Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1650 coming to laptops

With today's launch of the GeForce GTX 1650 for desktops, Nvidia is also officially launching GTX 16-series GPUs for laptops. Laptops with the new graphics cards should be available starting today, with more models to come, and prices start at $799. There are a few other bits of information to cover.

First and perhaps most interesting is that the specs don't fully match what's available on the desktop. The GTX 1660 Ti parts are the same, other than clockspeeds and TDP, but the GTX 1650 laptop has two more SM clusters than the desktop 1650—indicating the TU117 isn't fully enabled in the desktop part. Perhaps a future desktop GTX 1650 Ti will fill that niche. There's also no mobile GTX 1660 (GDDR5) equivalent, at least not yet.

Nvidia compared a GTX 1660 Ti laptop with a four-year-old GTX 960M laptop, and in its own benchmarks it shows the new model as three to four times as fast. Nvidia also notes that based on its own statistics, over three quarters of all GeForce equipped notebooks currently have a GTX 960M or slower GPU. For the GTX 1650, Nvidia says it's up to 2.5 times as fast as a GTX 950M equipped laptop, or 1.7 times as fast as a GTX 1050 laptop. We have not been able to corroborate those numbers, however.

There are plenty of other benefits to upgrading to a newer gaming laptop, of course. The latest models are thinner and lighter, screen bezels have shrunk substantially over the past several years, SSDs are now standard on most models, and displays with up to 144Hz refresh rates are readily available. Max-Q laptops are also available, and Nvidia notes that currently about 35 of the 80 planned/announced GTX 1650/1660 Ti models will be Max-Q designs.

Nvidia also has a new GeForce Fortnite promotion going on for the next month (from April 23 to May 22), for laptops and desktops using GTX 16-series graphics cards from select retailers. Buyers of select models can get 2,000 V-Bucks in Fortnite, along with the Fornite Counterattack Set that includes a "rare" Reflex outfit, "rare" Pivot glider, "uncommon" Angular Axe pickaxe, and a Response Unit back bling.