After launching a version for desktop PCs, Nvidia is bringing its GeForce RTX 4000 graphics technology to gaming laptops starting next month.
The laptop-focused GPUs will range from the budget-friendly RTX 4050 all the way up to the powerhouse RTX 4090, the company announced at CES in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
The new GPUs, which use Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, are designed to offer a significant performance upgrade over the older RTX 3000 series, although it depends on the specific game. According to an Nvidia benchmark, the RTX 4000 series can offer a three- to four-times performance increase on games that support DLSS 3, the company’s frame-rate boosting technology, which only the RTX 4000 series supports.
For other non-DLSS 3 titles, such as Red Dead Redemption or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, you can expect more modest frame rate gains at closer to 50%.
The other improvement to the RTX 4000 series concerns power efficiency. Nvidia claims the new mobile GPUs can cut down the power consumption by as much as two-thirds while offering the same performance levels as the RTX 3000.
“Put another way, Ada beats our current flagship GPUs with one-third the power,” said Nvidia SVP Jeff Fisher in Tuesday’s announcement.
That all said, the laptop-focused RTX 4000 series won't be as powerful as their desktop counterparts. Nvidia has released specs for the laptop GPUs, and as you can see, they can feature drastically lower specs. So don't expect the same performance, despite the GPUs sharing the same names.
The products will first arrive on Feb. 8 through new gaming laptop models that’ll pack either the RTX 4090 or the RTX 4080, starting at $1,999.
Then on Feb. 22, PC vendors will begin releasing laptop models built with RTX 4050, 4060, and 4070 GPUs. Expect the products to start at $999.
In addition, Nvidia will release a fifth-generation Max-Q version of the GPUs meant to power thin-and-light laptops. The fifth generation of Max-Q promises to pave the way for even more power-efficient gaming notebooks. Nvidia pulled this off by optimizing DLSS 3 for laptops, using low-voltage GDDR6 video memory for the GPUs, and incorporating new low-power memory states.
