RTX 4090 mobile graphics in the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18 – 8 laptop

I will be honest and say that I did not expect any drastic increase in mobile performance after the experience of the past years. In recent generations, Nvidia released the most powerful mobile graphics, but the shift with the next generation was only fifteen percent. This time, however, Nvidia set the distance for the mobile RTX 4090 along the lines of the desktop one. It is a mobile GPU behemoth with monstrous performance that has no chance of threatening anything else on the current market, at least until 2024.

If I take into account only the pure raw (rastering) performance, which Nvidia does not boast of anywhere, it is also high. The performance increase in games (despite the CPU limitation) is from 30 to 50 percent. This is an unexpected increase in performance. The paper specifications do not promise such high numbers. But when we call for help the main currency of the Ada generation, of course DLSS 3, we are in a completely different universe.

In games that support DLSS 3, it is the performance increase against the RTX 3080 Ti with DLSS 2 is even double. This technology noticeably helps where the processor can’t keep up and slows down the graphics, for example MS Flight Simulator 2020. There you can’t normally get above 70 fps with anything on the market, with DLSS 3 we have fps values ​​above 120. This is an extreme step forward. For laptops, where it’s more difficult to brute force performance due to power consumption, DLSS 3 is much more important than for powerful gaming PCs.

The shift in performance in applications for rendering or video processing is absolutely breathtaking. GeForce RTX 4000 support AV1 encoding and have a pair of encoders. So even classic formats are processed by the GPU twice as fast. In addition, thanks to a larger cache and changes in the kernel, the efficiency of CUDA is significantly higher. Although the number of units has increased by only 30 percent, the processing speed is almost everywhere doubled. There is nothing better for mobile rendering, working with video or streaming on the market.

At the time of writing the test, the Czech price was not yet known, but the pre-order in the UK was for about 105,000 CZK. This is not a bad price for a work and game machine with an 18″ LCD, 32 GB memory, RTX 4090 and Core i9-13980HX, i.e. the most powerful one on the market. I think the Czech price will be similar. But we will evaluate this only in the laptop test, when we’ll show the performance of this processor because that’s the “meat”.

We would like to thank ASUS Czech Republic for the loan of the laptop for the test

The mobile RTX 4090 rightfully deserves the highest award. It offers a huge intergenerational increase in performance even without using DLSS 3. But if you use it, the fps are up to double compared to the last generation. The shift in productivity outside of gaming is also extreme.