Asus ROG GX800 Notebook Preview

The design is very similar to the 17-inch sibling GX700. Asus once again uses a combination of metal (lid) and plastic (some rubberized), which can live up to the quality of the main rival from MSI, the GT80S. Because of the bigger screen and twice the GPU performance, however, the chassis is bulkier and heavier compared to the GX700.

The GX800 tips the scale at 5.69 kilograms – almost 50% more compared to the 3.9 kg of the GX700. This means the whole system with the water cooling (4.7 kg) weighs more than 10 kg. Adding both power adapters (1280 grams each), the total weight will be 13 kilograms. The MSI GT80S with identical components, but without water cooling and just one power adapter, "only" weighs 6.3 kilograms including the PSU.

But it does not really matter if you have the GX800 or GT80S: Neither device is really suited for frequent transportation. Both notebooks are primarily designed for users that want a stationary system, but not a big desktop PC. Otherwise, the chassis leaves a very good impression. Besides the design, we also liked the sturdiness. More information about the water cooling is available in the review of the GX700. The latter still has the same strengths (cooling performance) and weaknesses (space requirements), even though there are multiple optimizations according to Asus. Besides the GPU, the CPU is now cooled as well, for instance.

The port variety of the test model is just as comprehensive as the GX700. Among others, Asus deserves respect for the video ports. Thanks to HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4 and Thunderbolt 3.0, you can attach all kinds of monitors and drive them at 3840x2160 pixels at 60 Hz. Three USB 3.0 ports and two USB 3.1 ports (Type-C) are also very generous. The back is reserved for the water cooling, so Asus was forced to distribute the ports across the sides. The majority of ports are now at least on the left instead of the right side, which is better for the majority of users (keyword external mouse).

The card reader is a very fast model. Almost 228 MB/s sequential read and 159 MB/s when we transfer 250 jpg pictures are above average and comparable to the Schenker XMG U726.

Communications are handled by a Gigabit-Ethernet controller as well as a modern wireless module. Asus promises WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2x2 antennas) and Bluetooth 4.1. Our test model was equipped with Intel's Wireless-AC 8260. There is even a Wi-Fi antenna port at the chassis.

The maintenance is unfortunately still complicated (see GX700 review). The manufacturer once again waives a maintenance hatch, so you have to remove the whole bottom panel to access the battery, the cooling system, the storage devices and the memory slots.

Similar to the GX700, the GX800 is supposed to be shipped with a suitcase.

We already mentioned that the final GX800 will be equipped with a UHD-IPS panel, and Nvidia's G-Sync technology will be available as well. The latter prevents line shifts and ensures a smooth presentation. Our prototype only had an FHD display without G-Sync, so we did not perform any measurements.

The Asus GX800 is currently the fastest desktop replacement, even without the next-gen GPUs for the final product. Almost all gaming notebooks are equipped with a high-end quad-core processor, but none of the rivals can compete with the graphics performance. The memory equipment is excellent as well: 64 GB DDR4-RAM should be easily sufficient over the next couple of years. The icing on the cake is the three NVMe-SSDs in a RAID-0 configuration.

We already mentioned that the clocks depend on the Turbo Gear setting. The maximum will be 3.6 GHz without overclocking, while the chip can reach more than 4 GHz in the Extreme setting. We do not evaluate the clocks via Cinebench yet, because the water block or its contact with the CPU, respectively, is not yet finalized. The same applies for the temperatures later in this article.

There is nothing to improve in respect to the system performance. 8047 points in PCMark 7 is the highest score we ever measured (including desktop PCs). The main reason for the great result is the RAID configuration consisting of multiple M.2-SSDs.

Even though it does not really make a lot of sense to test the graphics cards, which will not be available in the final product, we ran many benchmarks with the GTX 980 SLI. One reason was to add missing titles to our gaming list. The second reason is to have more results for comparisons of the efficiency and performance after the launch of the Pascal architecture.

But back to our prototype: The GeForce GTX 980 is – SLI or not – the most powerful notebook GPU at the time of writing. The top model from Nvidia is based on the already slightly aged Maxwell architecture, which is still manufactured in a 28 instead of 16 nm process. It has 2048 CUDA cores and therefore much more than the less expensive siblings GTX 980M (1536) and GTX 970M (1280), which has a big effect on the performance. There is also no criticism for the video memory (8 GB GDDR5) or memory interface (256-bit).

Great: The GTX 980 can utilize its full potential in the Extreme mode. Our benchmarks show that the 18-inch device heavily benefits from overclocking. 3DMark 13 and 3DMark 11 determine scores for the GX800 that are between 10 and 20% faster than the MSI GT80S. If Asus keeps the Turbo Gear system, the difference should also apply for the Pascal versions of the two laptops (except MSI also decides to overclock the graphics card of the GT80 successor).

A couple more words about SLI: Dual-GPU notebooks offer more performance than single-chip solutions, but there are some drawbacks. This starts with the power consumption and continues with the cooling requirements all the way up to the driver dependency. To make sure you are not slowed down by modern games, you should update the driver regularly (we replaced the preloaded ForceWare 362.34 with the brand-new version 368.39 for our gaming tests). Micro-stutters are usually no problem for the desktop replacement, because the frame rate – even at maximum details in 4K – rarely drops below 50 fps.

Except for the weaker settings, where the GX800 is sometimes limited by the CPU, the SLI system results in significant performance gains. If you take all the results from the FHD and 4K benchmarks (graphics settings Ultra or High, respectively), the dual-GPU system is 60% faster than a single GTX 980, and even Nvidia's high-end desktop chip GTX 1080 is beaten by 10%. It will be interesting to see how the final product with Pascal will perform. The 18-inch device is at least one of the few devices we would call "4K-ready". Except for XCOM 2, all titles ran smoothly with 3840x2160 pixels and high details.

It does not make much sense to check the noise development of the GX800 due to the unfinished fan control. Subjectively, the 18-inch notebook is as loud as the MSI GT80S. The final product is – depending on the load – supposed to be much quieter than the prototype.

Asus asked that we did not have a detailed look at the temperature development, since both the keyboard and the palm rest will be equipped with a special mat that shields the heat from the inside. The results of the test model remind us of the GX700.

We do not evaluate the sound quality, either. Asus wants to equip the GX800 with two 34 mm speakers rated at 2 Watts and two 28 mm speakers rated at 3 Watts.

Asus ships the GX800 with two 330-Watt power adaptors (1x for the notebook and 1x for the water cooling) to cover the enormous power consumption. That 660 Watts are not overkill is confirmed by our measurements. Up to 590 Watts under maximum load and almost 200 Watts in the first scene of 3DMark06 remind us of a desktop PC.

Another comparison with the GT80S, where the GPUs are not overclocked: The rival from MSI is much more frugal with 411 and 163 Watts, respectively. The GX800 pulls between 58 and 74 Watts from the socket while idling – again more than the GT80S (44-62 Watts). Our table shows how notebooks with a single-GPU perform.

We wait for the final product for our runtime tests. The 8-cell battery is supposed to have a capacity of 76 Wh (93 Wh @GX700).