Hi, Mike. That’s very impressive, I still get very surprised at the performance from mobile processors. Is the chip in the XG exactly the same as what you’d get in a laptop? I take it that the XG’s enclosure has a better heatsink system compared to a laptop, maybe it clocks a bit higher on the XG? Do you know which desktop processor the 4090 mobile is the equivalent of? I’ve just got a 4070 but I’m not that impressed with it. I’m too used to playing in 4K and the PS5 and Series X are great at that but the 4070 needs settings lowered to get fluidity in 4K. I appreciate that the games for the consoles are tailored for their processing and the settings are balanced to get 4K. However, for me personally, the balance of the settings on the consoles do look great visually at 4K, even if not all the graphics are at 4K, and they maintain 60FPS for the best part. As I don’t have a high refresh 4K monitor or TV, I’m used to 60FPS and don’t mind it. That said, if I could get the same graphics quality but at 120, I think that would be the point where I’d be completely happy. Thinking about it, maybe that’s the main difference between console and PC players. I’d imagine that there’s a higher percentage of console players that play in 4K. To get a PC to do a solid 60 at 4K with the equivalent graphics quality/settings as the console, you’re probably talking almost three times the cost. I recently smashed the screen on my 144Hz 1080 monitor but I was never happy playing in 1080 and it was only 27”. Maybe it’s my age and eyesight but 4K on a large monitor or big TV is just a lot more immersive for me. BTW, the 40 series definitely do 8K/60 recording in Shadowplay, or whatever Nvidia call it now. I’ve tested the 4070 with Fortnite in 8K and with all the settings switched off it was doing about an 80FPS average and only seems to lose a couple of frames with NVENC running. I was only using it with the 10105F but because of the resolution, the GPU was mostly maxing out before the CPU could bottleneck. What was really surprising was that the quality was noticeably better than that 8K test I done on the 1660. I would have that the game itself would be using the exact same textures etc. at 8K, so the GPUs shouldn’t have looked different, just their frame rate performance. However, the 4070 looked noticeably better. It was as if the 4070 version had some graphics settings switched on by comparison. I’ll try and do a test later or tomorrow. Although 1080, 1440 and some 4K are obviously bottlenecked by the CPU and the frame timings are shockingly bad. It’s given me enough of a taste to finally convince myself to stop messing with PC gaming and just accept that I’m a console player. To get at least what I get on console as far as quality at 4K/60 is concerned. I’d have to pay far too much and as I’m only a casual gamer and don’t use Windows for work anymore, and expensive PC would just be a wasted on me. Cheers, Dave.
Hi Dave, thanks for stopping by again. I left you comments on your other vids but never got replies. The mobile RTX 4090 is the same exact die as the desktop 4080. It's their 5nm AD103 die. However the desktop variant obviously does insane wattage and therefore higher sustained clocks. I believe a desktop card uses slightly faster VRAM too. This XG Mobile enclosure does have a fancy vapor chamber and large(by laptop standards) heat sink. The fan is also thicker than a laptop fan. What disappoints me is they're still limiting it to 150W which is what all previous Nvidia XG Mobiles were using even though they didn't have vapor chambers. Puzzling because the top end RTX 4090 laptops are using the 175W variants with smaller cooling solutions. You're right about being disappointed. I'm primarily a console player. I want a turn key solution that has been heavily optimized. I actually don't like wasting time tweaking a game trying to figure out what settings are hurting my performance. Also the price. You are not going to build a PC with PS5/Series X performance for $500 USD. It also won't be as small or quiet as the consoles. Thanks for the info on the 8K recording with GeForce Experience(formerly ShadowPlay). It doesn't surprise me that 8K might cause a fps dip(probably a bandwidth issue sending all that bitrate to your SSD).
Hi, Mike. Sorry for not answering those comments yet. I’ve not been doing much RU-vid since I uploaded that last video. Also, I only have notifications on one device that I use for RU-vid, which hasn’t been switched on for a few days. I usually check my comments manually and although that’s a pain, it’s just easier for me to do that and not have full on notifications. There’s a few videos I’ve done that do well and I get an insane amount of stupid comments from them. Hence my reluctance to go “all in” with the notifications. Don’t get me started about micro managing graphics settings on PC :) Because I do tinker with things a lot, I just end up wasting far too much time getting bogged down in the settings, which is time that should be spent gaming. This is another reason why I prefer consoles and not just because I’ve used them for a long time. Like I said before, after messing with the 4070 for a solid day and not being immediately impressed with it, I doubt I’ll ever bother again with PC gaming unless I ever switch back to a Windows PC for my audio or video stuff. Which is very unlikely as I’ve gotten on very well with Mac PCs for that stuff since I switched full-time about 18 months back. Plus, although there’s a lot of negative stuff about the Mac PCs, mostly the price, peripherals and absolute lack of user expandability with Apple Silicon Mac PCs. It’s actually that lack of expandability which has turned out to be good for me, as I can’t mess about with the machines, as I would do with a Windows machine. That’s amazing that the die on your GPU is the same as the 4080. It just shows how much power (electrical) those tiny chips are designed to take. It’s no wonder why the size of the cooling system is what it is on the desktop 4080. It’s really easy to forget just how much heat these things generate. I remember killing an AMD CPU many years ago because I was trying to overclock it. This was way before water cooling was a thing and at a time when there weren’t many 3rd party fan coolers. That thing actually took out the motherboard as well when it went. It may be the case that even supplying just a modest amount of extra power to your XG may end up with a bigger disproportional amount of heat than what may be expected. It wouldn’t surprise me if these mobile GPUs are already running very close to their practical thermal limit in a small/mobile enclosure. That said, and although your XG is essentially an eGPU. Can you imagine how small a dedicated eGPU Nvidia could make if they used something between your GPU and a desktop 4080. They could put a fairly hefty cooler on it as an “all in one” box and it’d still be way smaller than a typical Thunderbolt eGPU. In fact, going back to Apple. While this SoC system for Apple Silicon is just about liveable with if you get what you need for a very specific workflow. They are going to have a terrible time when they release their next Mac Pro. No previous Mac Pro user will buy into Apple Silicon as there’s no memory or storage expandability, let alone the necessary PCIe expandability that anyone in audio or video post would be using with the current Mac Pros. If they don’t have PCIe, which would seem a fair bet as their SoC isn’t designed for it. They may need to have some external expandability for things such as graphics, as Apple Silicon absolutely sucks for “proper” GPU (3D etc.) processing. This is where Nvidia could really up the stakes for Apple’s graphics ability, at least on the Mac Pro. There’s already ratification for Thunderbolt 5, which can do either 80 or 120Gb/s. While this is a far cry from the bandwidth of even PCIe 4, it would definitely help for at least external graphics. There’s also a possibility that Apple may add some PCIe bridging system from the SoC. However, the whole point of the Apple Silicon SoC and its integration of all the controllers etc, which is where a lot of its speed comes from as well as using ARM/RISC, could be lost by adding bridging or protocol translation layers. That said, if such a system is possible, it’s likely to be proprietary and the Apple can self manufacture and go crazy with the prices. Maybe they’ll have their own “expandability” options, which may just be extra GPU core modules that are binned from their SoCs. Maybe I should do one of those BS Apple speculation channels, where you just make crap up and do a BS click bait thumbnail and title and start selling people on some made up BS about vapourware 😂 Anyway. It’s 7 in the morning here in the UK and I’ve been up for just over 24 hours wasting an entire day with a Windows PC and Nvidia GPU. I’m off to be bed :) Goodnight. Cheers, Dave.
I'm surprised you're disappointed with your 4070. From what I'm hearing it's good value considering the era of inflation and price GPU price gouging we're in. I've seen some runs where it's outperforming the 3080 and 3090. Plus you've got the capability of DLSS 3 frame gen. Back when I was buying laptops I was interested in a MacBook using a M2 variant. I like where Apple is trying to take the market - back to power efficiency. I want a device that benches the same on battery/wall power. Intel and Nvidia have driven the market to gigantic power draw which requires gigantic thermal solutions. Even AMD is doing this with their current CPU's by driving up the wattage so they can beat Intel in benchmarks. I still remember when the original Pentium 60Mhz was passively cooled. I didn't end up buying an Apple laptop because the price didn't justify the support. I was hoping to see more game devs embrace Apple's Metal API. Aside from Capcom, doesn't look like anyone cares. Guess they should have stuck with their OpenGL support. Don't get me started on all the Apple news channels. I think I have all of them except for one blocked. You literally can go backwards after a product launch and see their videos are 99% wrong. The only reason they're getting 1% is because they speculate something so vague or give themselves 3 choices.
Hi, Mike. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great GPU and performs well for what it is and it’s technical mid market position. I was just a bit underwhelmed having experiencing the progress from the 10 series to 20 and to the 30 series. Plus, I’m not convinced that it’s price reflects what’s going on globally with inflation and manufacturing issues. I do think that it’s at least 20% over priced. Maybe it’s because I’m also not working on Windows that I don’t really see it’s extended value. I had a 2080 Ti, 3070 Ti and a bunch of others over the last four years or so, and was using them for post applications. So with those cards I was getting noticeable value for a number of different applications. It’s probably not the 4070, it’s me :) That said. I’m a lot more impressed with the Sony and MS consoles. I know that’s mostly a practicality thing and having dedicated, specific hardware for casual gaming. But 4K on the consoles is just way more impressive to me, maybe due to the price point compared to a PC for 4K. Again, 60FPS isn’t an issue for me, although, 120 would be my sweet spot. If I were gaming at 1080 or 1440 and needed the highest possible frame rates, I suspect the 4070 would be a lot more impressive. However, as I’ve already mentioned, I don’t like gaming below 4K. I used to think that 4K was maybe a bit of a waste in fast paced shooters etc. due to the their typical temporal characteristics masking resolution. But I’ve really come to appreciate the nuances of playing in 4K on the consoles, even if for the best part a lot of the internal graphics aren’t true resolution. Or put it this way. If you could build a gaming PC for the same price as a PS5 or Series X and get the same performance, I’d be totally onboard. However, we’re a million miles away from that and it’ll never happen. The other problem I have is simply the whole PC gaming thing. Judging by the comments you see on RU-vid and forums, you’d think that everyone is a pro gamer and playing on high spec rigs that cost thousands. The reality is that most PC gamers are not pro anything and the vast majority don’t have anything near the specs they all like to bleat on about. It’s been some time now since I looked at some of the Steam hardware stats but the last time I did, I think the average GPU was around the 1660 and only a very small percentage were on anything above a 60 on RTX anything. Anyway, I’ll shut up before I start sounding like a console fan boy as I have absolutely no time for fan boys of anything. I’m just finishing the edit for that 4070 8K video and if I’ve got to be dead honest, it is actually quite impressive with what it’s doing at 8K. I’ll start the upload later. I’ve not done any talking in this one, it’s straight in with gameplay. If you get the chance to watch it once it’s live, check the description as I put all the boring detail in their as opposed to voicing it. Not unlike your recent XG video, there’s a few head scratchers with what’s going on in this 8K example. Cheers, Dave.
