They kinda have been at the end of Maxwell and during the Pascal era. GTX 980 in laptops was the first "desktop-class" mobile GPU, released with much fanfare from Nvidia as a different card from the previous GTX 980M. And it actually held very close to a regular 980: //www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-980-Notebook.150599.0.htmlShadowboxer said:Yeah mobile GPUs have never been equivalent to desktop GPUs and tech reporters and enthusiasts have been complaining about it since forever.Click to expand...
This was the reason why starting with 10xx series Nvidia dropped the "M" suffix in model names entirely. Performance parity with desktop became a big part of their marketing for a while. Except for Max-Q models, 10xx mobile chips where often within 5-15% of desktop counterparts in games. There were of course some outliers, but generally the performance delta was small - and notebooks used the same chips as desktops, only clocked lower and possibly better binned. You can check it on //www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphics-Cards.13849.0.html - just search for GTX 1060/1070/1080, allow both desktop and laptop GPUs and see the results. This also mostly holds for non-Max-Q variants of mobile 16xx GPUs - the performance gap might be slightly higher there, but it's still pretty small.
Then came the Max-Qs, the 2xxx series, multiple TDP variants and while the names stayed the same, the performance of mobile GPUs started lagging behind. Nvidia also started using different chip configurations or even different chips in notebook variants altogether... And now the disparity is almost as big as before, only model names are more confusing.
I can second that: I have a GTX 1070 in my laptop and in my desktop, and they are indeed in spitting distance. Of course their TDP is much closer [150W vs 120W], and the mobile variant [weirdly enough] hase MORE cuda cores [2048 vs 1920], so no wonder they are close. For the 3070, with such a huge TDP difference [and noticably less Cuda cores], they don't stand a chance to offer comparable performance...just bring back the "M" moniker, no shame in that.enemys said:They kinda have been at the end of Maxwell and during the Pascal era. GTX 980 in laptops was the first "desktop-class" mobile GPU, released with much fanfare from Nvidia as a different card from the previous GTX 980M. And it actually held very close to a regular 980: //www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-980-Notebook.150599.0.html
This was the reason why starting with 10xx series Nvidia dropped the "M" suffix in model names entirely. Performance parity with desktop became a big part of their marketing for a while. Except for Max-Q models, 10xx mobile chips where often within 5-15% of desktop counterparts in games. There were of course some outliers, but generally the performance delta was small - and notebooks used the same chips as desktops, only clocked lower and possibly better binned. You can check it on //www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphics-Cards.13849.0.html - just search for GTX 1060/1070/1080, allow both desktop and laptop GPUs and see the results. This also mostly holds for non-Max-Q variants of mobile 16xx GPUs - the performance gap might be slightly higher there, but it's still pretty small.
Then came the Max-Qs, the 2xxx series, multiple TDP variants and while the names stayed the same, the performance of mobile GPUs started lagging behind. Nvidia also started using different chip configurations or even different chips in notebook variants altogether... And now the disparity is almost as big as before, only model names are more confusing.Click to expand...
It was vastly different for me: like you, I had to carry around the "working" laptop, but that didn't hold me back to carry around my personal one. There were always [sometimes really silly] limitations on the working one, so having my own was useful not only for leisure, but to support my work as well. Spending months and months on the road or commuting on a weekly basis, not having my gaming laptop with me would have been a noticable downside. I'm not sure how many other guys are there like me, but I know I wasn't the only oneEdmondRC said:After owning a couple gaming laptops, I'm truly perplexed as to their purpose. I still played games at home 99% of the time, typically on a larger monitor. When I did take my laptop with me it was always a burden. I couldn't take it on business trips because I already had to tote my work laptop with me. I ended up taking on vacations, but of course I didn't really use it. At the end of the day, it sat at home, plugged into a monitor, just like a desktop PC. The portability wasn't worth the premium and loss of performance. I'm not saying this is true for everyone, and of course there is the market that uses the GPU for their productivity and graphic design, but I tried to like gaming laptops and I just never found they had any value to me.Click to expand...
EdmondRC said:After owning a couple gaming laptops, I'm truly perplexed as to their purpose. I still played games at home 99% of the time, typically on a larger monitor. When I did take my laptop with me it was always a burden. I couldn't take it on business trips because I already had to tote my work laptop with me. I ended up taking on vacations, but of course I didn't really use it. At the end of the day, it sat at home, plugged into a monitor, just like a desktop PC. The portability wasn't worth the premium and loss of performance. I'm not saying this is true for everyone, and of course there is the market that uses the GPU for their productivity and graphic design, but I tried to like gaming laptops and I just never found they had any value to me.Click to expand...
I was on both sides of the fence. When I lived in an apartment, was moving a lot, and had to spend several hours a week at the laundromat, a gaming laptop was great. Many hours of civ V were had, and I didnt have to move a desktop setup everytime I went somewhere else.Aryassen said:It was vastly different for me: like you, I had to carry around the "working" laptop, but that didn't hold me back to carry around my personal one. There were always [sometimes really silly] limitations on the working one, so having my own was useful not only for leisure, but to support my work as well. Spending months and months on the road or commuting on a weekly basis, not having my gaming laptop with me would have been a noticable downside. I'm not sure how many other guys are there like me, but I know I wasn't the only oneClick to expand...
However, it was never convenient. When traveling, I'm either driving or preoccupied, so no gaming can be done. At home I have a desktop that gets used. On vacation I'm on vacation. Once I moved to a house the use case for a gaming laptop vanished.
These days iGPUs are powerful enough to handle many games. Tongfang finally made the laptop I wanted [big iGPU, big battery, good screen, no dGPU] in the mechrevio1, sold as the thinn 15 in the USA, its powerful enough to run civ, tropico, xcom, battlefront, ece while also getting long battery life. I woudlnt want to play newer games on a hot running, loud, heavy gaming laptop these days.
It mostly depends on what graphics of games your playing. Some games I have cannot handle a vega. Assetto corsa for exampleTheinsanegamer said:I was on both sides of the fence. When I lived in an apartment, was moving a lot, and had to spend several hours a week at the laundromat, a gaming laptop was great. Many hours of civ V were had, and I didnt have to move a desktop setup everytime I went somewhere else.
However, it was never convenient. When traveling, I'm either driving or preoccupied, so no gaming can be done. At home I have a desktop that gets used. On vacation I'm on vacation. Once I moved to a house the use case for a gaming laptop vanished.
These days iGPUs are powerful enough to handle many games. Tongfang finally made the laptop I wanted [big iGPU, big battery, good screen, no dGPU] in the mechrevio1, sold as the thinn 15 in the USA, its powerful enough to run civ, tropico, xcom, battlefront, ece while also getting long battery life. I woudlnt want to play newer games on a hot running, loud, heavy gaming laptop these days.Click to expand...
Thermal/power throttling in action. Ampere, much like fermi, is jsut too hungry for the full die to be useful in mobile. Ideally, the GA 106 die should have been as big as mobile ampere should have gone, power limits become too difficult to deal with once you go past 100 watts.Toju Mikie said:Yep, and for slim laptops, the performance for the 3080 laptop is even more worse than the desktop version. The GS66 Stealth laptop has the same performance for the 3070 and the 3080, so no increased performance if you buy the 3080 laptop vs the 3070 laptop.Click to expand...
Well yes, but I have a desktop to play games like that.VEGGIM said:It mostly depends on what graphics of games your playing. Some games I have cannot handle a vega. Assetto corsa for exampleClick to expand...
To me, a laptop with a powerful iGPU has a huge back catalog of games that run perfectly without requiring a dGPU, those that need the extra power I can play at home.
IMO with so many games available today I dont need to have all of them playable on the go. I mean how much time do I spend gaming away from home? Not much. If I still mvoed frequently it'd be different, but moreso because a 17 inch gaming laptop is easier to move to a new place then a desktop, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, ece are.
There's one thing this does show, that the whole ampere efficiency thing was probably a lie. cause it would be closer not the opposite. It shows how power hungry ampere actually is.Theinsanegamer said:Thermal/power throttling in action. Ampere, much like fermi, is jsut too hungry for the full die to be useful in mobile. Ideally, the GA 106 die should have been as big as mobile ampere should have gone, power limits become too difficult to deal with once you go past 100 watts.
Well yes, but I have a desktop to play games like that.
To me, a laptop with a powerful iGPU has a huge back catalog of games that run perfectly without requiring a dGPU, those that need the extra power I can play at home.
IMO with so many games available today I dont need to have all of them playable on the go. I mean how much time do I spend gaming away from home? Not much. If I still mvoed frequently it'd be different, but moreso because a 17 inch gaming laptop is easier to move to a new place then a desktop, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, ece are.Click to expand...
Well I travel internationally like every single year. And also I'm taken out on the weekend to go to someone's house most of the time.[if we didn't have covid] it's also not like I can staple a battery onto a desktop. That's just impossible. And the ones that do have them and large and can probably only last minutes or hours on it.amghwk said:To think of all the heat production and fan noise when gaming something worthy of the GPU, ......nah.... I'll pass. For hardcore gaming, I would prefer to stick with a desktop system.
For me, for a laptop, I prefer to use an integrated graphics for the reduced heat production and reduced fan noise. And I prefer to handle a cooler laptop, both on my hands and when I put it on my lap. And I play games that don't require intense graphics prowess. There are lots of games that don't need the dGPU. And there are lots of emulations and games in them that one lifetime is not enough to play them all.
For high end gaming, a laptop needs to be tethered to a wall power socket anyway. Unless one wants to play only for an hour or so. But then need to plug in for charging again. Why not just use a desktop which is cheaper and can install more powerful graphics card in it?
Some argue that they can't carry a desktop everywhere. Yes, you go somewhere to work. Not going be gaming every given opportunity everywhere you go right?Click to expand...
Using the igpu only basically cuts more than half the games that can be used without lagging.