Asus ROG GX800VH Notebook Preview

Since some aspects like the build quality, the keyboard, the display as well as the software do not represent the final state yet, we will – similar to our first preview – not evaluate the GX800 and mainly focus on the performance. You can follow this link, where we included some initial opinions for many sections, if you want to know more about the case, the connectivity and the input devices.

One of the most important improvements is the reworked Gaming Center, which now appears much more modern and more stylish (compare screenshots). Due to the number of features, however, it will take some time getting used to.

The biggest highlight turns out to be the menu Turbo Gear. Contrary to other manufacturers, Asus does not only use the default overclocking for the processor and the graphics card, but also overclocks the components even further. If you select the Extreme Mode, the standard clocks of the Core i7-6820HK will climb from 2.7-3.6 GHz all the way up to 4.2 GHz – a high value for a notebook CPU.

The two Pascal chips also received a performance boost. Instead of 1582-1771 MHz (core) and 5000 MHz (VRAM), respectively, the GTX 1080 runs at 1632-1821 and 5200 MHz. These clocks are not the limit though. Thanks to the clever architecture, you can get much higher clocks depending on the cooling system. We were able to execute the GPU-Z Render test with up to 1950 MHz (!) in the case of our pre-production unit. 1900 MHz on average after two Unigine Heaven Benchmark runs deserve respect as well. 

But back to the Gaming Center. You can comfortably access other software components via quick-access bar at the bottom. These include ROG Macro Key for the configuration of the auxiliary keys or ROG Aura for tuning of the keyboard illumination. It is also possible to adjust the fan behavior of the notebook and the external water cooling (the latter is not required for operation) via Fan Boost. Other tools are Sonic Studio for the Sound and ROG Game First for communication.

We start the performance section with a couple of screenshots covering all important components like the CPU, RAM, and the storage devices. It remains to be seen which of these components will actually be available in the final product. We obviously plan to review the final product as well.

The Skylake quad-cores are otherwise very similar. Besides the TDP (45 Watts), the manufacturing process (14 nm) is identical as well. The big difference between the Asus and the competition is not the other CPU, but primarily the mentioned overclocking. The latter raises the GX800’s performance to desktop levels.

Both Cinebench R15 and Cinebench R11.5 position the Core i7-6820HK slightly ahead of the Core i7-6700 (desktop) in the Multi-Core test, which runs at 3.6-4.0 GHz. Notebooks with the Core i7-6700HQ like the MSI GT62VR are beaten by 26 % in the processor benchmarks. The GPU of the Core i7-6820HK (HD Graphics 530) is deactivated because of SLI, so graphics switching via Optimus is not supported, either.

The top position of the GX800 in the system benchmarks is not really a surprise. 7517 points in PCMark 7 are an excellent result, which is hardly beaten by any high-end notebook. Most gaming systems manage between 6000-7000 points.

Around 2700 MB/s for sequential reads and 1600 MB/s for sequential writes (AS SSD benchmark) are not possible for a SATA-III model. The test model of the MSI GT62VR, for example, only manages 502 and 465 MB/s, respectively. CrystalDiskMark even determines more than 3100 and 2100 MB/s, respectively, for the GX800. Okay, the distance is not that big for smaller files, which are more important in practice, but SSD-RAIDs are still a nice gimmick for hardware enthusiasts.

Then there is the issue of the fluctuating performance. If the driver lacks a corresponding SLI profile or a title does not support dual-GPUs in general, the second GTX 1080 does not have any advantages and can sometimes even result in lower from rates compared to a single-GPU solution. Only 12 out of the 22 games we tested in 4K benefitted heavily from the second GPU (>50 % more performance). 5 titles ran between 10-50 % faster, and 5 (Just Cause 3, Rainbow Six Siege, Anno 2205, Fifa 16, and Batman Arkham Knight) did not work well with SLI at all. The GX800 therefore leaves mixed impressions in our gaming tests, even though this is the verdict for all dual-GPU notebooks.

We used the preloaded driver version 368.97 for our benchmarks, and it worked very well in general (hardly any graphics errors or crashes). Nvidia’s driver version 372.53, which was released shortly ahead of the Pascal launch does – if at all – only have minor performance advantages. We used the latter for our Steam titles, while Origin and Uplay games were tested with ForceWare 368.97.

The gaming benchmarks show that the advantage of a second graphics cards is getting smaller the faster the single model is. While the GTX 980 SLI of the first prototype still managed performance gains of around 60 %, the value drops to about 40 % on average for the GTX 1080 SLI, even though some titles showed gains of more than 70 % (Battlefield 4, Star Wars Battlefront, The Witcher 3, Mad Max, Call of Duty Black Ops 3, XCOM 2, Fallout 4, Overwatch). Despite the smaller performance boost, the Pascal duo still beats two GTX 980 chips by around 50 %, which is very impressive.

You do not really have to worry about the settings in most of the games. The GX800 always manages smooth frame rates with high or maximum settings independent of the resolution. The 18-inch device even managed at least 50 fps in 3840 x 2160 pixels.