RTX 5080 laptop GPU beats RTX 4090 counterpart — delivers 10% less performance than RTX 5090

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series laptop GPUs have recently launched, and although the availability of devices with these graphics cards is spotty at best, official benchmarks are rolling out to show us how they perform compared to other cards. We’ve already seen multiple reviews for the RTX 5090 laptop GPU, like Tom’s Hardware’s look at the Razer Blade 16, but RTX 5080 laptops are still few and far between. However, Notebook Check got its hands on two Schenker Neo 16 test units, both equipped with a Ryzen 9 9955HX CPU and an RTX 5080 laptop GPU, and shared the graphics benchmark results for these units.

The performance difference between the RTX 5080 laptop and the RTX 5090 laptop averages 8% to 15%, around the same gap as the previous generation laptop GPUs. However, despite not being the top-end mobile GPU, the 5080 laptop beats the RTX 4090 laptop in benchmark numbers.

Of course, benchmark numbers mean nothing if they cannot be translated to actual FPS numbers. So, we also checked the test results on various games and found that the difference between the average FPS numbers of the 5080 and 5090 laptop GPUs was around 5%. This gap is much smaller than the 12.82% average uplift in FPS numbers between the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 laptop GPUs. Still, the RTX 5080 laptop outperformed the RTX 4090 laptop in real-world testing, with the newer GPU delivering about 5% more frames per second versus the 4090 laptop and an almost 20% uplift versus the 4080 laptop.

The RTX 5080 seemingly offers the best value for money when it comes to the latest mobile GPUs. While it doesn’t have the raw horsepower of the RTX 5090 laptop, the slight difference in actual performance means you’re not missing out much by going with the sensible choice. On top of that, you’re probably saving hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars by going with the cheaper 50-series option.

But if you already have an RTX 4090 laptop GPU, it’s probably best to skip this generation. This is especially true as your device is probably under two years old, and you’ll only get a 5% to 10% improvement with a Blackwell graphics card.