Why RTX 50 series gaming laptops will SUCK!

Why RTX 50 series gaming laptops will SUCK

With all the buzz around NVIDIA’s 50 series GPUs, many are excited to see new gaming laptops soon. But hold your horses, YouTuber Jarrod’s Tech came up with a few solid observations on why the RTX 50 series might actually suck for laptops, and here’s our take on it!

NVIDIA’s 50 series: Hype vs Reality 

While NVIDIA touted 4090 level of performance with just an RTX 5070, the reality couldn’t be further from the truth once you strip off all the AI and marketing. The RTX 5090 is a beast of a performer but consumes a whopping 575 watts of power. The RTX 5080 barely brings any meaningful upgrade over its predecessor and the 70 class cards…well they are just 70 class cards that are not beating last-generation flagships anytime soon.

RTX 50 series gaming laptops will SUCK!

Over on the laptop side, we’ll have to wait a few months to get the actual hardware in our hands but the spec sheet is already available. And here’s how it doesn’t look too good for our upcoming hero GPUs.

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Laptop RTX 5090 will be worse than you think

An independent review from Hardware Unboxed shows the desktop RTX 5090 being anywhere from 12-26% better than the 4090 in games while having roughly around 30% more cores, using 30% more power, and having 30% more VRAM. 

RTX 4090 vs RTX 5090 (Laptop and Desktop)
Source: Jarrod’s Tech

While that’s a respectable bump for our desktop gamers out there, the laptop 5090 only gets a modest 10% bump in cores over its predecessor with the same 150W (+25W) TGP. What that means is that the laptop version of the RTX 5090 will perform very similarly to a (laptop) 4090 and likely not be worth the extra premium….unless..you are into AI, and find the extra 8GB of GDDR7 memory super useful.

RTX 5080 is worse both ways

Referencing another Hardware Unboxed video, the desktop RTX 5080 is just 6.5% to 14% better than the RTX 4080. It brings even fewer hardware upgrades with just a slight bump in cores and power (~10%) alongside faster GDDR7 memory.

RTX 4080 vs RTX 5080 (Laptop and Desktop)
Source: Jarrod’s Tech

Understandably, desktop folks are not exactly happy with such a tiny bump but the situation over on laptop-land is even worse. The upcoming laptop RTX 5080 will have almost the same amount of cores as the RTX 4080 (mobile) with the same 150W TGP (175W with boost) so basically no improvement in terms of raw power. There’s a jump to 16 gigs of GDDR7 memory though which might come handy in playing at 4k or running small LLMs locally. 

RTX 5070 Mobile will still rock 8GB of VRAM

An……d, we still have an 8GB 70-class GPU in 2025. The laptop version of the RTX 5070 will have the same 8GB VRAM capacity as the RTX 4070 with exactly the same number of CUDA cores as well. The amount of power fed to the GPU is actually lower than last generation, but 100W seems to be around the sweet spot for RTX **70 cards on mobile so that’s not exactly a downgrade. Overall, no upgrades in sight at all, especially when it comes to raw rasterization rigor.

The RTX 5070 Ti does look pretty interesting in comparison with higher VRAM (12GB GDDR7) and more CUDA (5,888) but compared to last gen’s 80 class (RTX 4080 Mobile), it’s still quite a ways behind on cores and power.

It’ll be expensive…too!

Although the starting prices NVIDIA showcased for RTX 50 series gaming laptops were reasonable, it might still be a better idea to go last gen, for anything lower than a 90-class if you’re looking for value. The RTX 5080 for example is expected to ship in laptops ranging between USD 2,200 – and USD 3,000 on launch while the RTX 5070 should start at around USD 1,200. For the same price, you can snag up a Legion Pro 7i with top-of-a-line i9 processor and RTX 4090 GPU today or get an RTX 4070 laptop for under a thousand dollars.

RTX 50 series laptops pricing

Will Multi Frame Gen Save the Day? 

One of the major aspects of RTX 50 series GPUs is the exclusive support for DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation. It’s basically Frame Gen but instead of generating an additional AI frame in between two rendered frames, Multi Frame Gen (MFG) generates THREE additional AI frames. Surprisingly, the latency doesn’t seem to increase much compared to regular Frame Gen, so the responsiveness is just as good. Besides a few motion artifacts, this could be the feature that pulls many buyers to the RTX 50 series laptops over older generations. But are AI frames worth paying extra for? That’s ultimately going to be for you to decide. 

Should you skip the RTX 50 series entirely?

While we listed all the reasons why the upcoming RTX 50 series gaming laptops might suck, there are a few that might be worth upgrading to! DLSS 4 as mentioned earlier is available to all RTX cards, but Multiframe Generation is going to be exclusive to these new gaming laptops. Moreover, most gaming laptops featuring these GPUs have some form of re-design regarding their chassis or cooling alongside newer Intel and AMD processors. So, you’ll be getting better systems overall. At the end of the day, the decision to buy or not will be yours to keep, and there’s plenty of more time to speculate and debate so we are calling its quits here today!

  • Watch Jarrod’s full video on this topic where he dives deeper into the numbers: