NVIDIA’s next-gen GeForce RTX 50 series mobile GPUs will be a notable upgrade over their 40-series predecessors. This rumor comes from ruputable source “Golden Pig Upgrade Pack” on Weibo who claims that the RTX 5060 will be as fast as the RTX 4070 laptop GPU. Apart from the memory configurations, we don’t know much about the RTX 50 series mobility lineup. That said, the memory will likely be the primary generational change:
As reported last week, most of the GeForce RTX 50 mobile family will leverage 8 GB of GDDR7 memory. The exceptions are the RTX 5070 Ti and the 5080/5090. These SKUs will be paired with 12 GB and 16 GB VRAM, respectively.
Regardless, the use of GDDR7 memory will have serious implications on the gaming performance of Blackwell GPUs. Notebook GPUs are often bandwidth bound (like the CPUs). For example, the RTX 4060 mobile has a peak memory bandwidth of just 256 GB/s due to low clocks and a slim 128-bit memory bus. The RTX 5060 should almost double that figure to 507 GB/s, thanks to the faster GDDR7 memory.
However, it’s worth remembering that mobility GPU performance varies significantly across notebooks due to varying thermal solutions and OEM targets. We might some notebooks featuring the RTX 5060 which are barely faster than the RTX 4060, and other higher-end variants that are as fast as the RTX 4070 mobile.
The RTX 50 desktop and mobility GPUs are slated to be announced next week at CES, followed by a staggered launch. The RTX 5080 desktop will be the first to land later the same month, followed by the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5070 series.
