Nvidia GeForce RTX 50: doubled performance and increased battery life for laptops

Laptop PCs will also be entitled to the GeForce RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti and 5070. Obviously, if the name is identical to the versions for desktop PCs, the characteristics of the GPUs are revised downwards in order to be able to slip into the chassis of a laptop PC. It is therefore difficult to see how a GeForce RTX 5090 consuming 575W could find its place in a chassis that can dissipate a maximum of 250W, not to mention that there is also a processor to cool.

Same names, different characteristics

The GeForce RTX 5090 for laptops does include a Blackwell GPU but with half as many CUDA units and 24 GB of GDDR7. It is thus close to the desktop RTX 5080, but with 8 GB of additional video memory while using the same 256-bit bus.
Its thermal envelope will be between 80 and 150W depending on the settings of the laptop manufacturers. Like the previous generation, Nvidia allows a 25W boost depending on CPU usage with Dynamic Boost technology.

The mobile GeForce RTX 5080 has 7680 CUDA units of 16 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus and a TGP variable from 80 to 150W depending on the integration. Unlike the desktop GeForce RTX 50 series, the mobile RTX 5080 does not see its specifications halved compared to the higher model.

The mobile GeForce RTX 5070 Ti has 5888 CUDA units with 12 GB of GDDR7 on a 192-bit bus and a power envelope of between 60 and 115W with the 25W of Dynamic Boost we find the 140W present on the previous generation.

Finally, the GeForce RTX 5070 mobile has “only” 4608 CUDA units (like the GeForce RTX 4070 mobile) 8 GB of GDDR7 on a 128-bit bus and a power envelope of between 50 and 100W.

For this generation of mobile RTX 50 series, Nvidia has closed the gap on the previous generation with the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti for better performance leveling between models. The 40 series generation on laptops had a real gulf between the 70 and 80 versions, which is no longer the case.

Regarding performance, Nvidia announces a doubling of video game performance thanks to the use of DLSS 4 which introduces the generation of multiple images. The GeForce RTX 50 for laptops benefit from the same technologies as their counterparts for desktop PCs with DLSS (DLAA, Ray reconstruction, Super Resolution) and the new Transformer model as well as Reflex 2.

Battery life up 40% with Blackwell Max-Q

To adapt to the constraints of laptop PCs and in particular autonomy, Nvidia has implemented new energy saving mechanisms within its GPU. All of its improvements bear the sweet name of Blackwell Max-Q.

We thus find an intelligent power-off of the GPU which deactivates the parts it does not need, a rapid sleep which allows the GPU to go to sleep more often, even during tasks, a dynamic adaptation of the frequencies adjusting the frequencies depending on the task to be performed, and finally the use of more efficient GDDR7 memory.
Taken together, all of these optimizations allow, according to Nvidia, to increase the autonomy of laptops with Blackwell GPUs by up to 40%. To give you an idea, a Zephyrus G14 with a GeForce RTX 4070 lasted a little over 9h30 in video playback, so we could see it approaching 15 hours of battery life with a GeForce RTX 5070.

All laptop manufacturers will integrate the GeForce RTX 50 series into their models such as Asus, Acer, Dell, HP and Razer. The first expected models will be on the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 versions in March, while the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 versions will be available during April.