HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 vs. ZBook Fury 15 G8: What's the difference?

It's been less than a year and HP has already begun shipping the ZBook Fury 15 G8 to succeed the older ZBook Fury 15 G7. Since both models share the exact same chassis and physical features, is it even worth spending more for the newer model?

It all comes down to performance. The Fury 15 G8 comes with 11th gen Tiger Lake-H Intel CPUs and Nvidia Ampere GPUs to replace the 10th gen Comet Lake-H and Turing options, respectively, on last year's model. When comparing the most powerful GPU option on the Fury 15 G7 (Quadro RTX 5000 Max-Q) to the most powerful GPU option on the Fury 15 G8 (Quadro RTX A5000), the performance boost is generally minor to moderate as shown by our benchmarks below. Similarly, the fastest Xeon CPU on the Fury 15 G7 (Xeon W-10885M) is roughly 19 percent slower than the fastest vPro Core CPU on the Fury 15 G8 (Core i9-11950H). If these performance deficits mean little to your workloads, then the biggest reason for purchasing the G8 over the G7 becomes moot.

Beyond the processors, the G8 model comes with a 4K 120 Hz display option which offers noticeably smoother movement and even faster black-white and gray-gray response times for less ghosting than the standard 4K 60 Hz panel. The 4K 120 Hz display is available on the older G7 model as well, but finding a configuration with one is becoming increasingly difficult now that the G7 is slowly being phased out. If such an option is desirable, then the G8 model would be your best bet.

Other small changes include the move from Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 4 which means little unless if you plan on attaching external GPUs. PCIe4 SSDs may be supported on the G8 as well, but HP is only configuring PCIe3 SSDs as of this writing. The manufacturer has yet to confirm with us if the Fury 15 G8 supports PCIe4 NVMe SSDs.

There isn't much else to help distinguish between the two models aside from the aforementioned features. Unless if you plan on getting the highest-end configuration of the ZBook Fury 15 G8 to maximize performance, then the ZBook Fury 15 G7 can offer essentially the same experience both inside and out. See our review on the ZBook Fury 15 G8 for more benchmarks and differences between the two models.