talking through the rest of the 8 games individually in depth, I’ll
just blast through them so we can get into the average differences as that’s more interesting,
even if all of this testing did take many hours to complete. A
larger selection of games is important to help get a better rounded average.
Feel free to pause the video if you want a closer look at these additional games.
On average over all 17 games tested at 1080p, the RTX 3080 laptop was reaching
9% higher average FPS compared to the 3070 laptop. The 3080 was ahead in all
games with the exception of the weird Red Dead Redemption 2 outlier, which may be due
to the CPU power limit difference. Best case though we’re seeing a 15% boost with the 3080.
Stepping up to the higher 1440p resolution which is also the native resolution for this laptop
and the 3080 is now ahead regardless of the game in use, averaging almost 13% better than the 3070
once everything is taken into consideration. Best case now we’re almost seeing an 18% higher average
frame rate with the 3080, and keep in mind that the 3080 configuration costs about 18% more money.
Generally speaking, for the most part I think the 8 gigs of VRAM available to the RTX 3070
is probably plenty for most people. But in some titles at max settings 1440p
we did start to see the 16 gigs in the 3080 get an advantage,
such as the 1% lows in Watch Dogs Legion for instance. So based on this I would
expect smaller differences between a 3070 and 3080 if the 3080 also had 8 gigs of VRAM, but
in today’s games for the most part I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a deal.
While the 3080 graphics clearly perform better in most instances, in the case of XMG’s Neo 15,
as we saw earlier we’re looking at a 400 Euro or $450 USD price increase
to upgrade from the 3070 to 3080. This makes the 3080 worse in terms of value,
which isn’t too surprising once we get to the top of Nvidia’s product stack,
there’s usually diminishing returns there, so you end up paying more money for smaller gains.
In terms of total system power draw from the wall, in Control at 4K max settings the 3080 laptop was
drawing 21% more power. In this particular game the 3080 was reaching about 12% higher
average FPS, though if we apply it to the best case games we do start getting closer to 18%,
but in general it would seem the 3070 is more power efficient.
I’ve also been able to somewhat fairly compare battery life,
as both laptops have the same size battery. The 3070 laptop was lasting longer in a game,
I suppose because as we just saw, it’s more power efficient, though keep in mind the
3080 laptop also has the more efficient 5900HX CPU. Generally I don’t recommend
gaming on battery anyway as you get worse performance, but if you are going to load
up the Nvidia graphics on battery at least now you know there’s not that big of a difference.
It’s not all about gaming though,
let’s see how both laptops also compare in some content creator workloads.
The 3080 was only completing the shorter Blender BMW test a second faster, while
the longer Classroom test shown by the darker purple bars was about 8% faster with the 3080.
V-Ray was scoring close to 15% higher in the CUDA test with the 3080,
which makes more sense to me considering the 20%
higher CUDA core count, while the ray tracing test was just 5% higher on the 3080.
SPECviewperf tests out various professional 3D workloads,
and the 3080, shown here by the red bars, was ahead in all of these tests,
though the margins could vary from basically nothing to up to 51% in the 3D Studio Max test.
Cool so obviously the 3080 is doing better as expected,
but is it worth paying 18% more money for?
It might be if you’ve got the money and you want more performance. I mean in games we
were seeing a similar performance increase at the best case relative to the cost increase,
which is also what we saw in the 3060 and 3070 comparison, so not super unreasonable. That said,
clearly the 3070 does offer better value while also being able to handle all the
games I threw at it even at 1440p higher setting levels just fine.
I suppose if you really want the 16 gigs of VRAM or otherwise require it for some
other creator workload the 3080 is the only option, but yeah personally as mentioned I
think the 8 gigs in the 3070 or even 8 gigs in a 3080 is probably going to be fine for
more people for a few years yet, so yeah while the 3080 obviously offers better performance,
unless you’ve got money to burn I think most people should just go for the 3070.
That said for most people I think the RTX 3060 is a better sweet spot compared to the 3070,
as it can still handle all modern games quite well. Though in some titles the 6
gigs of VRAM can be a little more of a limitation. You can check out how the
RTX 3060 and 3070 compare in a laptop in this video next, so I’ll see you over in that one!