Qualcomm Adreno 690 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super

Qualcomm Adreno 690

The Qualcomm Adreno 690 is an integrated graphics card in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SoC for Windows laptops. According to Qualcomm, the 690 is up to 60% faster than the previous generation. In our tests with the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s, the Adreno 690 was only on par with a low en Intel UHD Graphics iGPU and not well suited for 3D games.

The chip is manufactured in 5nm at Samsung (5LPE) and suited for fanless laptops.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is a high-end desktop graphics card based on the AD104 chip using the Ada Lovelace architecture. The 4070 offers 5,888 cores and 12 GB GDDR6X graphics memory with a 192 bit memory bus and clocked at 21 Gbits. The card offers a good raytracing performance thanks to the 46 dedicated raytracing cores. For AI calculations (and DLSS 3 in games), the RTX 4070 has 184 Tensor cores.

The gaming performance is well suited for 2k/QHD gaming in most demanding games, and should be able to handle 4k gaming for lesser demanding games (or with reduced settings / DLSS activated). The raw gaming performance is comparable to an older RTX 3080 or a AMD Radeon 6800 XT. Compared to the similar named mobile GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, the desktop variant is much faster.

The AD104 chip is manufactured in the modern 5nm process at TSMC (4N with EUV) and specified with a TGP (Total Graphics Power) of 200 Watt (compared to the 450 Watt of the RTX 4090).

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super is a high-end desktop graphics card based on the Ada Lovelace architecture. It uses the AD103 chip in full configuration with 10,240 cores and 16 GB GDDR6X graphics memory (256-bit bus with 23 Gbits).

The ray tracing performance is outstanding thanks to 76 dedicated cores and the 320 Tensor cores can be used for DLSS 3.

The gaming performance without DLSS is ideal for 4k with around 60fps and 2k with higher frame rates in demanding games without ray tracing effects (e.g. F1 22 or Cyberpunk 2077). With ray tracing, the use of DLSS is recommended. Compared to the competition, the performance without DLSS and ray tracing is slightly better than the significantly cheaper AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT.

The currently available RTX 4080 cards are very large (2.5 or 3 slots) and use the new 12VHPWR connector (which has caused some problems with adapters).

The AD103 chip is produced at TSMC in 5nm (4N with EUV) and is specified with a TGP (Total Graphics Power) of 320 watts (Nvidia recommends at least a 750 watt power supply).