NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 vs NVIDIA RTX A5000 Laptop GPU vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA RTX A5000 Laptop GPU or A5000 Mobile is a professional graphics card for mobile workstations. It is based on the GA104 Ampere chip and similar to the consumer GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU. It offers the same 6.144 graphics cores, 48 RT cores, 192 Tensor cores and 16 GB GDDR6 graphics memory with a 256 Bit memory bus. It supports PCIe 4.0 and will be available in different variants from 80 - 165 Watt (TGP) with different clock speeds (and performance). The GPU supports eDP 1.4b to connect the internal monitor and DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 for external connections.

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q technologies (Dynamic Boost, Whispermode).

The raw performance should be similar to the GeForce RTX 3080 for laptops at the same TGP level. Both GPUs depend heavily on good cooling and a high TGP for good performance. At a similar power consumption level the RTX A5000 should be clearly faster than the old Quadro RTX 5000 and 5000 Max-Q. The desktop variant of the A5000 however, is a lot faster.

The GA104 chip offers 6,144 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 3,072 INT32 ALUs). With Turing all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).

The GA104 chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip).

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU or 3080 Ti Mobile (for laptops, GN20-E8) is the fastest graphics card for notebooks in early 2022. It is based on the GA103S Ampere chip and offers 7,424 shaders and 16 GB GDDR6 graphics memory with a 256 Bit memory bus. It supports PCIe 4.0 and will be available in different variants (80 - 175 Watt TGP currently known). The maximum Boost clock can vary from 1125 (80 W) to 1590 MHz (150W and up).

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q technologies (Dynamic Boost, Whispermode).

The performance depends on the TGP setting and cooling of the laptop. Thanks to the higher core count, the RTX 3080 Ti should be clearly faster than the old RTX 3080 Mobile and therefore well suited for 4K gaming.

The GA103S chip offers 7,424 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 3,712 INT32 ALUs). With Turing all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The GA103S integrates 58 Raytracing cores and 232 Tensor cores (e.g., for DLSS). The L2 cache is 4 MB. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1). Compared to the GA103, the GA103S integrates only a 256 Bit memory bus.

The GA103S chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip).