GDC 2025: Nvidia's 50-series Powered Laptops Are Shaping Up To Be Gaming Beasts

To say Nvidia has had a year is a understatement. We're only three months into 2025 and the company has launched its 50-series line of GPUs, which have offered some great performance gains, especially when utilizing its new multi-frame generation features, though the launch hasn't been without its fair share of issues, ranging from driver stability to just keeping the cards in stock at MSRP pricing. 

Yet Nvidia is still trucking on with its release pipeline, highlighted by its doubling down on AI-ehanced rendering, from RTX Megageometry to neural shaders that are designed to give more life and realism to a game scene without adding too much (and in some cases reducing) cost to performance. 

The next release in the RTX 50 line of products the 50-series powered laptops, which Nvidia had a few on display at their GDC suite. Announced during CES 2025, the RTX 50-series Max-Q chips are meant to bring many of the advantages Blackwell offers, from improved AI performance to gaming enhancement such as multi-frame generation, all to a small form factor. 

I had the chance to check out some of the laptops themselves, comparing the performance of the RTX 5090 Max-Q chip to last generations flagship, the RTX 4090 Max-Q thanks to a side-by-side comparison of Razer's Blade 16 model. 

As likely the most ubiquitous model of gaming laptop out there (Razer has a ton of mindshare), I was personally the most intrigued in this comparison. RTX 4090 laptops are no slouches, and I daresay most mobile gamers would be happy with the performance the Ada Lovelace Max-Q chips offered. 

The demo, which had Cyberpunk 2077 running at full tilt (RT Overdrive with frame generation enabled) was impressive on both machines. The framerates on the RTX 4090 version of the laptop was impressive, sitting near the 100fps mark with DLSS and FG turned on. However, the RTX 5090 version showed just how much more power it has by comparison, thanks to being able to leverage multi-frame generation.

I actually found myself smiling a bit too much, a goofy grin etched onto my face as I moved around Vik's ripperdoc clinic, the 16:10  240-hz OLED screen popping with each frame. The idea of playing Cyberpunk 2077 at 160-170fps on what is, by design, a mobile form factor was just unheard of to me.

I remember when Cyberpunk 2077 came out, I was rocking an older ASUS ROG Zephyrus 14" powered by an RTX 2070 Super chip and it could barely eke out 30fps when RT was on (using a mix of low and medium settings). Now, just a few years later, I was getting desktop-level RTX 4090 visuals, but with the RTX 5090's multi-frame gen boost on top of it. 

It was, I'll admit, a bit mind blowing and it made me start to consider never bringing my Steam Deck with me on a trip again if I happened to be packing one of these. 

Battery life is a huge factor with gaming laptops as well. Those blisteringly fast framerates and eye-popping visuals come at a cost, but this is where Blackwell's advances will, at least in theory, help things as well. While we still need to wait for independent testing to come out to prove this out, Nvidia are stating that the Blackwell laptop GPUs will provide a massive performance boost in battery life compared to the last generation of Max-Q chips. Obviously that wasn't something I could test there at the booth - both laptops were plugged in and I didn't have enough time to see which drained first (nor do I think Nvidia would have let me, now that I think about it), but what I was able to test was just how much better the cooling solution was on the Razer Blade 16 RTX 5090 versus the RTX 4090.

Laptops can get...warm. Anytime you have a chip being rode hard and the chip itself is typically right under the keyboard, you're going to feel it over time. The Razer Blade 16 has the advantage (and I guess disadvantage here) of being made from aluminium, which provides a premium and light material, but it also conducts heat in a way plastic chassis just won't. 

Nvidia's developer showing me the laptops mentioned that these machines had been on since about 9:30 that morning (I was there around 3:30 pm that day), so they were being ridden quite hard as a result. The time spent on and running such a graphically intense scene was likely the equivalent of a burn-in test at the factory. The RTX 5090-powered machine was warm to the touch, but not uncomfortably so. 

However, just leaving my palm on the body of the RTX 4090-powered Razer Blade 16 was enough to start to feel like it was burning me. It was just simply unuseable without a controller. I can't imagine playing this game using a keyboard and mouse on the 4090 Razer Blade 16, but I could see myself during normal use doing so on the 5090 version. The aspect to keep in mind is that these had been on all day without much of a break. That heat was soaking into the metal for quite a long time, so normal usecases will likely see the overall temp being somewhat lower, making the RTX 5090 version all the more impressive.

I also had the chance to check out a few other partner laptops, such as the HP Omen and others. I ended up settling on one of them that was much thicker than the ultra-thin Razer Blade 16, but sported a plastic chassis. There was next to no heat coming off the machine, much of it being dispelled by a fan at the top of the keyboard and underneath. 

Marvel Rivals was running on this one and while it's not on the same level as visually intense as Cyberpunk, it's still leveraging Unreal Engine's Lumen which can be really heavy on performance. 

Again, running at 2560x1600 with everything maxed out, Marvel Rivals was returning close to 300fps for me (with multi-frame generation enabled, of course). This was incredibly impressive, especially as you'd expect MFG to introduce a ton of added latency in a game where you want that latency as low as possible. Yet it's not noticeable - at least to me. I'm sure the best pros will be able to tell, but your average player it just won't be noticeable. 

I was pulling running around Tokyo as Cloak and Dagger, healing my AI teammates while dominating my AI opponents. I figured there would be some heat coming off of the keyboard since the 50-series GPU and the laptops CPU is effectively right under it, but if it was absorbing some of that heat, it wasn't noticeable. Instead, I found myself lost in the game, only pulling myself away due to the fact that I had to rush off to the airport to catch my flight home.

I was still thinking of these laptops when I pulled my Steam Deck out for the flight home. Sure, they won't be cheap - the Razer Blade 16 with an RTX 5090 sits at $4,499.99 at its base spec, but the level of performance was beyond anything I've seen on a laptop in recent years. We still need to wait for reviews, but if you're someone who rathers opt for a laptop as your daily driver and still wants to game without much compromise, definitely keep these in mind as they start to trickle out in the coming weeks.