Two new laptops with Nvidia's RTX 5060 are coming, and leaked performance makes it seem like 8GB GDDR7 might actually be enough

• Colorful has two new RTX 5060 gaming laptops on the horizon
• Benchmarks have leaked which indicates a sizeable leap over the RTX 4060 laptop GPU
• 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM may suffice for both laptop and desktop GPUs

We're still waiting for Nvidia's RTX 5060 GPU to launch, a GPU that is expected to complete Team Green’s Blackwell GPU lineup (at least, before the rumored Super models). Now, we have some early insight into the laptop version of this GPU's performance, which could strongly indicate what the desktop counterpart has to offer.

As reported by VideoCardz, Chinese laptop maker Colorful has two new Nvidia RTX 5060 gaming laptops on the way. Most importantly, benchmarks have already leaked (pictured below) for both systems; the Colorful iGame M15 Origo and the Colorful P15 Pro, which also use Intel's powerful Ultra 9 285H and Core i9-13900HX processors respectively.

Using the OpenCL API (used in general computing applications), the iGame M15 Origo scored 102,564 points while the P15 Pro hit 109,431 points. It's worth noting that there are no leaked Vulkan benchmarks, which is a graphics API commonly used in plenty of triple-A games, so these scores don't give us the full picture.

However, VideoCardz notably does highlight that the RTX 5060 laptop GPU is roughly 18% faster than its predecessor, the RTX 4060, thanks to its GDDR7 VRAM over the latter’s GDDR6 and more GPU cores.

There's no official confirmation of these laptops from either Colorful or Nvidia, so this leak is all we have at the moment - apply salt pinches where necessary. The purported leap over its predecessor suggests that 8GB GDDR7 may be enough to provide good performance - the same could be true of its desktop variant as well.

I still want 8GB GPUs gone for good, but I think GDDR7 speeds will be the difference

Now, don't get me wrong, I still absolutely want 8GB GPUs to be long gone. Modern games - especially poorly-optimized PC ports - are frequently very VRAM-hungry, to the point where 8GB can be too low for some triple-A titles. However, both RTX 5060 desktop and laptop GPUs could highly benefit from the upgrade to GDDR7 memory, and these benchmarks indicate a significant leap over the RTX 4060 based on older Geekbench tests.

With the anticipated improvements, I think 8GB of VRAM is slightly more acceptable for budget gaming laptops; particularly since gaming laptops with less powerful GPUs typically stick with 1080p and often don't go much higher than 1440p (which already makes no sense to me).

The potential of improved base frame rates, coupled with the advantage of Nvidia’s new DLSS 4 resolution upscaling and Multi Frame Generation, could make RTX 5060 laptops more appealing to budget gamers.

The desktop GPU is naturally expected to outperform the laptop variant (if it doesn't, something is seriously wrong), and these benchmarks tell me that the RTX 5060 may fare slightly better than I expected. Let's just hope that laptop pricing doesn't get too unrealistic, considering Nvidia's announced starting price of $1,099 for its major manufacturing partners.

You may also like...

• Here's one of the strangest ways gamers are trying to buy an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 - unsurprisingly, it's not working
• Nvidia's new GeForce hotfix driver 576.26 is its second in a row - and it's still giving users issues
• Nvidia and AMD are going to hate me for this - but I'm going to keep telling people not to buy overpriced GPUs