Asus ROG Strix G17 G713PI: Gaming laptop impresses in the test with the new Ryzen 9

The massive case of the gaming laptop shows an excellent stability. Despite its hefty weight of almost 3 kg (~6.6 lb), we are unable to detect any warping, even though the whole base unit is exclusively made from plastic. In contrast, the large 17.3-inch display is framed in a metal lid. The overall construction appears correspondingly robust, without giving any reason for complaint.

The many large and small accent elements stand out. The lid contains a bright logo that always remains illuminated in white. The bottom also houses a freely configurable RGB bar that can be illuminated together with or independent from the RGB keyboard. In addition, there are letterings and slogans around the case.

The large distance between the display and the back of the case with the fan vents appears well thought-out. When the case is closed, all the status LEDs remain visible and the fans continue to work without any hindrance, while you can continue playing your game using an external monitor and desktop keyboard.

Considering the 17-inch display, the Asus ROG Strix is one of the larger laptops. Compared to the predecessor generation of the ROG Strix Scar 17 SE, the case thickness increased by almost 2 mm (~0.08 in). Despite the attractively slim 5-mm (~0.2 in) display bezels, the large areas for the cooling make it a large laptop. However, the competitors are within a similar size range, and the same goes for the weight of almost 3 kg (~6.6 lb).

Only what is absolutely necessary and then also with just barely sufficient speed - the connection equipment is very limited. Merely two USB-A connections on the left side allow you to connect a gaming mouse, printer, and so forth. In addition, there is a simple but sufficient audio port for a headset.

Since the rest of the connections are placed in the back, your desk can be kept comfortably clutter free, even though the ROG Strix can rarely get along completely without any wired connections, as we will show below. The two USB-C connections barely reach 10 Gbit/s, which is just barely sufficient to also start games from an external SSD. We would have liked at least one USB port offering twice or even four times the speed. We see a similar picture with the LAN port: While we currently often find 2.5-Gbit ports, Asus only offers 1 Gbit. This is sufficient, but nothing more.

At least there are three video output ports, but only the first USB-C port supports G-Sync. While a gaming laptop doesn't need a large variety of connections, the transfer rates of the few connections that are available could have at least turned out higher.

Looking at the transfer rates reached by the WLAN module helps us to quickly forget the weak LAN port. The Asus ROG Strix G17 is able to surpass all the competitors here, placing at the top and impressive in our measurements of the 5-GHz range. At least at close distance from the router, you can get wireless transfer rates far higher than 1 Gbit/s. In addition, Wi-Fi 6E is supported, whose large communication range ensures less interference in areas with many different WLAN networks.

With this, it falls within the range of most Intel laptops, while significantly surpassing the AMD competitors with CPUs from the previous generation. For example, the sending and receiving performance of the Alienware m17 R5 is 40% slower.

The small camera appears to have an unfortunate placement, since the fingers tend to touch directly on the camera lens when trying to open the laptop. With an HD resolution, the images show a weak resolution, but are still easily recognizable even at low light conditions, even if they appear slightly grainy. While this should be sufficient for simple video calls, if your conversation partner uses Full-HD or higher, the quality differences are immediately apparent.

The microphone turns out significantly better. We did not notice any tinny sounds or audible distortions. Recorded voices sound natural and are registered evenly from various directions and changing distances. These are the best requisites for an in-game chat.

The Asus ROG Strix G17 just barely misses a placement in the high-end segment, but this is surely not the fault of the CPU, which is currently one of the most powerful models. Together with the 32 GB of DDR5-RAM in our G713PI-LL005W test unit, this leaves no doubts in the high computing performance. The graphics card, on the other hand, still leaves some room for improvement.

However, the RTX 4070 should still allow you to comfortably play most games, even more complex ones, at the highest detail levels and in full resolution. If you want frame rates that are as high as possible, you are more likely to achieve that in Full-HD resolution. With the models with the RTX 4060 and RTX 4050, you correspondingly have to expect a few more compromises.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX with the current Zen4 architecture is able to deliver considerable performance values. Its 16 cores and 32 threads alone ensure a large amount of performance reserves, allowing for maximum clock speeds of up to 5.4 GHz. There is also no lack in terms of the cache, and 16 MB of L2 cache and particularly 64 MB of L3 cache ensure minimum load times.

Our performance rating across various CPU benchmarks shows what this means in practice. The Zen4 processor from AMD places on top almost throughout. Only in the tasks that are performed by only a single computing core, the CPUs from Intel remain ahead. In the constant load test with Cinebench R15, the 7945HX in Turbo mode is able to surpass the values of an Intel Core i9-13980HX (also in Turbo mode) by about 20%. In the Cinebench R23, this is at least still 5%. The performance difference to AMD's preceding processor generation with the Zen3 architecture is even more remarkable. The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX reaches barely half the points, with the Intel Core i9-12950HX not doing much better either.

The power consumption remains at about the same level. With this, AMD was able to achieve a huge increase in the efficiency of its computing cores. You currently can hardly achieve a much higher performance with any mobile processor.

You can find additional performance data and comparisons in our CPU benchmark list.

Basically, everything works fast with the Asus ROG Strix. Installing programs, deleting, and easily running several applications in parallel doesn't pose any problems at all for the gaming laptop. There are almost no wait times at all, particularly since the processor operates at a high level throughout.

On the other hand, switching between the internal AMD Radeon 610M and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 doesn't work without any problems. Occasionally, you will see a black screen when starting some program, and that not only while gaming. This is also the case when activating Nvidia Optimus. We also have to note that the dGPU is repeatedly given some tasks, for example while surfing. This unnecessarily increases the power consumption or decreases the runtime during battery operation.

However, we should hope that some additional driver updates will remedy these behaviors. But until then, it is probably advisable to turn off the integrated graphics in mains operation via Armoury Crate. This will improve the user experience, particularly when often switching between programs. A frictionless cooperation between the two graphics chips would have been better.