So in my last post, I reviewed this ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop, even though the laptop itself was actually pretty good.
Its gaming performance was lagging a bit, especially when you consider the fact that it has this brand new AMD CPU and this brand new RTX 3070 GPU.
So, on paper, it should be way ahead, but in reality, it just ended up slightly over the last year's 2070 gpu models, and, you know, that's pretty disappointing.
So based on some of your feedback and some of the feedback from Asus as well.
I'm going to go through all the steps I took to see what is actually holding back this performance, and then not just on this particular model but also on the majority of gaming laptops that are launching this year, which is, you know, very important to know if you're planning to buy a laptop with a new RTX graphics card so without further ado, let's begin.
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Drivers
Now before I talk about what made a big difference. I want to talk about some of the things that actually didn't make any, And the first one will be two drivers.
Some of you suggested that an early driver would explain these lower numbers which are definitely possible.
So I did retest some of the games with the newest drivers, and I actually came up with the exact same numbers as before, so the drivers were not the issue.
Thermals
The next thing was the thermals now some of you said that the higher GPU thermals were causing this car to throttle.
Now first I want to say that the temperature results were completely fine, to begin with, and then lowering them even more by making the GPU fan run at 100% did not affect performance at all so that wasn't the issue either.
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Respond to ASUS' Feedback
I also want to publicly respond to something that someone at asus said, suggesting that the performance.
I showed is lower than their own numbers and that this might be a sample-specific issue.
But using their own documentation they provided it turned out that this very small difference was explained by a Asus doing their testing in turbo mode.
While I was doing my testing in the default performance mode. Something that I even, you know, mentioned in my review.
Now, I don't say that there is one perfect way to test the product but I do think that it makes the most sense to discuss and judge a product based on how the manufacturer ships.
Now unless there is an actual issue with the factory default mode, I will use that one.
And if they think that some other mode is better, they should just make that the default is that even though both performance and turbo profiles are viable,
I would suggest you keep the default mode on, as it offers you know the best balance between performance thermals and noise.
Do Higher Resolution Help?
Now one thing that I personally thought could explain the lack of difference between the two generations was the screen resolution, and it actually did to some extent but not completely.
Now when a new high-end GPU launches for desktops, you pretty much really need a higher resolution than 1080P to see its real benefit so I wanted to test that out as well, especially because this G15 comes with a fast Quad HD screen instead of the usual Full HD one.
Now I took a very similar model from the last generation.
The ROG scar has an eight-core i7 10875H and 115 Watt RTX 2070 Super,
So it should be a very good match for this new ROG Strix G 15 with an eight-core Ryzen 9 5900HX and 115 Watt RTX 3070.
Now it's not completely Apples to since this one has an Intel CPU. This one has an AMD CPU. So you should keep that in mind.
But the fact is that last year, there were no high-end gaming laptops with an AMD CPU so this would be the closest thing.
Now let's start with some results in 1080P. And since some games simply do better on an Intel platform and others do better on an AMD platform.
The results are all over the place, but in all 13 games I tested the average difference, ended up being less than 1% between the two, making them display equal and that also shows the reason to make this post in the first place because you would kind of expect the RTX 3070 laptop to do much better for let's see what happens in 1440p for the G15 I use its internal panel and for the scar 17.
I had to use an external monitor connected via the HDMI port, and the G15 did a bit better.
It was faster in almost every title from a couple of percent to about 15% faster, and on average, it was about 8% Faster than discard.
So the high resolution is definitely helping out the G15, but it's still not an exciting difference.
What is Nvidia, & why you want it?
But what didn't make a huge difference was the optimism, or, you know, disabling a debt is now optimized is an invidious feature that you'll find in most gaming laptops these days.
Basically loves the laptop switch between the dedicated graphics card, and the integrated graphics card on your CPU on the fly so when you're gaming for example your laptop will automatically use the more powerful GPU, but when you're doing some light work, it will automatically swap to the integrated graphics which is a lot more energy-efficient.
And thanks to this Optimus feature this G15 has a battery life of close to 10 hours when you're doing some light work, which would be, you know, impossible without it.
But often, this also has one major downside and that is that the laptop display is actually connected to the integrated graphics first, and then to your GPU so your RTx card has to put the frames back through the CPU to your screen instead of directly, and as a result of that you do lose performance.
Optimus performance Impact per game
But the question is, How much performance do you lose because of optimism.
Now the only way to test this is to ignore the display and connect an external monitor via a USB type C port in the back, as that is the only way to actually go around the integrated graphics and connect directly to the Nvidia GPU.
Now starting with cyberpunk which is a game that I originally thought had a CPU bottleneck at 1080p actually showed a really big improvement going from 65 to 75 FPS, which is roughly a 15% performance increase on 1440P, the difference is a bit smaller and going from 49 to 52 FPS, but that is still 6% better in watchdogs Legion, it looks a tiny bit different at 1080p high settings there is a nice 6% FPS increase, but with our Tx and dlss on there is basically no difference at all.
But in 1440P is showing a 10% increase at high settings, and a 23% increase with RTx and dlss on, and that is something that you will definitely notice while playing this game.
Now Metro Exodus is a game that doesn't seem to be affected by optimist much.
There is a small increase when using the external screen, but it is not something that you will really notice while playing in Assassin's Creed Odyssey at 1080p high and ultra settings, it just looks like Optimus isn't having much of an impact.
But when you look at 1080p medium, it actually gets interesting, with Optimus, it looks like you're hitting a CPU bottleneck, but without Optimus on the frame rates actually go up by more than 20% and 1440 feet, there is five to 15% difference depending on the setting.
So again, I would say it is pretty significant in Assassin's Creed Valhalla performance goes up by around 9% on 1080p and 3% on 1440 beats, and Far Cry five is another game with a bigger benefit at 1080p with about 14% difference on that resolution and 9% on 1440 Beat The Division Two is a little bit more consistent across all resolutions, showing an 11 to 12% increase at 1080p and 1440 P respectively.
And the same goes for Borderlands three, which has a 13% increase at both resolutions in shadow the Tomb Raider.
The difference is 17% at 1080 p and 10% at 1440 p in Call of Duty Warzone is 17% at 1080 p and 12% at 1440p.
What is a huge deal, especially in a competitive game like this one? And the last but definitely not the least is Doom eternal, which showed a ridiculous 47% increase in FPS at 1080p and a 33% increase at 1440P.
Optimus performance Impact Summary
So there is definitely a lot to take away here now first the impact of Optimists really depends on the game you're looking at, with some games showing almost no difference but others showing a huge impact from having optimists off, and it doesn't seem to be related to the resolution much either now some games benefit more 1080p ,while others benefit more at 1440p but across all results, the average increase in performance is actually around 12% for both 1080 beats and 1440 beats, and 12% is actually a big deal.
If he had that 12 to 7% of the G 15 has over the scar, things do look a lot better.
Alternative solution Mux switch, Advance Optimus
So yeah, I would say that this all sounds quite bad, but not having optimists would kill the battery life.
Now another solution would be the MCC switch which allows you to just manually switch between the two GPUs, but that does require you to reboot your laptop every time you do so, so it's also not an ideal solution.
Now the ideal thing would be the advanced optimist, which offers the benefits of an optimist, and the MCSE which together.
But laptops that habit seemed very very rare. I mean it's so rare that I haven't actually seen one that has it, and I did ask a Asus, why they chose not to include it in their lineup, and they said it is because it only works with a couple of panels, and it's still quite buggy so they chose not to.
So it looks like that for now we are stuck with an optimist, with no other way to disable it but to connect an external monitor via USB type C port in the back, which kind of defeats the purpose of buying a gaming laptop, as most people, you know, buy it to save space, or to game on the go.
Final thought
So, if you really need to buy a laptop right now, you have three choices, in my opinion.
You can either look for a laptop that doesn't use optimists at all, that will have its own downsides, but you get the full power of your GPU.
Second thing is that you can accept this gaming performance impact and settle for the fact that the overall performance is still okay, even if the gaming is much better than the last-gen, the G15 still pretty interesting thanks to its new AMD CPU, the fast quality display and better battery life so as an All Arounder, it's a good option.
Or you can look at last year's models that should be down in price by now, and they will offer a similar gaming performance.
But if you don't need to buy right now my best honest advice at the moment would be to just wait for the advanced optimist feature to become more widespread.
Because I really hope that these numbers will be convincing enough to make more brands, look into this issue, and eventually fix it.
Now that's it for today. I really hope you enjoyed this post ,if you did please give me a like and subscribe to topbestgoodreview for more.