We’ve already seen what appears to be the leaked specs for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080, which seemingly shows that the RTX 5090 may be getting the biggest generational leap of the entire series. After all, the card could be getting bumped up to 32GB GDDR7 (from 24GB GDDR6X on the 4090), 21,760 CUDA cores, and pretty much big upgrades all across the table.
While the same cannot be said for the RTX 5080 desktop, as its leaked specs do not indicate as much generational improvement, things are looking very good for its laptop counterpart.
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RTX 5090 & 5080 laptops could use the same chip
According to Moore’s Law is Dead, NVIDIA could be using the same GB203 chip for its RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 laptop GPUs. This means we may expect good numbers from the RTX 5080 laptop, especially in terms of VRAM and CUDA cores – areas where the RTX 4080 laptops weren’t too impressive.
For context, NVIDIA reduced the 4080 laptop’s VRAM to just 12GB compared to the 16GB 4080 desktop. As such, you could say the 4080 laptops were quite a disappointment. Sure, they had the RTX 4080 sticker, but the performance was cut down and the price was high. Looking at the card itself, our RTX 4080 review didn’t yield top marks, especially due to its poor value for money and the fact the Super card came along to fix it; laptops didn’t get the same Super refresh.
That said, the news of either an RTX 5080 or 5080 Ti laptop GPU packing 16GB GDDR7 VRAM with 8,192 CUDA cores suggests that the performance difference may not be as significant this time around. In fact, if the recent leaks are accurate, we can expect the GPU to potentially outperform the RTX 4090 laptop GPU as well.
The entire laptop line-up could get a bump
We have already heard rumors that the RTX 5090 laptop GPU will come with 24GB VRAM, and with the latest speculation of the 5080 laptops also getting a VRAM increase to 16GB, it is possible that NVIDIA has bumped the VRAM across its entire laptop lineup. This would be a really good step up, as a few 40-series laptop GPUs could be regarded as mediocre as a result of compromises. Sure, they performed exceptionally well in all AAA titles, but the gap between them and their desktop counterparts is obvious.
With 16GB VRAM and over 8000 CUDA cores, the RTX 5080 (or 5080 Ti) laptop could possibly leave its predecessor in the dust, but we still have to make some pretty bold assumptions if we are going to speculate just how much better these laptops are going to be.
As per MLID, if NVIDIA underclocks the GB203 chip’s memory bandwidth for the 5080 (or 5080 Ti) laptop to 28Gbps, paired with the 16GB VRAM, it should be enough the beat the RTX 4080 12GB laptop by a solid 50% lead in overall performance. Not only that, but it also translates to around 10 to 20% better performance than the RTX 4090 16GB laptop, and if we’re lucky, it may just match the performance of a desktop RTX 4080 or 4070 Ti Super.
Of course, all of these speculations rely on the fact that NVIDIA will not go down the efficiency route and reduce the memory bandwidth. In that case, the performance numbers may not look as appealing as they do now.