RTX 4090 Laptop vs Desktop - It’s not even close…

The difference between Nvidia’s RTX 4090 laptop and desktop GPUs is BIG! I’ve compared 25 games at 4K, 1440p and 1080p to show you the differences!

Test PC Components:

EVERYTHING I USE:

FOLLOW ME:

RTX 4090 Laptop vs Desktop Timestamps:
0:00 Are 4090 Laptop vs Desktop the same?
0:20 GPU Spec Differences
0:49 4090 Laptop Closer to 4080 Desktop
1:00 Bring the “M” back!
1:23 Why this naming can be misleading
1:59 Laptop Test System
2:19 Desktop Test System
2:42 Differences Between My Laptop & Desktop
3:02 GPU Power Limit Differences
3:27 Thermals
3:39 Fan Noise Difference
3:53 Power Draw
4:06 Performance Per Watt
4:27 Temperatures & Clock Speed
4:48 PCIe Bandwidth Difference
5:03 25 Games Compared (4K, 1440p & 1080p)
5:13 A Plague Tale: Requiem
5:43 A Plague Tale: Requiem + DLSS & Frame Generation
6:22 Cyberpunk 2077
6:41 Cyberpunk 2077 + RT, DLSS & Frame Generation
7:00 Dead Space
7:21 Dead Space + DLSS
7:33 The Witcher 3 + RT & FSR
7:59 The Witcher 3 + RT, FSR & Frame Generation
8:13 Microsoft Flight Simulator
8:45 Microsoft Flight Simulator + DLSS & Frame Generation
9:02 Spider-Man
9:41 Spider-Man + DLSS & Frame Generation
9:53 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
10:12 Apex Legends
10:53 Control
11:03 Fortnite
11:27 15 More Games Tested!
11:56 25 Game Average Difference at 1080p
12:40 25 Game Average Difference at 1440p
13:11 25 Game Average Difference at 4K
13:49 25 Game Average
14:24 Content Creation (Blender/V-Ray/DaVinci Resolve)
15:13 Price Difference
16:32 Cost Per Frame Value
16:45 Do You Need Portability? How Much Space?
17:41 Upgrade Options
18:02 RTX 4090 Laptop or Desktop GPU Worth it?
18:27 More Laptop vs Desktop Comparisons!

Disclosure: Purchases made through store links above may provide some compensation to Jarrod'sTech.

[JarrodsTech]

Update: At 4:49 I show that this laptop has 8 lanes of PCIe 4 for the GPU, which is correct, however not all 4090 laptops are like this. It seems to only be 8 lanes if the laptop also has an M.2 slot that supports Gen 5, like this GT77 laptop from MSI. I have another 4090 laptop here that uses 16 lanes and hits 24gb/s in the test just like the desktop. Difficult to say how much difference this makes though, I wouldn't expect too much, not enough to affect the conclusion of this comparison at least.

[ChinchillaBONK]

The high noise on the laptop is great for Flight simulators immersion

[aeroswft]

Nvidia rebranding the 4080 laptop as a 4090 to trick people into thinking that they're getting the fastest GPU available so laptop manufacturers can charge sky high price for their products.. classic.

[ArcienPlaysGames]

Been here for a long time, but I don't think I've ever gotten to say this: I really appreciate how you don't do these kinds of intro graphics or music for your videos. You just get straight to the point.

Lots of creators/reviewers are so adamant on making their audiovisual presentation their channel's identity (which there's nothing wrong with btw, but sometimes, it becomes the focus and it can be a bit much). Your channel's identity is NOT doing that, and it makes you stand out as a result.

Alongside Floss, you're my favourite tech reviewer and it's not even close.

[crxtodd]

Jarrod's channel is, by far, the best place to get your detailed laptop info. Thanks for the excellent content, as usual!

[nomercy]

Since the specs are way closer to the 4080 I would like to see a comparison with that as well

[drgapinski]

It's be cool to see how this laptop compares to the current desktop 4080 or last gen's desktop 3090 Ti just to see a more extreme value discrepency.

[DTD]

It was actually the 900-series that last used the -M notation, because they were trying to highlight the fact that the newer laptop dGPUs in the 10-series had closer parity with the desktop specs (minus wattage).

That said, if they're going to deviate this hard, you're absolutely right. They should either include the -M, or name them more aptly for the specs they're meeting. This is either a 4090M or it's a low power 4080, but it's definitely no 4090.

[worldsfirstlol]

I mean, for a laptop, these performance numbers are super impressive. For a portable gaming option its great.

[cameronbosch]

1:09 Nvidia actually had it with the Maxwell (900 series) GPUs and older, but they dropped them with Pascal (1000 series). For Pascal and even Turing, performance between laptop GPUs and desktop GPUs _were_ very close. But with Ampere (3000 series) and later, that is no longer the case.

I agree, the M designation should have been brought back with the RTX 3000 series.

[amiraliseyedi]

that'd be awesome if you could compare RTX 4090 laptop with RTX 4080 or 4070Ti desktop.

[pummelman]

The amount of details jarrod gave us, respect, thank you I learned alot about laptops

[zac.le]

Mobile graphic card (let's say rtx x070 mobile) improvement through generation would be a great idea.
I know it would be paired with different cpu but generational differences are expected

[MrTelecasterIV]

I used to buy these pc magazines and remember reading about laptops running the original Far Cry at med. settings at a decent resolution. It was considered a miracle. It still amazes me the power notebooks have these days. And still we are complaining... I grew up with a Dell Optiplex 166mhz Pentium, 32mb RAM and a S3 4mb GPU, we are truly spoiled these days.

[xin]

This is exactly what I am looking for, fps of laptop in 1440p matching exactly the same as desktop in 4k. That's good enough considering viewing distance and screen size. I can't complain as a laptop gamer.

[ricardorocha]

Your results are in line with ones of the Hardware Unboxed.

Although the specifications of 4090 Laptop GPU are similar to the destkop 4080, it seens that the performance is more in line with 4070 TI desktop. So, I think It would be a good idea make comparisons of 4090 Laptop with 4080 and 4070 TI desktop.

[muhammadshaffkhilji]

Hey Jarrod I have A few recommendations for when you do a comparison of differnt CPUs in games for example since you compare 11th gen vs Ryzen 5000 series you seem to always test games that are more demanding on the GPU rather than the CPU eg Cyberpunk 2077 or Control, or if there are some CPU intensive games they ussualy always hit 300+ fps any ways I think for most of the users It doesn't even matter that much if the game can already hit 250+ fps in CS go, sure some competitive players still might might want to see that but the experience is mostly gonna be the same unless they have like 360hz monitors...
So my Personal Recommendation is when you Compare Intel 13th gen vs Ryzen 7000 series in games Use the Cpu intensive games with setting in that affect the CPU the most...
For Example Raytracing in games Nowdays seems to be getting A lot CPU intensive
So You shold test The recent Games that have Raytracing

1: Spiderman Remastered (With RAYTRACING)
2 Hogwarts Legacy (With RAYTRACING)
ETC....

And if you think that is a lot of work load I think you should just stop testing the lower settings of the (Story Driven Games i.e Single Player games) from the benchmarks of the higer-end Laptops
Like Realisticly No one is goona want to Buy An RTX 4060 laptop or higher to Play on Low or Medium setting on (Single player games)
So for single player games Just test the Following settings from Now on...

1 : High
2 : Very High or Ultra (if Available)
3 : Raytracing Medium
4 : Raytracing Ultra

Granted you will have to test Dlss3 or FSR3 when that becomes available and you have two resolutions to test 😬
So,
For Upscaling use the following setting

5: Very high or Ultra (if Available) + Dlss2 /or Fsr2 (Quality)

6: Raytracing Ultra + Dlss2 /or Fsr2 (Quality)

7: Raytracing Ultra + Dlss2 /or Fsr2 (Quality) + Dlss3 /or Fsr3

Please Consider testing according to them as they might be more helpful for a lot of people By tehe way Love your Videos Man ❤
Keep up the Good work .

[TabalugaDragon]

1:07 umm no, 1000 series didn't have "m" in the name because mobile GPUs in that generation has essentially the same specs and nearly the same performance as the desktop ones.

[jlb]

I really want to see laptop 4080 vs 4090 on the same machine. We need to see what the gains are :)

[wazkangz]

At least the 30 series were a lot closer to each other and felt like a purchase that was worth it. These gaps make it seem less worth it to get higher end laptops.