The GeForce RTX 3080 has an insane 320 W TDP. What will this mean for gaming laptops?

[Redaktion]

Even the biggest and fastest laptops at the moment carry "only" the 150 W - 180 W TDP GeForce RTX 2080 GPU. Exactly how Nvidia will translate its massive 320 W desktop GeForce RTX 3080 to mobile form factors will be interesting to see.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-GeForce-RTX-3080-has-an-insane-320-W-TDP-What-will-this-mean-for-gaming-laptops.492840.0.html

[Andy M]

I was waiting for an article like that. I have some concerns for the future of the gaming laptops. It will be quite the challenge for Nvidia to cram those power hungry beasts inside laptops, especially the "thin and lights" ones.
I'm looking forwards to seeing it.

[muh]

Would be a chance for eGPUs, too bad that Thunderbolt 4 didn't double the bandwidth

[Valantar]

That illustration photo is very clearly not an RTX 3080.

[toven]

They could just give me 100w GTX 1780ti/2680ti maxp. I don't need RT on tiny screen.

[Jak]

Someone here forgot about Clevo P870TM, with its 95W CPU and two 200W GPUs

[DF]

I've been waiting for someone to ask this type of question.  How indeed will they move forward if their new chip is so power hungry?  I suspect they'll fit the "power envelope" by whatever clocks they can manage.  It's a painful turn of events given that 35% of Nvidia's revenue comes from mobile and the 2xxx series is pretty long in the tooth right now.  However you'll also gain from the pci-e 4.0 capability.  That arrives with Tiger Lake H (and yep that is yet another 'late' chip from Intel).
Probably TL H and Ampere mobile are targeted at refresh around Jan-Mar of 21.  Likely some talk in Jan and either a late Feb or early Mar release.  If the pairing is later than that you can bet that Intel messed up yet again.
Further benefits of waiting will be HDMI 2.1 which may not be essential for laptop level chips it will still be handy and a bit more futureproof than 2.0b as well as having more bandwidth than DP 1.4.
But yes you'll want to see just what Ampere does for performance at lower power levels to see what mobile Ampere might be like.  If they wait 6 months notebook sales will start to really stagnate - not good for any of the giants.

[Ricone]

Well, gaming laptops were never good enough. Sure you could buy a beefy one and play, but batteries are not supposed to last forever and the heat is always going to be an issue. Your gonna have problems with your gaming laptop sometime, that's for sure.
Buy a macbook 13 and play games on your desktop pc. Heck, you can stream your desktop to your notebook anyway

[Anonyneko]

Except people buy gaming laptops precisely because they cannot buy a desktop for various reasons (for me it's because I'm rarely at home, current epidemiological situation notwithstanding, and would prefer a single work/play machine).

It's true though that the situation is worrying. Nvidia did promise a "1.9x" power efficiency improvement at lower wattages (looking at the slides it's ~30-40% performance improvement at 120W), so I hope we still get our incremental upgrade unlike the whole Turing debacle, but the performance margin between laptop and desktop GPUs will keep increasing again, no more Pascal miracles within our lifetime.

[Jonathon Schott]

Someone here forgot about Clevo P870TM, with its 95W CPU and two 200W GPUs

Yes, but that is a EOL platform because 1080 was really the only good generation for sli in a laptop. writing this on a p870dm3 and have been following this closely. I actually have hope that Clevo does release a higher wattage version in mxm of the 3080. I would give up my other gpu, especially since sli is virtually dead anymore anyway, for a 'desktop' 3080. fingers crossed Clevo comes out with a y-adapter power cord, it would be nice if they also did a custom heatsink but that is stretching my hopes on the matter. but yeah, 400W total power available for a graphics card? at least 325 minus the 75 from pcie2? that covers a 3080 handily, might even inspire me to get the 780W power supply for this beast.

[Spunjji]

Come on, this really isn't difficult. We already know what they're going to do because it's what they always used to do before Pascal launched.

My bet on how that will shake out: a heavily down-clocked and undervolted 3070 will become the mobile "3080", giving performance closer to the desktop 3060 but utilizing a nice expensive die to justify the extortionate pricing. The 3060 itself will become the mobile "3070" in down-clocked form. Etc. "Max-Q" editions with hilariously bad price/performance ratios will be released to separate people whose wealth is inversely proportional to their intellect from their ill-gotten gains.

Who knows, they might even surprise us all and completely neuter the 3080 to hit a 150W TDP, providing the absolute worst possible performance per dollar. If they do, I hope AMD cut them off at the knees for it - but that would require OEMs to build capable AMD laptops that haven't been artificially hobbled, and for consumers to actually buy them. I'm not holding my breath.

[Dj]

Come on, this really isn't difficult. We already know what they're going to do because it's what they always used to do before Pascal launched.

My bet on how that will shake out: a heavily down-clocked and undervolted 3070 will become the mobile "3080", giving performance closer to the desktop 3060 but utilizing a nice expensive die to justify the extortionate pricing. The 3060 itself will become the mobile "3070" in down-clocked form. Etc. "Max-Q" editions with hilariously bad price/performance ratios will be released to separate people whose wealth is inversely proportional to their intellect from their ill-gotten gains.

Who knows, they might even surprise us all and completely neuter the 3080 to hit a 150W TDP, providing the absolute worst possible performance per dollar. If they do, I hope AMD cut them off at the knees for it - but that would require OEMs to build capable AMD laptops that haven't been artificially hobbled, and for consumers to actually buy them. I'm not holding my breath.

This comment right here. Beautifully spoken!!

[James3456]

I would like a modest footprint desktop PC for gaming. I won't ever need full size disk bays (2.5 inch SSD drives are fine) but I can't seem to find such a beast.

[Jonathon Schott]

To add to my previous post, if they can beat my sli 1080's with a single 3080 i will be happy

[David Moisés]

"Max-Q" editions with hilariously bad price/performance ratios will be released to separate people whose wealth is inversely proportional to their intellect from their ill-gotten gains.

Not everyone is willing to carry on their backpack a heavy laptop, and that bring expensive sacrifices: AERO 15, GS66, XPS 15, ZenBook Pro, ENVY 15, ZBook Creator. All carying Max-Q variants for delivering portability.

However a look on what AMD brought with the 4900HS tell us that great performance can be achieved in mobile, if they replicate the same with the 6000-series GPU's, NVIDIA is literally dead.