Best Gaming Pc Laptop 2020 – Today, we’re looking at desktop versus laptop graphics performance, revisiting a topic we last covered over a year ago when Nvidia introduced its first GeForce RTX mobile GPUs. The original investigation was prompted by Nvidia’s confusing naming scheme, where laptop and desktop GPUs have the exact same name but decidedly different performance.
With hardware available in early 2019, we found that the desktop RTX 2070 was on average 19% faster than the mobile RTX 2070 chip at 1080p. That difference expanded to a whopping 42% difference when comparing the desktop RTX 2070 to Nvidia’s lower-powered RTX 2070 Max-Q variant.
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Since then, we’ve seen upgrades to both laptop and desktop hardware. On the graphics side, Nvidia has released the RTX Super series for desktops and, more recently, laptops. This latest wave of 2020 gaming laptops use high-end Super GPUs, in the form of the RTX 2070 Super and RTX 2080 Super we’ve already reviewed. We also see new CPU options in Intel’s 10th gen and AMD’s return to gaming laptops with Ryzen 4000.
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However, knowing what you’re getting is more confusing than ever. In 2020 you can buy laptops that contain “RTX 2070 Super” GPUs, but sometimes you get a Max-Q variant, sometimes you don’t. This continues across the board, from below the GTX 1660 Ti to the highest option, the RTX 2080 Super. For some customers who are not familiar with Nvidia’s GPU lineup, at first glance it appears that these laptops offer the same GPU, and therefore the same performance, that you would get from an equivalent desktop gaming PC. But this is far from the case.
Let’s take the RTX 2070 Super as an example. Although the desktop and laptop variants use the same physical GPU – the
The full 12nm TU104 die with 2560 CUDA cores is really there – other aspects are very different. The desktop card has a power cap of 215W, which allows the GPU to run at a boost of 1770MHz or higher. The laptop variant has a power cap of 80 to 115 W, with boost clocks between 1155 and 1380 MHz. This means that purely based on the nominal clock speeds, the desktop card can have a maximum clock speed of 28 % higher and possibly over 50% higher compared to the lowest powered mobile configuration.
Memory configurations can also vary. The basic design is again similar, both variants delivering 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus. But if you get a low-power Max-Q mobile variant of the RTX 2070 Super, you’ll only see 11Gbps of memory, compared to 14Gbps on the desktop. This reduces memory bandwidth in addition to lower clock speeds.
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We could go on with examples about the rest of the series, but you get the point. Nvidia believes that by using the same physical GPU with the same number of shaders, they can score their laptop GPUs just as they do on the desktop. This is despite vastly different power targets, clock speeds, and performance.
So, in today’s review, we’re going to break down the exact performance difference you can expect between Nvidia’s eponymous desktop and laptop GPUs, covering everything from the GTX 1660 Ti to the RTX 2080 Super. Hopefully this will make it a lot clearer the next time you buy a new gaming system knowing the level of performance you’re getting.
Like our previous desktop vs laptop comparisons, this isn’t designed to be a direct GPU comparison, where we limit the desktop platform to the same specs and level of performance you’d get from a laptop. There is no CPU throttling or power throttling, it is designed to be a realistic comparison between desktop and laptop platforms. That means yes, the desktop computer will also have a more powerful CPU with better cooling and faster memory. That’s how these systems are usually set up in the real world, so these results will show you the real difference between a gaming laptop and a desktop, not between a gaming laptop and some weird inverted desktop.
With that said, we didn’t go all out with our PC test system to absolutely crush gaming laptops. Our PC platform for this test was configured with a relatively modest Intel Core i5-10600K, 16GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory with XMP enabled. We’ve chosen these components to roughly match what’s offered in most gaming laptops: you’ll generally find an Intel six-core CPU like the Core i7-10750H at the most reasonable prices, while 16GB of memory is also a common starting point. It is.
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On the notebook side, our usual test notes apply. We configured all of the laptops we tested with dual-channel memory, decent airflow through the coolers, and set them to default power settings. The results you will see in the graphs are an average of several systems with the same configuration. You can check out the full list of laptops we’ve tested here.
Let’s kick off the benchmarks with Red Dead Redemption 2, the first of six games we’ll explore in depth before showing a rundown of the 18 games we tested for this comparison.
The first thing you’ll notice here is that there are power caps next to each CPU and GPU configuration, showing the maximum sustained power consumption we’ve seen from these components. For laptops, the CPU and GPU generally run up to this limit indefinitely, so this could mean 45W CPU and 90W GPU. However, with our desktop platform, how close a CPU or GPU will come to hitting the cap will depend on the game and its usage.
For example, while the RTX 2070 Super is listed here with the desktop variant as 215W, the actual power consumption in many games is lower.
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Back in Red Dead Redemption 2, running at 1080p on high settings with the Vulkan version, you might have noticed right away that we have three desktop settings at the top of the graph.
The RTX 2070 Super and RTX 2080 Super deliver extraordinary performance, but even the RTX 2070 lags behind the fastest laptop configuration we tested in 2020, equipped with a Core i9-10980HK and RTX 2080 Super Max-Q running at 90W .
Moving down the chart, we have the RTX 2060 desktop configuration in the middle, which offers slightly more performance than the RTX 2070 Super Max-Q. In this test, the desktop RTX 2060 is only 4% ahead of the laptop RTX 2060, which, as we’ll see, is an outlier. Meanwhile, the GTX 1660 Ti is around 8% ahead of its handheld counterpart.
Next up is Control, which is one of the most GPU-intensive titles in our suite, we’re nowhere near being CPU-limited here, especially on laptops. Below, you’ll see that the desktop GTX 1660 Ti outperforms the laptop variant by 14%, which also allows it to position itself ahead of lower-powered RTX 2060 configurations. So if you get a laptop with an 80W RTX 2060, you’re not quite on the level of a desktop GTX 1660 Ti.
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One in the tabletop stack is the RTX 2060, which pulls away from this GPU’s fastest laptop configuration by on the order of 13%. The desktop RTX 2060 is noticeably faster than the RTX 2070 for laptops and also the RTX 2070 Super Max-Q. In fact, the RTX 2060 offers performance closer to the RTX 2080 Super Max-Q type alongside these GPUs.
So for high-end stuff, it’s a massacre for laptop variants. Our desktop RTX 2070 GPU is 30% faster in this title, far ahead due to its much higher maximum power cap of 175W versus 115W. Super desktop GPUs compared to their 90W Max-Q counterparts in laptops, the margin grows to more than 40 percent in favor of the desktop model.
In Metro Exodus, you can also expect huge margins between laptop and desktop GPU variants, growing with each successive step. The desktop GTX 1660 Ti is 14% faster than the laptop model. So for the RTX 2060 it’s 17% faster. For the RTX 2070, we’re up to 31% faster. That’s 41% for RTX 2070 Super vs RTX 2070 Super Max-Q and 35% for RTX 2080 Super vs RTX 2080 Super Max-Q.
These are significant margins in favor of PCs, especially at the top end. The difference in performance for a card like the RTX 2070 is frankly ridiculous, considering they both have the exact same name, minus the Max-Q branding here.
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The 115W power cap for the laptop’s GPU doesn’t even come close to the desktop’s card, and indeed, it’s hard to say that the laptop model offers true RTX 2070-like performance.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider makes an interesting case because this game is also CPU heavy, to the point where our high end settings were capped at 1080p CPU and performed just as well.
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