Yes, Nvidia has managed to jam the RTX 4090 into a laptop, but there will be more affordable options coming February 22 starting at $999.
As anticipated, Nvidia has just announced during its CES 2023 stream that mobile versions of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, RTX 4060, and RTX 4070 will be making their way into gaming laptops this year. Even the RTX 4080 and beastly RTX 4090 are already moving into the mobile gaming space, too, as "a new class of enthusiast laptops."
CES 2023 is a next-gen laptop bonanza right now, so expect countless posts about powerful gaming laptops over this week. Impressively, Nvidia has managed to jam its latest, and bulkiest, Ada GPU innovations into some very small and highly portable machines. In fact, gaming laptops are going to be hitting us from every direction this week, touting mobile machines with Max-Q GPUs, and in some impressive form factors considering the size of their desktop counterparts.
Along with the announcement comes four new Max-Q innovations. Working to make all this mobile gaming possible will be DLSS 3, low voltage GDDR6 memory, on-chip memory optimisations, and even something called Tri-speed memory (for dynamic GPU memory power switching).
I'm looking forward to potentially being able to game on a 14-inch laptop this year, as Nvidia notes they're "up to twice as fast as a PlayStation 5, but one sixth the size." The more affordable end of the Ada laptop market will come in starting at $999, and will be available from February 22.
Before that, however, we'll get systems at the top end, where Nvidia claims RTX 4080 and 4090 gaming laptops will have the power to run "up to three 4K gaming monitors at up to 60 fps; enough to power a professional grade driving simulator."
We'll believe that when we see it, thanks. Though I will admit these are looking pretty damned promising, the numbers Nvidia is touting are theoretical performance projections, not actual benchmarks. Just remember that.
Starting at $1,999, the flagship laptops will start to trickle onto the market on February 8. Better get my favourite "professional grade driving simulator" downloaded ready, I guess.
