NVIDIA RTX 3500 Ada Generation Laptop GPU vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16G

NVIDIA RTX 3500 Ada Generation Laptop GPU

The Nvidia RTX 3500 Ada Generation is a higher-end professional graphics card for use in laptops that sports 5,120 CUDA cores and 12 GB of ECC GDDR6 VRAM. Brought into existence in 2023, this graphics adapter leverages TSMC's 5 nm process and Nvidia's Ada Lovelace architecture to achieve higher-than-average performance combined with moderate power consumption. The Nvidia-recommended TGP range for the card is very wide at 60 W to 140 W leading to bizarre performance differences between different systems powered by what is supposed to be the same product.

Hardware-wise, the RTX 3500 is a cut-down GeForce RTX 4070 Desktop, as far as we can tell. Consequently, both make use of the AD104 chip and have little difficulty running triple-A games at QHD 1440p.

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Architecture and Features

Ada Lovelace brings a range of improvements over older graphics cards utilizing the outgoing Ampere architecture. It's not just a better manufacturing process and a higher number of CUDA cores that we have here (up to 16,384 versus 10,752); under-the-hood refinements are plentiful, including an immensely larger L2 cache, an optimized ray tracing routine (a different wat to determine what is transparent and what isn't is used), and other changes. Naturally, these graphics cards can both encode and decode some of the most widely used video codecs, AVC, HEVC and AV1 included; they also support a host of Nvidia technologies, including Optimus and DLSS 3, and they can certainly be used for various AI tasks.

The RTX 3500 Ada features 40 RT cores of the 3rd generation, 160 Tensor cores of the 4th generation and 5,120 CUDA cores. Multiply those numbers by 1.15 and what you get looks exactly like a desktop RTX 4070: 46, 184 and 5,888, respectively. Elsewhere, the graphics card comes with 12 GB of 192-bit wide ECC GDDR6 memory for a very healthy throughput of ~432 GB/s. Error correction can be turned off if desired. The fact that error correction is present here proves that the RTX 3500 Ada is indeed targeted at professional users.

Just like Ampere-based cards, the RTX 3500 makes use of the PCI-Express 4 protocol. 8K SUHD monitors are supported, however, DP 1.4a video outputs may prove to be a bottleneck down the line.

Performance

While we have not tested a single system featuring an RTX 3500 Ada Generation as of February 2024, we have plenty of performance data for the RTX 4070 Desktop, a graphics card that's about 20% superior to the RTX 3500 Ada Generation. Based on that, we fully expect the RTX 3500 to deliver:

• a Blender 3.3 Classroom CUDA score of around 32 seconds
• a 3DMark 11 GPU score of around 44,000
• around 90 fps in GTA V (1440p - Highest settings possible, 16x AF, 4x MSAA, FXAA)
• around 50 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p - High settings, Ultra RT, "Quality" DLSS)

Nvidia's marketing materials mention "up to 23 TFLOPS" of performance, a 15% improvement over 20 TFLOPS delivered by the RTX 3000 Ada Generation.

Your mileage may vary depending on how competent the cooling solution of your laptop is and how high the TGP power target of the RTX 3500 is. One other thing worth mentioning is that enabling error correction appears to reduce the amount of video memory that is available to applications and games by up to a gigabyte.

Power consumption

Nvidia no longer divides its laptop graphics cards into Max-Q and non-max-Q models. Instead, laptop makers are free to set the TGP according to their needs, and the range can sometimes be shockingly wide. This is the case for the RTX 3500, as the lowest value recommended for it sits at just 60 W while the highest is more than two times higher at 140 W (this most likely includes Dynamic Boost). The slowest system built around an RTX 3500 Ada can easily be 60% slower than the fastest one. This is the kind of delta that we've been seeing on consumer-grade laptops featuring the latest GeForce RTX cards.

Last but not the least, the improved 5 nm process (TSMC 4N) the RTX 3500 is built with makes for very decent energy efficiency, as of mid 2023.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16G

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB is a mid-range desktop GPU and is manufactured using the 5 nm process at TSMC. In addition to the 8 GB model, there is now also a 16 GB model, which is primarily intended to offer noticeable added value for performance-hungry games. With the two GeForce RTX 4060 models, Nvidia is rounding off its current Ada-Lovelace line-up towards the mid-range. The chip used here is the AD106. This combines 4,352 memory units and 16 GB GDDR6 are available here. The memory interface is 128 bits, resulting in a memory bandwidth of 288 GB/s.

Features

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB is not deprived of the features already introduced with the high-end models of the Ada-Lovelace generation, such as DLSS 3.0 with frame generation. This clearly sets the new mid-range model apart from the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and can gain a clear advantage in games that offer these features.

Performance

Without DLSS, the performance is comparable to that of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB. Compared to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB can deliver around 10 percent more performance. Compared to AMD, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB is slightly ahead of the Radeon RX 7600. The 16 GB VRAM is noticeable in some games. Sometimes we see significantly better frame rates in games where 8 GB VRAM is not enough. Nvidia has succeeded in its goal of creating a good gaming GPU for 1080p gaming and with 16 GB of RAM, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is the more interesting of the two RTX 4060 Ti models. Unfortunately, Nvidia charges a hefty premium for the larger VRAM. This does not necessarily make it easier for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB to position itself on the market.

Power consumption

The power consumption of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB is specified by the manufacturer as 165 watts (TDP). This is 5 watts more than the 8 GB model. In order not to have to supply the graphics chip with less energy, an increase in power consumption was unavoidable. Compared to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, however, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB is still significantly more economical.