NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 is a mid-range desktop GPU manufactured using the 5 nm process at TSMC. The AD107 chip is used here. It combines 3,072 shader units and 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. The memory interface is 128-bit, resulting in a memory bandwidth of 272 GB/s in conjunction with the VRAM clock speed.

Features

The features that were introduced with the high-end models of the Ada Lovelace generation, such as DLSS 3.0 with frame generation, are also present in the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. This sets the new mid-range card apart from the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 and provides a significant advantage in games that offer these features.

Performance

Without DLSS, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 performs slightly behind the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. Compared to AMD, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 often competes with an AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT. The GeForce RTX 4060 caters to the 1080p gaming range in terms of performance. At times, the performance is sufficient for 1440p gaming as well, although older games are more suitable for this resolution. Additionally, some compromises in terms of graphical fidelity might be necessary for the latest games. The performance is suitable for playable frame rates at high detail settings.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 is specified by the manufacturer at 115 Watts (TDP). This is significantly lower than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, which has a TDP of 170 watts. In comparison to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (200 W TDP), the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 performs well and delivers similar performance with significantly lower power consumption. Power is supplied through a PCIe slot and an additional 6+2-pin connector.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU (Codename GN21-X9) is a high-end laptop GPU. It is based on the AD104 chip as the desktop RTX 4070 Ti and use the Ada Lovelace architecture. The AD104 chip offers a maximum of 7.680 shaders (e.g., the RTX 4070 Ti Desktop) from which RTX 4080 Laptop uses 7.424 and a 192 Bit memory bus. The RTX 4080 mobile uses 12 GB GDDR6 dedicated graphics memory with a clock speed of 16 or 20 Gbps (effective). The TGP (Total Graphics Power) can be configured between 60 and 150 Watt (+ 25 Watt Dynamic Boost from the CPU) leading to different performance levels (the desktop RTX 4070 Ti uses 285 Watt for comparisons). The boost clock speed ranges from 1350 MHz (at 60 Watt TGP) up to 2280 MHz (150W). Therefore, the performance is also depending a lot on the power setting used for the RTX 4080 mobile in the laptop.

The synthetic performance of the RTX 4080 is clearly above the mobile RTX 3080 Ti in our tests and only bested by the mobile RTX 4090. In actual games we saw that even demanding games with Raytracing enabled (like F1 23) could be played in QHD and maximum settings. Less demanding games like Baldur's Gate 3 can be fluently played in 4k (see results below).

The RTX 4080 offers 232 tensor cores (4th gen) that enable DLSS 3 including frame generation for supported games. Furthermore, 58 raytracing cores (4rd gen) can be used for raytracing effects in supported games.

The AD103 chip is manufactured in 5nm at TSMC (4N process).