CES 2021: Nvidia announces 30-series gaming laptops

Nvidia 30-series
(Image credit: Future)

Somethings are worth the wait and the next series of Nvidia mobile chips are one of them. After waiting almost a year and watching folks with desktops have all the fun, Nvidia has finally announced the mobile series of its 30-series GPUs at CES 2021. Available January 26th, starting at $999, Nvidia says gamers can expect over 70 laptops from some of the biggest laptop OEMs. 

Nvidia 30-series

(Image credit: Future)

Nvidia started with the RTX 3060 laptops, which the company is boldly comparing to the PlayStation 5, declaring that its 1.3x faster than the console. Nvidia is targeting laptops with 1440p displays and says the newcomer is 1.5x faster than the previous RTX 2070. As for RTX 3080, Nvidia's upping the ante, doubling the VRAM from 8GB on the 2080 to a whopping 16GB of video memory. All that power won't come cheap however, as the starting price is listed at $1,999.

And to show how powerful mobile RTX 3080 is, Nvidia showed of a Razer Blade 15 running the graphically-taxing Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Nvidia 30-series

(Image credit: Future)

And a moment for displays, at least 30 of gaming laptops rocking 30-series chips will have a display with at least a 240Hz refresh rate. So not are you getting power, you're getting a buttery smooth picture. Throw in Nvidia's ray tracing technology and you've got some breathtaking games on the horizon. 

Fans of Nvidia's Max-Q architecture will be happy to learn that its going into its third iteration. This time, all the features like WhisperMode and DynamicBoost will be AI-powered.

As good as this all sounds, we won't know how good Nvidia 30-series compared to its predecessors or AMD chips until we get review units. Stay tuned. 

Sherri L. Smith
Editor in Chief

Sherri L. Smith has been cranking out product reviews for Laptopmag.com since 2011. In that time, she's reviewed more than her share of laptops, tablets, smartphones and everything in between. The resident gamer and audio junkie, Sherri was previously a managing editor for Black Web 2.0 and contributed to BET.Com and Popgadget.