Home / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile: Performance and Specs

Top 50

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile: An In-Depth Review

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile is a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU) designed for high-performance gaming and professional workloads. In this article, we will explore its architecture, memory specifications, gaming performance, professional applications, power consumption, comparisons with competitors, practical advice for users, pros and cons, and ultimately who this GPU is best suited for.

1. Architecture and Key Features

The RTX 4080 Mobile is built on NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace architecture, a significant leap from its predecessor, Ampere. This architecture employs a 4nm manufacturing process, which enhances performance and energy efficiency. One of the standout features of the Ada Lovelace architecture is its support for real-time ray tracing (RTX) and Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS).

Unique Features

- Ray Tracing: The RTX 4080 Mobile supports advanced ray tracing, providing realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections in games.

- DLSS 3: This cutting-edge technology utilizes AI to upscale lower-resolution images, significantly boosting frame rates while maintaining visual fidelity.

- NVIDIA Reflex: This feature reduces latency during gaming, ensuring a smoother experience, crucial for competitive gaming.

2. Memory Specifications

The RTX 4080 Mobile comes equipped with 12GB of GDDR6X memory.

Memory Type and Performance

- Type: GDDR6X, which is faster and more efficient than its predecessor, GDDR6.

- Memory Bandwidth: The bandwidth of the RTX 4080 Mobile is approximately 736 GB/s, which allows for high-speed data transfer, essential for rendering high-resolution textures and large 3D models.

- Impact on Performance: The combination of ample memory and high bandwidth enables the GPU to handle demanding applications, providing smoother performance in both gaming and professional tasks.

3. Gaming Performance

In real-world gaming scenarios, the RTX 4080 Mobile excels across various resolutions.

Frame Rates in Popular Titles

- 1080p Gaming: In titles such as "Call of Duty: Warzone," users can expect an average of around 160 FPS with high settings.

- 1440p Gaming: At this resolution, games like "Cyberpunk 2077" can achieve around 100 FPS with ray tracing enabled, showcasing the GPU's power.

- 4K Gaming: While 4K is demanding, the RTX 4080 Mobile can deliver around 50-60 FPS in visually intensive games with ray tracing enabled.

Ray Tracing Impact

The GPU's ray tracing capabilities allow for stunning graphics but can impact performance. DLSS 3 mitigates this by offering improved frame rates without compromising on quality, making the RTX 4080 Mobile a great choice for gamers who prioritize visuals.

4. Professional Tasks

In addition to gaming, the RTX 4080 Mobile is highly capable for professional applications.

Video Editing and 3D Modeling

- Video Editing: Software like Adobe Premiere Pro benefits from the CUDA cores, enabling faster rendering times and smoother playback of high-resolution footage.

- 3D Modeling: Applications such as Autodesk Maya and Blender leverage the GPU for real-time rendering, significantly enhancing productivity.

Scientific Calculations

The RTX 4080 Mobile supports CUDA and OpenCL, allowing users to perform complex calculations and simulations efficiently. This makes it an excellent choice for data scientists and researchers needing high computational power.

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Management

The RTX 4080 Mobile has a thermal design power (TDP) of around 150-175 watts, depending on the laptop configuration.

Cooling Recommendations

- Cooling Solutions: Given the TDP, it's crucial to pair the GPU with a robust cooling solution. Look for laptops with advanced cooling systems, such as vapor chamber cooling or multiple fans.

- Case Considerations: Ensure your laptop chassis has adequate ventilation to prevent thermal throttling.

6. Comparison with Competitors

When comparing the RTX 4080 Mobile to similar models, it stands out but faces competition.

AMD Counterparts

- AMD Radeon RX 7900M: While competitive in raw performance, especially in rasterization, it lacks the same level of ray tracing capability and DLSS features.

NVIDIA Rival Models

- RTX 4070 Mobile: Offers slightly lower performance but at a reduced price point, making it a more budget-friendly option.

7. Practical Advice for Users

When considering the RTX 4080 Mobile, keep the following in mind:

Power Supply Recommendations

- PSU Requirements: Ensure your laptop has a power supply capable of delivering sufficient wattage to support the GPU, ideally 200W or more.

- Compatibility: Check if the laptop is compatible with the RTX 4080 Mobile and comes with the necessary cooling.

Driver Nuances

- Driver Updates: Regularly update NVIDIA drivers to ensure optimal performance and compatibility with the latest games and applications.

8. Pros and Cons of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile

Pros

- Exceptional Gaming Performance: High frame rates at various resolutions, especially with ray tracing enabled.

- Strong Professional Capabilities: Excellent for video editing, 3D modeling, and scientific calculations.

- Advanced Features: Support for DLSS 3 and ray tracing enhances gaming and rendering quality.

Cons

- Price: Premium pricing compared to lower-tier models may deter budget-conscious buyers.

- Power Consumption: Higher TDP may lead to reduced battery life in laptops under heavy load.

9. Conclusion: Who Is the RTX 4080 Mobile For?

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile is an impressive GPU that caters to gamers and professionals alike. Its combination of high performance, advanced technology, and strong support for ray tracing and AI upscaling makes it ideal for those who demand the best from their hardware.

Ideal Users

- Gamers: If you’re looking for a top-tier gaming experience, especially in demanding titles with ray tracing, the RTX 4080 Mobile is a fantastic choice.

- Content Creators: Video editors and 3D modelers will appreciate the speed and efficiency it brings to professional applications.

- Researchers and Scientists: Those needing high computational power for simulations and calculations will benefit from its CUDA and OpenCL support.

In summary, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile is a powerhouse that delivers exceptional performance and advanced features, making it a worthy investment for serious gamers and professionals.

Top Mobile GPU: 14

Likes

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2023

Model Name

GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile

Generation

GeForce 40 Mobile

Base Clock

1290MHz

Boost Clock

1665MHz

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

7424

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Transistors

35,800 million

RT Cores

Tensor Cores

Tensor Cores are specialized processing units designed specifically for deep learning, providing higher training and inference performance compared to FP32 training. They enable rapid computations in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and personalized recommendations. The two most notable applications of Tensor Cores are DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AI Denoiser for noise reduction.

232

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

232

L1 Cache

128 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

48MB

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x16

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

4 nm

Architecture

Ada Lovelace

TDP

110W

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

12GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

192bit

Memory Clock

2250MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

432.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

133.2 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

386.3 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

24.72 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

386.3 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

24.224 TFlops

Miscellaneous

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 Ultimate (12_2)

CUDA

8.9

Power Connectors

None

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Shader Model

6.7