NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (130W) vs RTX 3070 (130W) – the RTX 3080 wins but the RTX 3070 is the smart buy

When it comes to high-end mobile GPUs, the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 are at the top of the food chain. Most laptops that are equipped with these chips come with a good cooling solution and in most cases, these machines aren’t too good in terms of portability due to the fact the internals need significant cooling that includes a lot of heat pipes and cooling plates for the GPU memory and VRMs.

Now, it’s clear that the GeForce RTX 3080 is faster compared to the RTX 3070 if their TGPs are equal. That’s why for today’s comparison we picked the 130W versions of the GPUs and they are both fitted in MSI GP66 Leopard 10 UH/UG machines. This will show us how faster the GeForce RTX 3080 (130W) is when it’s compared to the GeForce RTX 3070 (130W).

Contents


GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 variants

  GeForce RTX 3080 [130W] GeForce RTX 3070 [130W]
Architecture Ampere Ampere
GPU chip GA104 GA104
Shader units 6144 (+20%) 5120
ROPs 96 96
Base Clock (MHz) up to 1185 (+7%) 1110
Boost clock (MHz) up to 1605 1620 (+1%)
Memory clock (MHz) 1750 1750
Memory size (MB) 8192 8192
Memory type GDDR6 GDDR6
Memory bus width (bit) 256 256
TGP (Total Graphics Power) 130W 130W
DirectX version 12.1 12.1
Technology 8nm 8nm
RTX capabilities Yes  Yes
Release date 01.2021 01.2021
Detailed specs Link Link

 

Synthetic benchmarks

Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)

Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)


Gaming tests and gameplay videos (ext. monitor)


Verdict

The GeForce RTX 3070 (130W) is 14% slower overall when compared to the GeForce RTX 3080 (130W) and it sounds like a normal difference. The bigger GPU has more firepower under the hood represented by more CUDAs and ROPs which leads to higher performance. On the other hand, the GeForce RTX 3070 (130W) is still a great mobile GPU that is fast enough even for games like Cyberpunk 2077 on Ultra quality. In addition, this GPU can save you some bucks if you pick it instead of its bigger and more expensive sibling.

All laptops equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 [130W]

All laptops equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 [130W]

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments