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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile: Overview of Capabilities and Relevance in 2025

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile is the mobile version of the iconic graphics card that set new standards for gaming and professional performance in 2018–2019. Seven years after its release, in 2025, it remains relevant for certain use cases. In this article, we will examine who this model is suitable for today, what its strengths are, and where it falls short against contemporary alternatives.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Turing Architecture: A Revolution in Real-Time Rendering

The RTX 2080 Mobile is built on the Turing architecture, which marked NVIDIA's first step into the era of hybrid rendering. The manufacturing process is 12nm (TSMC), which appears outdated by 2025 standards, but optimizations in code and drivers partially compensate for this.

RTX and DLSS: The Foundation for the Future

The main highlight of the card is support for hardware ray tracing (RTX) and DLSS 1.0 (Deep Learning Super Sampling). By 2025, these technologies have become standard, but the first generation of DLSS lags behind DLSS 3.5 in terms of detail and stability. Nevertheless, in games optimized for older versions, such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Control, the RTX 2080 Mobile demonstrates smooth gameplay when RT effects are activated.

Compatibility with FidelityFX

Although FidelityFX is an AMD technology, many of its features (such as FSR 1.0) also work on NVIDIA cards. For the RTX 2080 Mobile, this is a lifesaver: FSR helps increase FPS in modern projects where DLSS 1.0 no longer keeps up.

2. Memory: Speed and Impact on Performance

GDDR6 and 8GB: A Balance for 1440p

The graphics card is equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit bus and a bandwidth of 384 GB/s. This is sufficient for gaming at resolutions up to 1440p, but at 4K or when working with heavy textures in 3D editing software, stuttering may occur.

Optimization for Mobile Systems

The memory frequency has been reduced to 12 GHz (compared to 14 GHz for the desktop version) to lower power consumption. This is not critical for most tasks but in scenarios with active use of VRAM (such as rendering in Blender), the gap compared to a full RTX 2080 is noticeable.

3. Gaming Performance

Full HD (1080p): Comfortable Gaming

In 2025, the RTX 2080 Mobile can still handle most games at high settings:

- Cyberpunk 2077 (RT Ultra, DLSS Quality) — 45–55 FPS;

- Apex Legends (Ultra) — 100–120 FPS;

- Starfield (High, FSR 2.0) — 50–60 FPS.

1440p: Limits of Capability

In QHD, many projects require lowering settings:

- Horizon Forbidden West (Medium) — 55–65 FPS;

- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (High) — 70–80 FPS.

4K: Only for Undemanding Games

In ultra-HD, gaming is possible only in indie projects or older AAA titles:

- The Witcher 3 (Ultra) — 35–40 FPS;

- Hades 2 (4K, Max) — stable 60 FPS.

Ray Tracing: The Cost of Beauty

Activating RTX decreases FPS by 30–40%, but DLSS 1.0 partially recovers performance. In 2025, this is insufficient for new games with advanced RT effects, such as Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, where the card only achieves 25–30 FPS.

4. Professional Tasks

Video Editing and Rendering

With 2944 CUDA cores, the RTX 2080 Mobile handles rendering in DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro. For example, rendering a 10-minute 4K video takes about 15–20 minutes (compared to 8–10 minutes with the RTX 4060 Mobile).

3D Modeling

In Blender and Autodesk Maya, the card shows average results: a scene with 5 million polygons is processed in 2–3 minutes. This is adequate for students and freelancers, but professionals should opt for models with more VRAM.

Scientific Calculations

CUDA and OpenCL support allows the use of the GPU for machine learning or simulations. However, 8GB of memory limits work with large datasets – the card is only suitable for educational tasks.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Generation

TDP 150W: Cooling Requirements

The RTX 2080 Mobile is a "hot" card even by 2025 standards. In laptops with insufficient cooling systems (such as thin ultrabooks), throttling and performance drops may occur.

Recommendations

- Choose laptops with 3–4 heat pipes and fans over 80mm;

- Use cooling pads with active ventilation;

- Regularly clean ventilation grilles from dust.

6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA RTX 4060 Mobile

The lower-end model of 2025 surpasses the RTX 2080 Mobile by 20–25% in games thanks to the Ada Lovelace architecture and DLSS 3.5. However, the new model's price starts at $1300, while laptops with the RTX 2080 Mobile can be found for $800–1000.

AMD Radeon RX 7700S

The RX 7700S offers comparable gaming performance without RT but falls short in ray tracing tasks. However, it is more power-efficient: TDP is only 100W compared to NVIDIA's 150W.

Intel Arc A770M

Intel's card is cheaper ($700–900) but suffers from unoptimized drivers. Its potential in professional applications is unlocked only at 60–70%.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

A laptop with the RTX 2080 Mobile requires a 230W power supply. Using weaker adapters (such as 180W) will lead to battery discharge under load.

Compatibility

The card works only in systems with PCIe 3.0 x16. Modern laptops with PCIe 4.0 are backward compatible, but the increase in speed will be minimal.

Drivers

Update drivers via GeForce Experience. For older games (2018–2022), use the 520.xx driver version package, as they are better optimized for Turing.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Support for RTX and DLSS;

- Sufficient performance for 1080p/1440p;

- Good compatibility with professional software.

Cons:

- High power consumption;

- Only 8GB of VRAM;

- Outdated manufacturing process (12nm).

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the RTX 2080 Mobile Suitable For in 2025?

This graphics card is an option for those seeking a balance between price and performance. It is ideal for:

- Gamers looking to play in Full HD/1440p at high settings without pushing maximum RT;

- Students and freelancers working in Premiere Pro or Blender;

- Enthusiasts building a budget gaming laptop with ray tracing support.

However, if your budget allows for an additional $300–500, it’s better to opt for a laptop with the RTX 4060 Mobile or RX 7700S – they will provide future-proofing and fewer heat-related issues.

The RTX 2080 Mobile is a legend that can still impress, but time takes its toll.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2019

Model Name

GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile

Generation

GeForce 20 Mobile

Base Clock

1380MHz

Boost Clock

1590MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

13,600 million

RT Cores

Tensor Cores

Tensor Cores are specialized processing units designed specifically for deep learning, providing higher training and inference performance compared to FP32 training. They enable rapid computations in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and personalized recommendations. The two most notable applications of Tensor Cores are DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AI Denoiser for noise reduction.

368

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

184

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

12 nm

Architecture

Turing

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

1750MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

448.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

101.8 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

292.6 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

18.72 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

292.6 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

9.175 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

2944

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

4MB

TDP

150W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 Ultimate (12_2)

CUDA

7.5

Shader Model

6.6

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

9.175 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

9914

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary

10.343 +12.7%

GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Mobile

9.777 +6.6%

GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile

9.175

Radeon R9 FURY X2

8.774 -4.4%

ROG Ally Extreme GPU

8.46 -7.8%

3DMark Time Spy

GeForce RTX 3090

19416 +95.8%

Radeon RX 6750 GRE

12617 +27.3%

GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile

9914

GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q

7810 -21.2%

GeForce GTX 980 Ti

5663 -42.9%