Don’t waste your money buying a high-powered RTX 4050, 4060, or 4070 laptop GPU! They don’t actually perform any better in games compared to cheaper laptops with lower-powered versions. In the past, gaming laptops with higher-powered GPUs would get better FPS in games. More power equals more performance. But that’s not always the case with Nvidia’s new RTX 40 series. These are the power level ranges that all 5 of Nvidia’s new RTX 40 laptop GPUs can run between, without dynamic boost. If we include dynamic boost, then the actual maximum is 25 watts higher than all these. And brands are definitely advertising their laptops with these maximum power levels. But check this out. Here’s how the RTX 4050, 4060, and 4070 laptop GPUs perform with only the Heaven GPU stress test running. These are all max-powered 140-watt laptops.

including 25 watts of dynamic boost. The 
4050 seems to be running around 80 watts,   the 4060 is below 100 watts, 
while the 4070 is below 90 watts. But then on the other hand, the 
higher tier RTX 4080 and 4090   laptop GPUs are able to run closer to 
160 watts in the same GPU stress test,   so they’re actually able to run in the dynamic 
boost range closer to their maximum limit. So what’s going on with the lower tier 
GPUs? They’re not thermal throttling,   so why aren’t they going higher? If we look under the GPU performance 
limiters section of hardware info,   we can see that the reliability voltage limit 
gets hit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this   before RTX 40 series, but it’s happening on the 
4050, 4060 and 4070 in a GPU only stress test.

If we change to a different GPU workload like Furmark, then suddenly we’ve got no problem hitting 140 watts. The voltage limit is not hit, so it clearly depends on the GPU workload being run. Which makes me wonder, do games actually perform any better at 140 watts? These lines show how all 5 GPUs score in Timespy graphics in 10-watt power increments. At around 100 watts or so, the 4050, 4060, and 4070 start flatlining and are not able to achieve higher scores despite there being more power limit headroom available. This is because they’re hitting that voltage limit, preventing them from actually running at higher wattage. The 4080 and 4090, on the other hand, have no problem reaching higher scores with more power. Interestingly, the 4090 doesn’t really perform all that differently between 80 and 95 watts, but that’s a story for another time.

Of course, Time Spy isn’t an actual game. Different games require different resources, and perform differently, so I’ve tested 10 games on the RTX 4050, 4060, and 4070 laptop GPUs in 10-watt power increments to see if more power actually gives us more FPS. These are the average frame rates from all 10 games tested on the RTX 4050 laptop GPU at 1080p at different power levels. We start out with 40 watts down the bottom to represent a more budget-friendly laptop with lower power limit, and go right up to 140 watts to show what the most powerful 4050 can achieve best case. Once we get to about 90 watts, the 4050 isn’t really giving us any more FPS with higher power levels because they're not actually being reached due to NVIDIA's voltage limit. Now here’s how things look if we average the same 10 games, but on the higher tier RTX 4060 laptop.

GPU at the higher 1440p resolution. This time, 
there’s not really a performance improvement beyond 100 watts. We’re talking about less than 
a 1 FPS difference between 100 and 140 watts, so within the margin of error range and not 
something you’d notice when playing. There’s a 53% FPS boost going from 40 to 90 watts, 
that’s where most of the gains come from. It’s a similar deal on the RTX 4070 laptop 
GPU, with a 47% improvement going from 40 to 90 watts. Again, 100 watts and above 
gave basically no extra performance, while 90 watts is only like 1 FPS slower than 
100 watts on average, so diminishing returns above 90 watts, because it’s not actually 
going any higher due to the voltage limit. The dips in performance, as measured by the 1% 
lows, weren’t as consistent as the average FPS

at 100 watts and above. I don’t think this is 
due to dynamic boost, because again the higher   wattages aren't actually getting hit. If I had 
to guess, constantly hitting the voltage throttle   limit and operating in that state may not be as 
smooth compared to not running into it at all. I didn’t test all 10 games on the RTX 4080 
and 4090 laptop GPUs, but there’s no need   to. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is enough to 
confirm what we saw in the Time Spy graph   earlier. That the 4080 and 4090 are able to scale 
better, more power gives them more performance. You can check the raw FPS numbers in all 
10 games at 11 different power levels on   all 3 GPUs with the link below the video. 
I’ve uploaded them for channel supporters,   as this amount of testing takes an enormous 
amount of time, and it's your support that

allows me to do these thorough investigations. 
But spoiler, in the 10 games that I tested, there weren’t any outliers. All of the games stopped 
performing better once we got to 100 watts. Now I have only tested games here. It is possible 
that other workloads or maybe even specific games might be able to get a performance improvement 
at 140 watts without being hit by that voltage limit. But that wasn’t the case in the 
10 random games that I’ve tested here, so I can only assume that that’s going 
to be the case in the majority of games. I don’t know if there will ever be a way to 
remove the voltage limit, or why it exists, maybe the GPUs just can’t take any more and it’s 
some kind of hardware limitation. Either way, it’s definitely an Nvidia limitation, 
as I’ve seen this happen from 4050s, 4060s, and 4070s regardless of laptop brand. The 
cynical side of me wonders if it’s an artificial

limit so that there’s some space to launch an 
RTX 4070 Ti laptop GPU next year or something. If the 4050, 4060, and 4070 don’t actually 
run above 100 watts in most actual games, is it even fair to advertise 
them with these power limits? In the past, an 80-watt RTX 3060 was looked 
down upon compared to a 140-watt version as it doesn’t perform as well, and the 80-watt version would be found in either a cheaper or thinner laptop. But now a 70-watt 4060 can match that 140-watt 3060, it’s just that the 4060 stops getting 
a benefit at around 100 watts. So a plus side of these lower-powered 40 series 
laptop GPUs is that they can still perform pretty well in thinner and more budget-friendly laptops. 
It’s just that they seem to max out at around 100

watts or so, even though the spec sheet kind of 
implies that they should go higher. Which I think, most people would think means more performance 
in games, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In my laptop reviews, I always mention 
the minimum and maximum GPU power limit, and the way I find the minimum power limit 
is by running a CPU and GPU stress test at the same time. But now I think I’m going to 
have to change the minimum wattage number to whatever number gets hit in a GPU-only 
stress test when the voltage limit gets hit. And the maximum will just be what 
is specified in Nvidia’s control panel, even if technically we might not actually ever 
see that in many games. Because as we saw, some workloads can run there. So based on 
these results, there’s no real reason to make the mistake of spending more money on a higher 
wattage RTX 4050, 4060, or 4070 gaming laptop.

If you see either of those three GPUs advertised at 140-watt max power limit, don’t be fooled. It’s not really going to matter in most games. You’re just not really going to see an FPS boost going up from 90 to 100 watts. Check this video next to find out about other common gaming laptop mistakes and how you can avoid them!

High Power RTX 4050 / 4060 / 4070 Laptops Are a Waste 💸

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High Power RTX 4050 / 4060 / 4070 Laptops Are a Waste 💸

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