Can a laptop CPU throttle the GPU performance?!?

[SebAhl]

Hi All,

So I ordered the 17"Ionico with a 3060, but I keep wondering if I should upgrade to 3070 while the laptop assembly is idle. The reason I selected the 3060 is due to a YT video. In this review it appears that the 3070 GPU is too fast for the i7-10875h, meaning the GPU is constantly waiting for the CPU to catch up - and hence there's "performance left on the table".

Therefore, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to spend the extra money on the 3070 option when the i7 is too slow.

Do you guys agree with that statement, or could it still be better (performance wise) to get the 3070 over the 3060?

Thanks in advance!

Check min 7:48

 

[FerrariVie]

You're actually comparing 2 different things... the video has a 11370H (4 cores) while the Ionico has a 10875H (8 cores) with 10W more power. I don't believe that the 10875H will be a bottleneck for either the 3060 or 3070. Another thing I noticed is that the laptop on the video has a max-q 80W 3060, while I believe the Ionico might have a max-P version with at least 90W (I'm guessing here based on the fact that max-q is not being mentioned on the configurator).

But performance really depends on a lot of factors. Looking at the only benchmark that we currently have on the 3000 series for a PCS laptop (link), it looks like the 3060 max-P is very well balanced with the 10870H. Since the Ionico has a 10875H which is just a bit better, I think they're still very much aligned.

However, you need to keep in mind that for most games that you can run on ultra settings (all of today's games), the CPU will not matter that much. When you start dropping the settings to medium or low, is when part of the work is being shared with the CPU. The exception to this are those games where higher FPS (like 150+) will give you an advantage, like on competitive e-sports FPS games... Higher framerates will require more CPU to process all that quickly.

So, to answer your question: Yes, a 3070 will indeed make a difference, and even if the CPU could not be on par in terms of speed, the 8-cores 10875H is still very capable. But thermal performance of the chassis and the GPU TGP (max power) makes a lot of difference as well.

 

[Macco26]

Absolutely agree with FerrariVie. I'm putting this screecapture from a Jarrod's Tech video of today:

He compared an Intel 10870H (exactly as like a 875H, if anything it's slightly worse, but let pretend they are equal) with an RTX 3070 75W, ok?
And he beated a Ryzen 5800H with RTX 3070 MaxP at 125W on this game, and for others, it was head to head. For sure it's not bottlenecking. And those were at 1080p resolution. At QHD resolution it's even harder a CPU can bottleneck.

That Zen laptop has almost the same chassis of the Ionico (comes from the same manufacturer), expect Ionico to have at least 115W or 125W TGP 3070.

Anyway, next days Jarrod promised to compare Intel + 3070 chassis vs the Zen3 + 3070 chassis of the same manufacturer as he recevied the Intel one just today. The Intel one should be the closest thing to our Ionico with 3070. Consider to subscribe to that good guy on Youtube.

 

[SebAhl]

Cheers guys, that's very helpful!