The RTX 3060 seems like it’s everywhere. The desktop version of the graphics card topped the March 2023 Steam Hardware Survey, while the laptop version ranked 8th in the same ranking. It’s not an entirely unexpected situation, with GPUs dominating this tier in 2018 since the great GTX 1060, but the laptop version in particular is worth a look in more detail.
Our interest was motivated by two factors. The first is the fact that the RTX 3060 laptop uses the same silicon as the desktop card More CUDA cores enabled – with slightly lower power targets. This dichotomy is a rarity in the laptop arena, which often marries high-end GPU names (such as the RTX 4090) with more down-market GPU dice (the AD103) — with a similar gap in expected performance. The second, more prosaic reason is that recent sales have brought premium 3060 laptops up to the £1250 mark and budget examples are well below the £1000 barrier.
So given these factors, how well do these laptops perform – can the 3060 laptop GPU give the desktop-class 3060 a run for its money? We’ve got two RTX 3060 gaming laptops to explore, one from British firm Chillblast (via parent CCL) and a more sophisticated model from German company Tuxedo, which focus on advanced Linux machines.
| rtx 3060 | GPU | Corner | boost clock | Memory | bandwidth | TDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| desktop | GA106 | 3584 | 1777 mhz | 12GB GDDR6 | 360 Gb/s | 170 W |
| laptop | GA106 | 3840 | up to 1702 MHz | 6GB GDDR6 | 336 Gb/s | up to 115W |
The Chillblast Defiant 16 laptop is an all-out performer with a 28mm-thick 2.5kg chassis and plenty of cooling capacity and 115W TDP, while the Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 16 Max Performance is thinner at 17mm, lighter at 1.7kg and more uniform in its presence end workstation but with a higher 130W TDP.
Both 3060 laptops cost the same amount on RRP (£1549 vs ~£1590) and are backed by 12th-gen Core i7 12700H processors, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, larger NVMe SSDs and higher refresh rate 1440p screens – so it should be Need a close fight.
I used each laptop for a two-month period for work and gaming, then benchmarked each against a desktop RTX 3060 and Core i9 12900K system to see what the difference really was between the two 3060 laptop systems and the desktop counterpart. What was the power difference.
Let’s set the stage with some key info on the design, hardware, and software of these laptops before we get to the performance test versus the desktop RTX 3060 on page two and our pricing decisions on page three.
With nearly identically matched components resulting in similar levels of performance, I found that the physical design and software experience were the biggest differences between the two machines.
Considering the hardware first, it is clear that the Chillblast Defiant 16 is the more interesting of the two. With highlighted WASD keys and a sci-fi keyboard font, not to mention RGB backlighting behind each key and around the fan grille on the back of the device, this is definitely a gaming machine. It’s wedge-shaped, with the screen hinged at the top of the device about an inch instead of at the edge.
Meanwhile, the InfinityBook Pro 16 has a more substantial build and more subtle width from front to back, with the screen resting on the edge, and a familiar design: a silver-colored magnesium alloy chassis, black keys, and a large trackpad .
Both machines have numberpads, which I’m not personally a fan of, but at least makes sense for a pro-focused InfinityBook with a half-height top row and scissor switches on the bottom. Both 16-inch 2560×1600 screens are also a 16:10 aspect ratio, perfect for productivity and gaming alike with the IPS panels providing good brightness, contrast and motion handling, along with excellent viewing angles and color reproduction. The only difference here is the refresh rate, with the Chillblast limited to 165Hz and the InfinityBook Pro 240Hz.
In terms of software, the Chillblast Defiant 16 plays it more straight – it’s a fairly standard Windows laptop, with some preinstalled bloatware (Norton 360 for gamers), controls to adjust fan speeds, keyboard backlighting and power/performance modes There is a custom control center. I wasn’t able to actually uninstall the Norton software, even after running the company’s uninstall tool, so I was greeted by a popup on every boot—quite tedious, but ultimately non-detrimental to performance.
Meanwhile, the Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 16 comes with your choice of Tuxedo OS (Linux, free) or Windows 10/11. I opted for the Linux option because it’s a great way to save some money if you already have an unused, legally acquired Windows license, and I was curious to see what changes the German firm made versus a standard Ubuntu install. Have done Most of the user-facing changes I found were quite minor in truth, with the default configuration being the KDE Plasma desktop – a bit more Windows-like than the GNOME desktop in ‘standard’ Ubuntu – with a Tuxedo-branded control center. I installed Windows on a high-performance SolidGym P44 Pro drive for performance testing, and sure enough it provided a completely clean copy of the OS without any bloatware.
Now let’s move on to the topic of our analysis, with RTX 3060 Laptop vs Desktop performance test. Can these mid-range laptops compete with our full-fat gaming desktops?
RTX 3060 Laptop Performance Analysis
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