Hot on the heels of NVIDIA lifting the embargo on its newly minted
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card comes a fresh leak pointing to some new mobile GPUs that are presumably in the pipeline. At a glance, it seems as though Lenovo has spilled the beans on at least two 'Super' SKUs in the works, both bound for its ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 laptop.
The Gen 4 model is not yet out, and every ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 3 configuration sports a GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q graphics chip (we
reviewed the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 1, which came out with a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti). According to a leaked image of a presentation deck outlining Lenovo's ThinkPad roadmap, the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 will also feature a GeForce GTX 1650 GPU option, perhaps without the Max-Q designation (it's curiously missing from the slide).
What is more interesting, however, is the mention of unreleased mobile GPUs. Have a look at the leaked slide...
According to the leaked roadmap, the upgraded ThinkPad is getting a bump in size to a 16-inch display, and will weigh slightly more at a hair over 4 pounds. Lenovo will be refreshing it with Intel's latest generation
Tiger Lake-H processors with Core i7 and Core i9 options (as well as vPro), which can be paired with up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and up to 2TB of SSD storage, with support for RAID 0 configurations.
On the graphics side, there are several GPUs listed...
- Intel Xe (integrated)
- GeForce GTX 1650 Ti w/ 4GB GDDR6 (no mention of Max-Q)
- GeForce RTX 3060 w/ 8GB GDDR6
- GeForce RTX 3070 Super w/ 8GB GDDR6
- GeForce RTX 3080 Super w/ 16GB GDDR6
This is the first we have seen of the unannounced GPUs, so there aren't really any leaked specifications to cite. Lenovo's roadmap does not reveal a whole lot in that regard either, though it did at least outline the memory allotment—the GeForce RTX 3080 Super will have 16GB of GDDR6 memory and the GeForce RTX 3070 Super will have 8GB of GDDR6 memory, if the slide is accurate.
As points of reference, here are the specs of the non-Super models in mobile form...
- GeForce RTX 3080: 6,144 CUDA cores, 8GB/16GB GDDR6, 256-bit bus, 80-150W
- GeForce RTX 3070: 5,120 CUDA cores, 8GB GDDR6, 256-bit bus, 80-125W
Speeds and performance vary, as NVIDIA is letting OEM partners configure different power profiles for each GPU, with optional support for Dynamic Boost as well. And on the GeForce RTX 3080 model, there are both 8GB and 16GB GDDR6 variants.
The addition of Super models gives NVIDIA's hardware partners a wider range of GPUs at the high end. It will be interesting to see how the specs turn out, as well as what price points these upcoming GPUs models end up hitting in the laptop space. Stay tuned!