NVIDIA hints at RTX 30 laptop graphics launch on January 12th
Your gaming portable is about to get a speed boost.
You might not have to wait much longer to get a taste of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 series in your laptop. Tom’s Guide points out that NVIDIA has shared a not-so-subtle teaser for its mobile RTX 30 graphics ahead of its January 12th CES event. You only get fleeting glimpses, but the brief clip shows both a laptop and what’s clearly a portable-oriented GPU.
Store listings for RTX 30-equipped laptops might offer a clue as to what you can expect. NVIDIA is reportedly planning rough equivalents to most of its desktop GPUs, including an RTX 3060 with 6GB of RAM, a 3070 Max-Q with 8GB of memory and a flagship RTX 3080 Max-Q with 16GB of RAM — even more than the 10GB of the desktop 3080.
The cards should benefit from Ampere architecture improvements like faster ray tracing, and might add Resizable Base Address Register tech that boosts communication between the CPU and GPU. Existing RTX 30 chips are technically capable, so it may be just a matter of enabling the feature through software.
NVIDIA might also introduce a non-Ti RTX 3060 for desktops at the virtual event.
There are still some unanswered questions that may have to wait until after the presentation. It’s not certain how well laptop RTX 30 graphics compare with their counterparts. Power consumption is also something of a mystery. RTX 30 boards consume a lot of power, and it’s not certain how NVIDIA will keep that consumption in check for portable machines.
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— NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) January 9, 2021