So, I have an update on the NVIDIA RTX Mobility front - it will be launching at CES 2019 on January 6th. Sampling should have already started for testing purposes and reviewers will be getting theirs soon as well. Here's the catch though - the samples will ship with pre-release drivers with lackluster performance and final drivers will only be available at embargo lift, making any performance leaks useless.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX mobility series planned to launch on CES 2019 on the 6th of Jan, embargo set for 1/26

Now keep in mind, NVIDIA has been very gung-ho about leaks recently and may decide to move around the dates a bit; but even if they do so, I doubt they will change by more than a couple of days. In any case, if you are on the market for a laptop, you should wait just a couple of months more, because things are about to get a lot better. The date of the embargo has been set for the 26th of January which is around the time general availability of the laptops should start.

If everything goes according to plan, you should have RTX powered laptops available on the shelves come February - along with performance reviews using the final drivers. The new mobility lineup that will be launching at CES will include the RTX 2070 and the 2070 Max-Q parts along with the 2060, 2050 Ti and 2050. We do know the 2080 Max-Q is in the works as well, but we aren't sure whether it will launch along with its other siblings or have a staggered release date.

Now admittedly, our source did not explicitly name all of these as the RTX series, so its possible the lower tier GPUs are still branded GTX because below the 2070 the "RTX" portion of NVIDIAs graphics doesn't really make sense.

Another interesting point to note is that NVIDIA has been attempting to standardize laptop thickness for its mobility lineups and has provided different Z heights (laptop thickness) supported per each upcoming RTX 20 mobile graphics card. NVIDIA has been providing ODMs engineering support and they've gotten the Z heights down to what NVIDIA recommends for the minimum.

Leaks about the NVIDIA RTX Mobility series so far

You can also find the device IDs for the Turing lineup that were posted on Github and are given below:

Turing TU102: 1e02, 1e04, 1e07Turing TU102GL: 1e30, 1e3c, 1e3dTuring TU104: 1e82, 1e87Turing TU104M: 1eabTuring TU106: 1f07

Of course, it is the TU104M with device ID 1eab that is of particular interest to us, since that is the GPU making up the RTX 2080 Mobile graphics card. Here is the same device ID listed with the RTX 2080 Mobile nomenclature intact. I have screenshotted the entry below in case NVIDIA tries to get it scrubbed from the database:

A screencap showing the associated nomenclature with the device ID.

This is great news for gamers who want something more portable than a tower because NVIDIA's Max-Q designs are the closest you can ever get to desktop-grade performance in a laptop. Heat and cooling are usually quite innovative for these laptops and clocks are lower than their desktop counterparts. TDP is usually the next big concern, but considering 12 NFF is an improved version of 16nm FinFET this is something that we should have quite a bit of leeway with (Low clocks + 12 NFF = decent TDP).

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#fff;border-top:0;border-right:0;background:transparent;-ms-transform:rotate(-45deg);-webkit-transform:rotate(-45deg);transform:rotate(-45deg);box-shadow:-1px 1px 1px #555}.dem__radio_label .dem__spot:after{width:6px;height:6px;border-radius:50%;top:50%;left:50%;background:#fff;-ms-transform:translate(-50%,-50%);-webkit-transform:translate(-50%,-50%);transform:translate(-50%,-50%);box-shadow:0 0 0 1px #666,inset -1px -1px 1px #ccc}.dem__checkbox_label:hover .dem__spot::after,.dem__radio_label:hover .dem__spot::after{opacity:.4}.dem__checkbox:checked+.dem__spot,.dem__radio:checked+.dem__spot{border-color:#999}.dem__checkbox:checked+.dem__spot:after,.dem__radio:checked+.dem__spot:after{opacity:1}.dem__checkbox:disabled+.dem__spot,.dem__radio:disabled+.dem__spot{opacity:.5}.dem__checkbox:not(:checked):disabled+.dem__spot:after,.dem__radio:not(:checked):disabled+.dem__spot:after{opacity:0}input[type="submit"].dem-button,a.dem-button,.dem-button{font-weight:700;color:#fff;padding:10px 30px;border-radius:3px;background:#eb0254;transition:background .2s}input[type="submit"].dem-button:hover,a.dem-button:hover,.dem-button:hover{background:#eb0254}input[type="submit"].dem-button:active,a.dem-button:active,.dem-button:active{background:#21935a;box-shadow:0 3px #21935a inset}a.dem-button:visited{color:#fff}Which mobility GPU are you most interested in? RTX 2080 MAX-Q RTX 2070 MAX-Q RTX 2070 Mobile RTX 2060 Mobile RTX 2050 Ti Mobile RTX 2050 Mobile

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