In a nutshell: Laptops featuring Nvidia's high-end RTX 50 series graphics cards have started rolling out, and early reviews suggest the company's latest flagship offers a somewhat lukewarm uplift over its predecessor. Furthermore, a new series of benchmarks indicates that moving down one rank might provide very similar performance while saving customers hundreds of dollars.
Notebookcheck recently tested a mobile Nvidia RTX 5090 and 5080 paired with the same CPU, providing a nearly like-for-like comparison. Although some laptops featuring the 5080 are up to $1,000 cheaper than 5090-equipped notebooks, the former is often less than 10 percent slower.
Using XMG Neo 16 A25 engineering samples with AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX processors, the RTX 5080 stuck closely to its larger sibling in four 3DMark tests and several high-end games. The biggest gap appeared in Steel Nomad, where the 5090 scored 6,156 – 18 percent above the 5080. Its advantage shrank to 15 percent in Port Royal at 1440p and under 10 percent in other benchmarks.
Unsurprisingly, the RTX 5090 pulled the furthest ahead in gaming at 4K, while the difference between the GPUs diminishes considerably at 1080p in most titles. For example, the 5080 and 5090 perform identically at 1080p in Final Fantasy XV, suggesting that the burden may have mostly shifted to the CPU. In most other 1080p benchmarks, the 5090's lead hovers around five percent. In 4K, it extends to roughly 15 percent in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3.
However, Monster Hunter Wilds, Alan Wake 2, and Assassin's Creed Shadows challenged both GPUs. In native 4K with ray tracing, even the laptop 5090 couldn't reach 50 fps in Monster Hunter, and the 5080 fell into the low 40s. Both cards collapsed to below 20 fps in Alan Wake 2 with ray tracing at 4K, and the 5090 maintained a 13 to 15 percent advantage at multiple resolutions in Assassin's Creed, including 1080p.
Most early reviews suggest that the mobile RTX 5090 is only worthwhile for customers upgrading from the RTX 30 series or earlier, as it only gains around 10 fps over the 4090 in most games. The results from the 5080 likely give it a far superior cost-per-frame value.
Laptops featuring the mid-range RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti are expected to appear in the coming weeks, and Nvidia is set to launch the desktop 5060 and 5060 Ti soon.