Nvidia’s Manipulation of RTX 4070 Laptop Performance
I believe Nvidia has done something strange this year by manipulating the performance of the laptop RTX 4070 Laptop so that they can fit into their product lineup a little better and sell more devices, and as a result, the RTX 4070 laptops do not perform as well as I would expect.
MSI Stealth Lineup: Showcasing Mid-tier Performance
I’ll be using MSI’s stealth portfolio of goods to demonstrate what mid-tier hardware can and cannot achieve. I believe these are an ideal vessel to demonstrate performance, therefore this is the previous version of MSI stealth the gs66.
It runs an RTX 3070, whilst the current one, the Stealth 16 Studio, runs an RTX 4070. It’s a decent boost in performance, but there’s nuance to this discussion since the performance of laptop GPUs is really dependent on the amount of power that you put into the laptop, right?
Nuances of Laptop GPU Performance
So, if you take the same chip as the RTX 3070 and pump it with 140 watts in a thicker and heavier laptop, you will get considerably higher performance, as this new MSI laptop, the Stealth 16 Studio, draws 105 watts for an RTX 4070.
It’s around a 10 percent increase in power usage for a 25 to 30 percent increase in performance; it falls in between a 30 80 and a 3080 TI, but it consumes far less energy to do it.
Performance Comparison between RTX 4070 and RTX 3070 TI
I would say that the performance is disappointing, as it is not much better than the RTX 3070 TI. It’s just a lot more energy efficient, so 1080P and 1440p gaming are great, but as you hit 4K resolutions, you’ll see the restrictions of eight GB of RAM.
Optimal Performance in Thin and Light Laptops
But I believe the RTX 4070 shines in thin and light performance laptops because thermal and power limitations prevent you from pumping 150 watts into a device like this, and I believe MSI has done an excellent job with their stealth products in keeping the device light and performing well.
Design and Build Quality of MSI Stealth Products
So this year, MSI has two completely new stealth products, the stealth 14 studio, and stealth 16 studio, and they’re well built; they’re super solid, with very little flex on the main body, and both sizes come in two different colorways:
A star blue, which is like a navy color with a very subtle metallic sparkle to the finish, and a pure white, which isn’t pure white at all, but rather a white color with a slightly iridescent finish.
Visual Accents and RGB Lighting
But when it’s closed, the front and back accents look really nice on that white model, and they both have these RGB’s that light up to illuminate the stealth logo on the tail end, so both of these devices have a bit of a visual accent to them, but nothing out of the ordinary; they’re still stealth products.
Screen Quality and Performance
The screens on the Stealth 14 and Stealth 16 both have a 16×10 aspect ratio. They’re solid screens that are very quick and have fantastic colors and brightness. They’re awesome for gaming and content creation.
The 16-inch machine I have here has an RTX 4070 at 105 watts and works similarly to a 150-watt RTX 3080. Creative workflows, however, do not appear to be significantly faster on the RTX 4070. I believe this is due to the 4070’s 8 gigabytes of VRAM, 120-bit bus, and fewer cores.
Internal Components and Thermals
If you look at the inside, the 14-inch model has a vapor chamber to deal with the heat output a little bit better, it has a single NVME, and it has two detachable RAM slots, which is fairly unique on a 14-inch tablet. The battery life is pretty decent. It has a larger battery than many other 14-inch tablets, however it uses an Intel CPU.
The 16-inch variant features more standard heat pipes. There is no vapor chamber and no liquid metal, which I suppose helps to keep the price a little lower. It has two NVME and two RAM slots. The battery life was a little shorter than expected. It has a great battery, however I believe the screen is drawing.
Pricing and Value Proposition
I don’t know the exact pricing on these units, but I believe the stealth lineup starts around $1400 or $1500 dollars and goes up as you increase the configuration, but typically MSI’s stealth lineup isn’t super expensive; it’s usually a little bit more budget-friendly, so I imagine they’ll kind of stick with that mindset this year, but interestingly, when I got these things in, I was pulling them out of the box and I started running some benchmarks.
I discovered I still had all of my old stealth products, like the GTX 1070 stealth, the RTX 2070 stealth, the RTX 3070 stealth, and now the RTX 4070 stealth, so I figured I should see how far these things have progressed since it’s been like seven years.
Evolution of MSI Stealth Products
The oldest stealth that I own is the gs63, which is powered by a GTX 1070 and has some big ass bezels, but my God, the panel Flex on this device was fierce. They’ve come a long way since this product, but performance-wise, it’s amazing to see how much has progressed throughout the years of the stealth product line.
Purposeful Detuning of RTX 4070 Laptop
I feel like there’s a degree of purposeful detuning of the RTX 4070 to make that juggling act a little bit simpler for them, but it’s also to create greater distinction between the products. I think they want to keep the RTX 4070 away from it as much as possible this year, and I believe that’s a business decision.
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It’s probably for the best, as there were about 30 to 70 laptops with high enough wattages last year, or roughly the previous generation. That’s all great for customers, but from a business standpoint, that’s not good, right? That’s just less money, and more people are purchasing the less expensive products, which Nvidia would never want to be Nvidia.
However, the RTX 4070 I’m not entirely satisfied with the performance, but if the price is right, it’s a fine product. If you’re picking between, say, a 40 and a 30 series, there are benefits to the 40 series. Naturally, you get dlss3 with frame generation and other features, but if you can locate a 30 series device that’s offering an aggressive.
