Nvidia has just announced a new generation of Ampere gaming laptops offering twice the power efficiency of previous architectures, but the biggest news is the Nvidia RTX 3060 laptops are faster than anything on the market today, including the RTX 2080 Super. Those are going to deliver $999 gaming laptops with performance reportedly 30 percent higher than a Sony PlayStation 5.
Nvidia is calling this its biggest gaming laptop launch ever, with over 70 new gaming laptops being released apparently from every OEM, with notebooks on sale from January 26 this year.
There are three new notebook GPUs in the running with the RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and RTX 3080 with up to 16GB GDDR6. It looks like Nvidia is really starting to take note of the demand for higher video memory capacity, especially with the CES announcement of the new Nvidia RTX 3060 with 12GB of GDDR6.
That’s more memory capacity than any of the previously launched RTX 30-series GPUs except for the ridiculously capacious 24GB of the RTX 3090.
As mentioned earlier, the RTX 3060 notebooks will completely replace the RTX 2060 series machines with laptops starting at $999, capable of shifting games at 90fps at 1080p Ultra settings.
The RTX 3070 for its part, is noted as a “1440p Gaming Beast” riffing on the fact that we’re getting high-end, high refresh rate QHD panels in this next generation of gaming laptops. It promises 50 percent higher frame rates than the RTX 2070, with 90fps at 1440p Ultra settings.
These machines are expected to start at $1,299.
Then there’s the flagship Nvidia mobile graphics card, the RTX 3080 with a massive 16GB of GDDR6 memory. This is the GPU that will power the world’s fastest laptops, “The New Flagship.”
That GPU promises to deliver over 100fps at 1440p Ultra settings, and will start at $1,999. But I would bet you’d struggle to find any laptop manufacturer willing to put an RTX 3080 into any notebook under $2,000.
The memory side is interesting, however, as the specs state that the RTX 3080 is available with up to 16GB of GDDR6, which would indicate there will be lower spec versions of the card with less. Whether that will match the desktop Nvidia RTX 3080 with 10GB or drop down to 8GB we don’t yet know.
But I would guess the $1,999 notebooks won’t get the 16GB card.
There are some other updates that Nvidia is rolling out with its new laptop GPUs, with a fresh spin of Dynamic Boost, version 2.0, that promises to use Ampere’s AI chops to manage power between GPU, CPU, and VRAM to better balance power and performance between all the thirstiest parts of a laptop.
It also finally announced Resizable BAR, allowing full access for CPUs to a graphics card’s video memory, rather than the paltry slice it’s currently allowed. That will deliver a modest increase in performance alongside select Intel 10th Gen processors.
The next generation of gaming laptop kicks off on January 26, with pre-orders starting right now. And if they’re anything like all the tech we’ve seen launching in the past six months they’re going to go fast…