Gaming laptops with Nvidia’s new RTX 4080 laptop GPU are expensive, but they might actually
offer better value compared to the best from last gen, the RTX 3080 Ti.
Both the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 4080 laptop GPUs have the same amount of CUDA cores, but the
newer 4080 clocks higher.
Last year’s 3080 Ti actually has more GDDR6 memory capacity and a bigger memory bus with
more memory bandwidth, but the 4080’s memory speed is higher.
The 4080 can run with lower power limits, which is why we’re seeing it in smaller
and thinner laptops this year, but they both max out at 150 watts.
Technically they can both go right up to 175 watts, which is the case with both of the
laptops that I’ve tested.
There is a small 10 watt difference between these specific laptops at the lower end, but
this shouldn’t be enough to affect our conclusions.
Both laptops have Intel HX CPUs, however the RTX 4080 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.
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 get straight into the 25 game comparison at 3 different resolutions, then after that
we’ll compare price difference, cost per frame value and content creator performance.
Let’s start out with a Plague Tale Requiem, which I’ve found to be quite GPU heavy.
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 4080.
The game still played fine on both laptops at 1440p max settings, but the 4080 was reaching
a 39% higher average frame rate, though the difference in the dips in performance, shown
by the 1% lows, was much smaller.
I’ve also tested this game with DLSS enabled, both with and without Nvidia’s new frame
generation feature, which is only available for RTX 40 series GPUs.
At 1440p, both laptops were reaching a 30% higher average FPS with DLSS on quality mode
compared to themselves without DLSS on in the previous graph, however turning on frame
generation was able to boost the frame rate an additional 50% on top of this.
Regardless of how you feel about these “fake frames”, in single player story based games
like this I’ve only found this feature to be a positive.
Cyberpunk 2077 was just shy of the magical 60 FPS sweet spot at 1440p ultra settings
on the 3080 Ti laptop, while the 4080 was able to deliver a 30% higher average frame
rate.
Neither game was running particularly well at 4K, but we’ve also got features like
DLSS and FSR to improve this.
Here’s how Cyberpunk looks with DLSS on quality mode, however I’ve also used the
highest ray tracing ultra preset this time.
At 1440p there’s again a similar 31% boost with the 4080 compared to the 3080 Ti when
both laptops are using DLSS, but enabling frame generation is where things change.
Even the 1% low from the 4080 with frame gen on is higher than the average FPS without
it, and frame generation made 4K max settings with ray tracing actually usable, while still
looking fine in the area I was testing in.
Dead Space had a below average difference out of the 25 games tested, with the 4080
coming out 25% ahead of the 3080 Ti at 1080p, 26% ahead at 1440p, and 18% at 4k, with even
smaller differences in the 1% lows - a trend we’ll see throughout the testing.
The 3080 Ti was still able to deliver above 60 FPS at 1440p max settings, but we’re
able to boost average FPS by an extra 41% simply by turning on DLSS.
The 4080 was now 25% ahead of the 3080 Ti with DLSS on, and like most, this game doesn’t
have frame generation support, so there’s no extra boost possible for the 4080.
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is a CPU heavy game, so the differences seen here are
some of the lowest out of all games tested.
I should also note that we had a fair amount of instability in this game on the 13th gen
laptop that randomly came and went, so not sure if it’s a problem with the extra E
cores or something.
Turning on DLSS barely changed the results on both laptops at 1080p and 1440p, which
I suspect is because we’re limited by the CPU, despite both laptops having Intel’s
top-end HX chips.
This game has frame generation support, and turning that on was able to offer an extra
improvement at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, as it's able to boost even CPU limited games.
For some reason though, frame generation enabled at 4K actually ended up slightly worse compared
to just using regular DLSS without frame gen.
I double checked the result and confirmed it, it might be a bug with this specific game.
The Witcher 3 was tested with its next gen update, and as the frame rate was stupid high
I chose to test with the ray tracing preset enabled to see what these GPUs can do.
FSR was set to quality mode, as it enabled that by default, and well, based on some of
these frame rates even with FSR upscaling it looks like we might want to lower down
from quality mode.
For some reason both laptops were limited to about 30 FPS at 4K, not sure if that’s
some limit of FSR or what the deal was.
Call of Duty was tested with the game’s benchmark, and we’re looking at a 34% higher
average FPS with the RTX 4080 laptop at 1080p and 1440p resolutions.
Like the others, this game could also be boosted with upscaling features like DLSS, though
the rest of our results won’t feature DLSS or FSR, as it already takes days to get through
25 games of testing, so I can’t use it on all of them.
Apex Legends was tested in the firing range for reproducible results, and while the FPS
numbers might not mirror actual gameplay, they still show us that the RTX 4080 laptop
was about 30% faster at 1080p and 1440p resolutions.
The gap gets smaller at 4K though, with the 4080 20% ahead, but honestly if you’re playing
competitively you’re probably not going to be running 4K max settings anyway.
The same goes for Fortnite, the new epic setting preset was quite tough even on the RTX 4080
laptop, with 1440p only just able to squeeze out 60 FPS, a 31% lead compared to the last
gen RTX 3080 Ti laptop.
Again like a lot of other games, this could be further boosted by features like DLSS.
Microsoft Flight Simulator had one of the smaller differences at 1080p, as it’s fairly
CPU heavy, with the 4080 just 17% faster than the 3080 Ti.
The 4080 was able to come out 29% faster at the higher 1440p resolution though, as the
GPU is better utilized, while 4K saw a higher 32% boost with the 4080.
This game is one of the few with frame generation support though, so the 4080 is absolutely
capable of much more than this.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s benchmark, and at 4K the 4080 had
its second biggest win over the 3080 Ti out of the 25 games tested with a 32% higher average
frame rate.
The only game that had a bigger difference was Metro Exodus Enhanced with the highest
extreme preset, likely because this enables ray traced reflections, making it extra hard
on the GPU.
Despite the 4080’s 37% lead, 33 FPS isn’t exactly amazing, but again there are of course
lower setting levels that will perform better, I’m just intentionally using max settings
as they’re generally more GPU bound.
Which is ideal for a GPU comparison, rather than actually playing.
Halo Infinite felt a bit choppy at 4K ultra settings on the 3080 Ti.
The 4080 was definitely better, but the dips in performance shown by the 1% lows were noticeable
to me with occasional stuttering, so I wouldn’t recommend this resolution at max settings,
even if the 4080 was 30% better.
You’ve probably heard that 30% number thrown out enough times now, so rather than individually
talk through the rest of the 13 games tested I’ll just quickly skip through the rest
of the results on screen now so that we can focus on more important details.
Feel free to pause the video if you want a closer look at any of these results.
Every time I do this I kind of wonder why I spend so many days testing 25 different
games just to show the results for such a short amount of time, but I think it allows
me to have a much more accurate average result that better represents a wider selection of
games.
In other words, more data equals more better.
On average over all 25 games tested, at 1080p the RTX 4080 laptop GPU was about 29% faster
when compared to the RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU.
As we can see, results really vary and depend on the specific game.
The two games at the top both had ray tracing effects applied, so they're more GPU heavy,
while others down the bottom like Far Cry 6, Spider Man, Rainbow Six and Flight Simulator
are more CPU bound titles, so there’s less of a difference at this lower resolution going
to a higher tier GPU.
Stepping up to the higher 1440p resolution and the RTX 4080 laptop now had a slightly
larger 31% lead when compared to last year’s RTX 3080 Ti.
Best case we’re looking at a 39% boost in our most GPU heavy games, while others that
are more CPU demanding like Spider Man saw just an 18% boost, which may be more due to
the difference going from 12900HX to 13950HX processor.
The RTX 4080 laptop was 27% ahead of the 3080 Ti at the highest 4K resolution.
The Witcher 3 was the only outlier here, but otherwise we’re not seeing that much of
a difference percentage-wise compared to the lower resolutions tested.
None of these results factor in DLSS or frame generation, which as we saw earlier would
give much higher perceived boosts.
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 4080 laptop is in
a quick and easy summary.
Normally the difference is biggest at 4K in a GPU comparison, but it’s the smallest
here, and I’m wondering if we’re starting to see the 12 gig VRAM limit of the 4080 appearing.
Just before we compare prices, let’s check out a few content creator workloads - it’s
not all just about gaming!
We’re looking at a bigger performance gap in Blender, with the RTX 4080 scoring 51%
higher in the Classroom test and 75% higher in the Monster test, though a smaller 24%
improvement in the Junkshop test.
There’s a 43% boost in the V-Ray CUDA test with the RTX 4080, not bad at all considering
both GPUs have the same amount of CUDA cores, so goes to show what other generational improvements
offer, while the ray tracing test was scoring 33% higher on the 4080.
DaVinci Resolve was just 7% better with the RTX 4080, 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 prices of both of these laptops will of course change over time, so refer to updates
with the links below the video, or check out my website gaminglaptop.deals to get the best
deal on your next gaming laptop.
At the time of recording, Lenovo’s Legion 7i gaming laptop with RTX 3080 Ti graphics
and 12900HX processor goes for $3200 USD.
Razer’s Blade 18 with RTX 4080 on the other hand starts from $3800, or $600 more money.
So is it worth it?
From a cost per frame perspective, the RTX 4080 in the Blade 18 is offering better value
at all resolutions.
It’s worth noting the Legion was on sale too, so at a higher price without the sale
the 3080 Ti would be even worse value, and we’re not even accounting for the fact that
Razer laptops are generally more expensive compared to most other brands.
Though things could of course be different with a cheaper 3080 Ti laptop, there are much
cheaper ones than this, but likewise I would also expect cheaper 4080 options.
The blade is a premium product and as a result I'd expect it to be one of the higher options.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that RTX 4080 laptops are cheap, and honestly most
people would be just fine spending less money on something else.
Whether that be an RTX 4070 or below which come out later this month, or last gen 30
series, which still offers good performance.
But compared to the best from last gen, the RTX 3080 Ti, the 4080 is giving a decent uplift
relative to the extra cost.
But hey, maybe when you’re spending more than $3000 USD on a gaming laptop you don’t
care too much about the value anyway.
Personally, I think the newer features on offer with RTX 40 series like DLSS 3 frame
generation are a nice extra.
At least in supported games, which at the start of 2023 is only 17 titles I believe.
But as nice as it may be, it’s difficult to recommend anyone buy something in hopes
that a feature will gain more traction in future.
There just aren’t any guarantees.
If you’ve already got a decent laptop from the RTX 30 series that can play all your games
fine, there’s no real reason to upgrade.
It’s rarely worth upgrading between single generation of hardware, and if you’re not
struggling to run modern games on what you’ve got then there’s no real reason considering
the 4080.
And hey I am making this video right as the RTX 4080 laptops launch, so it is completely
possible that 3080 Ti laptops go on sale and cost even less money than I’m showing here.
But yeah the point is there’s no real reason trading in your wallet unless you really want
the best.
You can check out all of the new gaming laptops with RTX 4080 graphics over here next, and
I’ll be comparing plenty more 40 series laptops as soon as I can, so make sure that
you’re subscribed for all of that upcoming content!