Nvidia’s RTX 5070 gaming laptops hide a terrible secret

CES 2025 was a good one for gamers, who were treated to Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs and hints of AMD’s next-gen Radeon RX 9070 GPUs.

We also saw the unveiling of the laptop variants of the GeForce RTX 50 Series, with a range of products starting with the RTX 5070. Next in the series would be the RTX 5070 Ti, then RTX 5080, then RTX 5090 variants, with escalating price points for each.

The RTX 5070 laptop variant is the one that sticks out to me, with it having a significantly lower price of just $1,299. But if that sounds enticing to you, be warned — it’s also hiding a terrible secret.

8GB of VRAM isn’t enough in 2025

The $1,299 starting price of the GeForce RTX 5070 laptop may seem appealing at first glance, especially compared to the top-dog RTX 5090 starting at $2,899, but it only has 8GB of VRAM.

Sure, it packs the same technology as its more expensive brethren, such as DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation. New 5th-generation tensor cores and 4th-generation ray tracing (RT) cores give the entire lineup an upgrade, too. And the VRAM is of the speedy, efficient GDDR7 variety that’s new for RTX 50 Series Blackwell GPUs.

But that’s about the end of the good news. Even if the VRAM is of the new variety, to only have 8GB of it is still sorely lacking in 2025.

The features that Nvidia wants you to experience, such as ray tracing and higher texture gaming, suffer greatly against VRAM limits. Nvidia is likely hoping that its suite of hardware upgrades, such as improved RT cores, tensor cores, and DLSS 4, will help make up for some of that.

PCWorld’s Adam Patrick Murray tweeted a quote from a press Q&A with Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang on the RTX 5070’s 8GB of VRAM: “We strive to reach a balance between the [whole system]. We don’t always hit the right balance, but that’s the goal.”

The statement is telling. Even Nvidia seems to admit that 8GB of VRAM isn’t ideal, but they’re OK with cutting that corner to achieve “balance” for the whole system — in this case, that likely means hitting that mouth-watering price point.

Of course, it isn’t easy to just “add more VRAM.” To do that, you have to work around the GPU specs and consider what it can support without affecting other areas of the laptop’s engineering. Nvidia has to keep in mind the svelte thickness of its laptops, together with power efficiency and battery life. All of that matters. All of that is much easier to achieve when you only have 8GB of VRAM to play with.

In the past, gamers kicked up a fuss over 8GB desktop GPUs like the RTX 4060 Ti, which harmed its overall popularity. And while laptops often get a pass on cut corners since we know they need to compromise for form factor, 8GB of VRAM just isn’t what we want to see.

The desktop RTX 5070 will carry 12GB of VRAM, and that’s the bare minimum for a next-generation GPU costing $549. AMD at least has the sense to pack 16GB of VRAM in its GPUs in this very price range.

Sure, you can explain that away by saying discrete GPUs typically have better specs and more VRAM than their mobile counterparts. After all, the RTX 4090 laptop variants came with 16GB of VRAM, a significant 8GB shy of the desktop RTX 4090. But Nvidia knows gamers want more VRAM. Just look at the updated 16GB RTX 4070 Ti Super, which put the original 12GB RTX 4070 Ti to rest. So why the 8GB choice here?

And this decision raises another question: Will the desktop RTX 5060 variant also come in at only 8GB of VRAM like the RTX 40 Series generation? We hope not. But seeing an 8GB RTX 5070 on the laptop side doesn’t instill confidence in those other products.

Is there a silver-lining to this?

Apart from the price, one minor silver lining is that the power draw of the RTX 5070 laptop will land in the 50-to-100-watt range, a slight improvement over the RTX 5070 Ti laptop with its 60-to-115-watt range. Yet while every watt matters in a small form factor, I’d bet gamers would trade some heat and battery life for a few more GBs of VRAM.

You really have to stretch to find any positives for 8GB of VRAM in 2025. Nvidia does have its Blackwell architecture improvements to point to, along with the more efficient hardware in the RTX 5070, as well as AI-driven improvements via DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation. But are 5th-generation tensor cores and 4th-generation RT cores enough to make 8GB of VRAM tick along? Even if the answer is yes, you can’t deny that they’d help even more with 12GB of VRAM.

It’s hard to justify 8GB of VRAM in a premium gaming laptop. We questioned it during a Full Nerd podcast episode from 2023 as we know that many modern games can easily topple with that little VRAM. Even Apple has upgraded its entry-level Macs past the 8GB threshold, and we all know how stingy Apple can be with its specs.

From initial specs, the new RTX 5070 laptop seems like a pass. You’d likely be better off with the RTX 5070 Ti version for just a few hundred more. Of course, we won’t know for sure until we conduct our full reviews… but I have a feeling the results will confirm that 8GB of VRAM just won’t cut it in today’s gaming landscape.

If you want a powerful gaming laptop at an affordable price point, check out our picks for the best gaming laptops under $1,000.