NVIDIA announces next-gen mobile GPUs, claims huge performance gains
What's the story
NVIDIA yet again beat AMD to the punch by announcing its next-gen laptop GPUs. The mobile RTX 3000 series GPUs share nomenclature with their desktop counterparts, but thermal and power constraints keep them from matching their performance.
The marketing material claims huge gains over the last-gen 2000 series of mobile GPUs, but their performance relative to desktop 3000 series graphics cards is unknown.
2K anywhere
Gaming at 1440p to be available across major laptop makers
Gaming at 1440p on the go has usually been restricted to expensive gaming laptops. NVIDIA's proprietary DLSS upscaling should allow these new laptops to achieve higher resolutions with a minimal performance impact.
The new mobile RTX 3000 GPUs will be integrated into more than 70 upcoming laptops from brands such as Acer, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, MSI, and Razer.
Number crunching
Comparing mobile RTX 3000 series GPUs to their desktop counterparts
The mobile RTX 3080 has 30% fewer CUDA cores than its desktop counterpart. On the contrary, the 3060 variant has 6.6% more CUDA cores than its desktop counterpart.
The mobile RTX 3080 runs a 256-bit memory bus and 16 GB of GDDR6 VRAM compared to the desktop 3080, which has a 320-bit bus and 10 GB of GDDR6X VRAM.
Shortage woes
Poor yield of recent cards casts doubt over sustained availability
Ampere architecture has been nearly unattainable for most buyers around the world due to poor manufacturing yield. GPUs are scooped up by re-sellers en-masse and resold at inflated prices.
Since mobile GPUs also use the same architecture and process node, there's a possibility of shortages. However, the GPU shortages of 2017 didn't affect laptops but only made desktop graphics cards hard to find.
Budget upgrade
NVIDIA RTX 3060 for desktops announced at $329
The RTX 3060 is touted as the perfect upgrade for gamers still using Pascal architecture 1060 cards. It comes with a 12GB GDDR6 VRAM and supports DLSS. The step-up to GDDR6 memory improves ray-tracing capabilities ten-fold, claims NVIDIA.
Following the launch of the RTX 3060Ti last month, NVIDIA announced that this cheaper 3060 card will be available worldwide late in February for $329.