NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile Comparison

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1630 has a higher average benchmark score of 24,277, compared to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile’s 23,628. This is a narrow 2.7% difference despite the substantial architectural gap between the two.

Q: How do the two compare in Geekbench OpenCL performance?

A: The RTX 3080 Mobile dominates, scoring 104,831 versus the GTX 1630’s 24,858. That is a 76.3% advantage for the RTX 3080 Mobile, making it over four times faster in this compute-oriented workload.

Q: What about Vulkan performance — is the result similar?

A: Yes, the pattern repeats. The RTX 3080 Mobile scores 104,066 in Geekbench Vulkan, while the GTX 1630 manages 23,695. The RTX 3080 Mobile leads by 77.2%, showing a consistent and massive performance gap across both APIs.

Q: Which GPU has better raw specifications on paper?

A: The RTX 3080 Mobile is vastly superior on paper. It has 6,144 shading units versus 512, 192 texture mapping units versus 32, 96 raster operation units versus 16, and 8 GB of GDDR6 memory versus 4 GB. Its FP32 throughput is 18.98 TFLOPS compared to 1.828 TFLOPS for the GTX 1630.

Q: Do both GPUs support modern graphics APIs?

A: Both support DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. However, the RTX 3080 Mobile supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the GTX 1630 only supports DirectX 12 (12_1). The RTX 3080 Mobile also adds hardware ray tracing and tensor cores.

Q: What is the transistor density difference between the two chips?

A: The RTX 3080 Mobile’s GA104 chip has a transistor density of 44.4 million transistors per mm², built on Samsung’s 8 nm process. The GTX 1630’s TU117 chip has a density of 23.5 million transistors per mm² on TSMC’s 12 nm process, meaning the RTX 3080 Mobile packs nearly twice the density.

Where Each One Wins

The benchmark data is unambiguous: the RTX 3080 Mobile wins every head-to-head test, and by enormous margins. In Geekbench OpenCL, it scores 104,831 against the GTX 1630’s 24,858, a 76.3% lead. In Geekbench Vulkan, it scores 104,066 versus 23,695, a 77.2% lead. The RTX 3080 Mobile is the clear winner in every measured scenario.

However, the GTX 1630 does hold a niche advantage: its average benchmark score of 24,277 is slightly higher than the RTX 3080 Mobile’s 23,628. This is an artifact of the averaging method, not a real performance win. The GTX 1630’s nearest rivals include the GTX 780 Ti (within 0.2%) and the RTX 2080 SUPER (within 0.4%), placing it in a performance tier that is roughly comparable to those older or higher-end desktop cards. The RTX 3080 Mobile, meanwhile, sits within 0.5% of the RTX 3070 Ti Mobile and within 1% of the AMD Radeon RX 9070.

For use-case selection, the data suggests the RTX 3080 Mobile is suited for compute-heavy workloads and modern gaming titles that leverage Vulkan or DirectX 12 Ultimate features. The GTX 1630, with its lower power draw and compact single-slot design, might be preferred in scenarios where the workload is light and the system demands a low-profile card — but the benchmark evidence does not support any performance-based reason to choose it over the RTX 3080 Mobile.

Architecture Differences

The GTX 1630 is built on the Turing architecture using the TU117 chip, fabricated on TSMC’s 12 nm process. It packs 4,700 million transistors on a 200 mm² die, with a transistor density of 23.5 million per mm². The RTX 3080 Mobile uses the Ampere architecture with the GA104 chip, fabricated on Samsung’s 8 nm process. It contains 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, giving a density of 44.4 million per mm².

The RTX 3080 Mobile has dedicated hardware for ray tracing (48 RT cores) and AI acceleration (192 tensor cores), neither of which exists on the GTX 1630. This is a fundamental architectural difference — the GTX 1630 is a rasterization-only GPU, while the RTX 3080 Mobile is designed for hybrid rendering workloads that combine traditional rasterization with ray-traced effects and DLSS-style upscaling.

The memory subsystem also differs radically. The RTX 3080 Mobile uses a 256-bit memory bus with 8 GB of GDDR6, delivering 448.0 GB/s bandwidth. The GTX 1630 has a 64-bit bus with 4 GB of GDDR6, yielding only 96.00 GB/s. This 4.7x bandwidth difference directly impacts texture-heavy scenes and high-resolution rendering.

Clock speeds tell an interesting story. The GTX 1630 has a higher base clock at 1740 MHz versus 1110 MHz, and a higher boost clock at 1785 MHz versus 1545 MHz. Yet the RTX 3080 Mobile still achieves far higher throughput because it has 12 times the shading units. The FP32 compute figures confirm this: 1.828 TFLOPS for the GTX 1630 versus 18.98 TFLOPS for the RTX 3080 Mobile.

The bus interface also differs: the GTX 1630 uses PCIe 3.0 x16, while the RTX 3080 Mobile uses PCIe 4.0 x16. This matters for data transfer rates in bandwidth-sensitive tasks, though the GPU’s internal compute capability is the dominant factor in most workloads.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ in nearly every measurable specification. The GTX 1630 has 512 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 16 ROPs; the RTX 3080 Mobile has 6,144 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. The RTX 3080 Mobile’s pixel rate is 148.3 GPixel/s versus 28.56 GPixel/s for the GTX 1630, and its texture rate is 296.6 GTexel/s versus 57.12 GTexel/s.

Memory capacity doubles from 4 GB to 8 GB, and the bus width quadruples from 64-bit to 256-bit. Memory bandwidth jumps from 96.00 GB/s to 448.0 GB/s. The GTX 1630 has a TDP of 75 W, while the RTX 3080 Mobile has a TDP of 115 W. The GTX 1630 is a single-slot card with no power connectors, while the RTX 3080 Mobile’s power delivery is portable-device dependent.

The GTX 1630 has a fixed set of display outputs (1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.4a), while the RTX 3080 Mobile’s outputs are dependent on the laptop design. The GTX 1630 is 145 mm long, 69 mm high, and 18 mm wide; the RTX 3080 Mobile has no listed dimensions, as it is a mobile part.

Shading unit count is the most stark difference: 512 versus 6,144, a 12x gap. The RTX 3080 Mobile also has 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores, which the GTX 1630 lacks entirely. The FP16 performance also differs: the GTX 1630 delivers 3.656 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio), while the RTX 3080 Mobile delivers 18.98 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio), meaning the RTX 3080 Mobile does not halve throughput on FP16 workloads.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head data contains two tests, and the RTX 3080 Mobile wins both decisively. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 3080 Mobile scores 104,831 against the GTX 1630’s 24,858, a 76.3% lead. To put this in perspective, the GTX 1630’s OpenCL score is roughly one-quarter of the RTX 3080 Mobile’s, meaning the latter completes compute tasks in a fraction of the time.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the margin is similar: 104,066 versus 23,695, a 77.2% lead for the RTX 3080 Mobile. This consistency across two different APIs suggests the performance gap is not workload-specific but rather a fundamental compute advantage. The RTX 3080 Mobile’s 18.98 TFLOPS FP32 throughput, combined with its 448 GB/s bandwidth, allows it to saturate both compute and memory-bound tasks far better than the GTX 1630’s 1.828 TFLOPS and 96 GB/s.

The GTX 1630’s average benchmark score of 24,277 is higher than the RTX 3080 Mobile’s 23,628, but this is misleading. The GTX 1630’s average is based on only two tests, both of which are Geekbench compute workloads. The RTX 3080 Mobile’s average includes additional tests from 3DMark and PassMark, which drag its average down despite showing strong raw performance in individual tests. For example, the RTX 3080 Mobile scores 16,321 in PassMark G3D and 7,276 in PassMark GPU Compute, indicating solid DirectX performance that the GTX 1630 does not have benchmark data for.

The nearest rivals data further contextualizes the scores. The GTX 1630 performs within 0.2% of the GTX 780 Ti and within 0.4% of the RTX 2080 SUPER, suggesting it trades blows with those older high-end cards. The RTX 3080 Mobile sits within 0.5% of the RTX 3070 Ti Mobile and within 1% of the AMD Radeon RX 9070, placing it in a modern mid-to-high-end tier. The delta percentages in the head-to-head tests (−76.3% and −77.2%) reflect the GTX 1630’s position relative to the RTX 3080 Mobile, confirming the latter’s dominance.

The Verdict

The data is unequivocal: the RTX 3080 Mobile is the superior GPU by a wide margin. It wins both head-to-head benchmarks with leads exceeding 76%, and its raw specifications — 12x shading units, 4.7x memory bandwidth, and 10x FP32 throughput — make it the obvious choice for any compute-intensive or modern gaming workload.

The GTX 1630’s only statistical advantage is its higher average benchmark score (24,277 versus 23,628), which stems from a smaller benchmark set and does not reflect real-world performance. Its higher base and boost clocks are irrelevant when the underlying hardware is so limited.

Who should pick the GTX 1630? The data suggests only those constrained by a single-slot, low-power (75 W) form factor with no external power connectors, and who need a basic display output configuration. Even then, the GTX 1630’s 4 GB memory and 96 GB/s bandwidth will bottleneck any modern game or graphics application.

Who should pick the RTX 3080 Mobile? Anyone who needs serious compute capability in a laptop. Its 18.98 TFLOPS FP32, 448 GB/s bandwidth, and hardware ray tracing make it suitable for 3D rendering, machine learning inference, and high-end gaming. The 115 W TDP is a power cost, but the performance payoff is enormous.

The verdict is simple: if you need performance, the RTX 3080 Mobile wins decisively. If you need a minimal, low-power desktop card, the GTX 1630 exists — but the benchmark data shows it is not a competitor to the RTX 3080 Mobile in any measurable way.