5 things you should check on laptop GPUs before you buy one

Whether for work or gaming, dedicated GPUs in laptops have become better than ever before. They are now truly a viable alternative to desktop computers, with similar performance, and without as much of a price premium as you might imagine. However, for various reasons, picking a laptop with the right GPU is a virtual minefield. This is why you should always check into the factors below before buying any laptop.

5 Benchmarks, benchmarks, and more benchmarks

Unlike desktop computers, we don’t get to buy laptops as separate components. So it doesn’t make sense to judge a laptop’s GPU in isolation. It’s tied to a complete system, so what really matters is how that system performs as a whole. This is why the most important thing to check when it comes to the graphics performance of a laptop is benchmark scores.

Whether it’s a synthetic benchmark like 3D Mark, or real world benchmarking of the apps or games you want to run, this is the most precise indication of what sort of performance you can expect for your money, regardless of the laptop’s on-paper specifications. You’ll want to make sure you’re checking benchmarks of the laptop your’re looking for, not just the GPU, because the same GPU can perform differently inside different laptops, as we’re about to get into.

4 The numbers behind the name

Laptop GPUs have similar or identical names to desktop GPUs of the same generation. For example, there’s an Nvidia RTX 4090 for both laptop and desktop systems. However, despite having exactly the same name, these two GPUs couldn’t be any more different. If you look at the core counts, configuration, clock speeds, and so on, it’s clear that a name is all these two GPUs share. The laptop model has performance which is more comparable to the prior desktop generation’s RTX 3090, which is still amazing but not what the name promises.

This isn’t always the case. For example, the Nvidia RTX 4060 laptop and desktop chips are essentially the same, and can perform practically the same depending on how they’re set up. But the bottom line is that the name of a laptop GPU only tells you its position in the mobile product stack and has nothing to do with the actual performance of its desktop counterpart.

3 Thermal design power (TDP)

If you have two identical processors with the same theoretical maximum performance, but one has access to better power and cooling, then the resulting real-world performance won’t be identical. With desktop GPUs this is rarely a consideration, since there’s plenty of room for cooling and power sufficient to let the GPU reach the performance level it was designed for, and in the case of some factory-overclocked cards, to go beyond that.

Laptops are a different kettle of microchips. Power and cooling are always in short supply, so some laptops may not allow a given GPU the headroom to perform as well as it should. If you have, for example, an RTX 4070 in a slim and light gaming laptop, it won’t have the same performance as the same GPU in a big workstation laptop.

This is where TDP comes into the picture. You can look up what the TDP range (measured in watts) is for a laptop GPU, and then see how close the laptop maker has come to the upper end of that range. For example, the RTX 4060 laptop GPU reaches its performance sweet spot at around 100W, but manufacturers can cap it as low as 45W. This causes a huge decrease in performance.

This is why benchmarks are crucial, since there are situations where a higher tier chip at low TDPs may perform worse than a lower-tier chip at high TDPs.

2 MUX switches

Most laptops with powerful GPUs use a hybrid approach where the power-efficient integrated GPU in the CPU package handles simple jobs like running productivity apps, while the powerful dedicated GPU only kicks in for applications that need it, like video games.

The problem is that with solutions like Nvidia Advanced Optimus, the frames generated by the more powerful dedicated laptop GPU must be passed through the integrated GPU first, before it reaches the display. This has a mild dampening effect on performance, but if your laptop has a MUX switch, you have the option to completely bypass the integrated GPU, increasing frame rates somewhat. The difference is meaningful, and this is definitely a feature to look for. However, a new Windows feature known as CASO (Cross Adapter Scan-Out) reduces the impact on performance where there isn’t a MUX switch, or when the MUX switch is in hybrid graphics mode. So it’s not that critical unless you absolutely must have the most performance possible.

1 Display resolution

Another unique aspect of laptops is that you get a GPU connected to a specific display, so it’s important to make sure the display resolution and the capabilities of the GPU are a good match. This has to be in the context of your intended use as well. For those interested in gaming on a laptop, a resolution of 1920×1080 is generally more than acceptable with screen sizes that range up to 17.3-inches. While 2560×1440 laptops are becoming more common, the benefit of such high resolutions on relatively small screens for gaming in particular is debatable. Once we reach 4K resolution on a laptop, for gaming purposes, it becomes hard to recommend it at all. As the resolution goes up, so must the power of the GPU to drive the additional pixels at playable frame rates.

That said, 1440p and 4K resolutions do have a purpose on laptops for general desktop work or creative tasks such as video editing. A 1080p display can feel cramped even with just two windows split in a 50/50 arrangement. If you pair a higher resolution display with a lower-end laptop GPU, then for gaming you’ll have to be content with lower detail settings, or the use of upscaling technologies. Usually one also has to trade refresh rate for resolution, with 1080p displays available at extremely high rates, and options scaling down in speed as resolutions climb.

Measure twice, cut once

A laptop GPU is part of a financial commitment to a whole computer, much more so than on desktop systems. You have to be doubly sure that you’re getting the right model for your needs, to cover the number of years you need those needs fulfilled. Laptop GPUs are more powerful and power efficient than ever, but it’s still possible to get the wrong tool for your particular job, or to pay far more than you needed to by going for higher tier components with marginal performance gains.