NVIDIA is lying to you… RTX Laptop Madness

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Something I’ve mentioned in almost every video I’ve done that features one of NVIDIA’s RTX 3000 series laptop chips, is stressing the fact that the RTX 3080 in this laptop is in no way the same chip as you get in a desktop RTX 3080 card. The 3080 in particular is possibly the most egregious, not only offering significantly less cores, clock speed and VRAM, but they aren’t even based on the same die! And yet, for all intents and purposes, they are named identically.

Now, NVIDIA will tell you that the chip you get in a laptop is actually called the RTX 3080 Laptop. That extra delineator is what’s meant to tell you it’s not the same. Then you might also hear the argument from the commenters saying “obviously they aren’t the same, laptops are much smaller so duh it’s not going to perform the same”. Let me address both of those quickly, starting with the latter.

Yes, obviously this 1cm thick laptop is not going to be able to offer the same performance as this 6cm thick graphics card. The fact there is a performance difference isn’t what I’m mad about. What gets me is the confusion that comes from naming two very different products functionally identically. The average gamer who might have watched a review of a 3080 desktop card a while ago, seeing it offered exceptional 1440p gaming performance, eventually gets round to buying a new laptop. They read “RTX 3080” and assume it’s the same, then when they fire up some games at 1440p and are getting half the performance, well they might just feel a bit cheated.

To answer the response you’d get from NVIDIA, on principle alone you could argue this is verging on potentially misleading. Grammatically, adding “laptop” to the end of the same model name doesn’t really fit as an extra descriptor for the chip itself. It reads as “This is an RTX 3080 (based) laptop”, as the word “laptop” describes the entire unit, not just a modification to the GPU name. I know that sounds like semantics, and, well, it is… But language is important, and it affects people’s purchasing decisions for products they can be shelling out months or years worth of savings for – and ones that they’ll be stuck with for years to come.

Imagine if Ford sold the Mustang with two V8 engine options. One is the famous 5L V8 with 450PS, and the other is a more ‘eco friendly’ 3L V8 that they could call the “V8 Green” with 300PS instead. Both are commonly referred to as the “Mustang V8”, sometimes even by Ford themselves! Some dealers do tell you which engine the car you are looking at has, but most of the time it’s only in the fine print, and to top it off the only colour Ford sell the Mustang in just happens to be green, so when you are looking them up and see some listed as “Mustang V8 Green”, you aren’t quite sure if it’s the full fat 5L V8 but it’s a green car, or if it’s the still impressive but not as good 3L instead. Confusing, isn’t it?

There is a reason why “Mobile”, or “m” worked well as a descriptor on the GTX 900 series laptop chips – it’s easy to know a “GTX 980m” is somehow fundamentally different from a “GTX 980”. When they moved to the GTX 10 series and they were named the same, it was a bit strange but at least they were the exact same chips just clocked lower. Same for the RTX 20 series, same physical bits of silicon, just running at a lower clock speed. But now, to have completely different chips that are functionally indistinguishable, it makes being a laptop buyer right now really difficult.

I’d argue a company like AMD has done this relatively well with their Ryzen CPUs. The Ryzen 5900HS and 5900HX are visibly named differently from their desktop 5900X. It’s not perfect, you do still need to look up how many cores they have and the clock speeds they’ll run at, but at least you know at a glance that it’s different in some way.

I should also note that I technically did suggest the word “laptop” in my first video covering this, mostly as a last resort if words like “mobile” weren’t suitable.

Now even if you think NVIDIA’s “laptop” designator is enough – and let’s face it they won’t be changing it for this generation anyway – there’s another problem. NVIDIA’s official position is that partners are required to list the ‘correct’ name that includes the word “Laptop”, and what TDP the chip is configured to. I’ll cover the TDP in another video, but for now let me show you Asus’ main product page for this Zephyrus G15. If you start by looking at the “Tech Specs” page, you’ll see Asus is fully compliant here. Both the ‘correct’ name, and even the TDP and VRAM amount. But “Tech Specs” isn’t the page you land on first, “Features” is, and if you scroll down to the very first paragraph about the G15… it reads, “GeForce RTX 3080 GPU”. No laptop.

If you scroll down a bit more to where it tells you more specs, and yep, “GeForce RTX 3080 GPU” in the blurb again, and the highlight reel specs, the ones that are large and in your face… “NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU”. No laptop. This is the main product page for this laptop. If Asus themselves can’t make this clear, then the distributors that just copy and paste the press releases or features pages sure as hell won’t. The OverclockersUK product page for this laptop lists the GPU 13 separate times and not once does it call it a 3080 Laptop.

This isn’t me just calling out clockers, it’s a widespread issue. Scan doesn’t list it correctly until you click on specifications, but to get there you have to scroll past the title, subheading, and the massive product name right at the top of the Product Overview tab. PC world doesn’t list it as 3080 laptop anywhere, and while Box doesn’t sell this 3080 model, they don’t list the 3070 laptop version correctly anywhere even on the spec list. Even across the pond in the states, newegg list the 3070 model without the ‘laptop’ name until you scroll down, click on “Specs” then scroll even further down.

Now, in theory, this is not in compliance with NVIDIA’s requirements meaning NVIDIA should be able to apply some pressure to get these pages updated. I say in theory, because it’s been 7 months since these chips were announced, and over 6 months since they started shipping to customers and these errors are very much still present.

But before you jump to conclusions about “follow the money” and “there is no incentive for them to fix this”, I should make it clear that when I first pointed this issue out in February my NVIDIA rep told me everyone should be listing them as “RTX 3080 Laptop” everywhere, and when in a hilarious self-own I found NVIDIA’s own store page doesn’t call them “laptop” parts (yes, doesn’t, still doesn’t), his final response was “My eyeballs have already taken enough damage thank you”. Clearly the marketing teams at NVIDIA care about this being correct, but NVIDIA employs over 18,000 employees as of October last year, so getting a massive organisation like that to do anything takes time, and a lot of follow up emails.