What you need to know
- ASUS ROG announced the Strix G15 and G17 Advantage Edition laptops.
- They are the first laptops to pair the AMD Radeon RX 6800M GPU with a Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU.
- The Strix G15 and G17 Advantage Edition laptops will be available later this year, though pricing has not been announced.
ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) unveiled the ROG Strix G15 and G17 Advantage Edition gaming laptops today. They are the first laptops from any company to pair the new AMD Radeon RX 6800M GPU with a Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU. With that pairing of internals, the Strix G15 and G17 Advantage Edition laptops look like strong contenders to make our list of the best gaming laptops.
AMD announced the Radeon RX 6000M Series graphics yesterday. They're based on AMD's RDNA 2 architecture and are said to deliver "desktop-class performance" despite being mobile chips. The RX 6800M is the flagship of the lineup, and is said to deliver 1440p gameplay at 120 FPS while supporting ray tracing, compute, and traditional effects.
The Ryzen 9 5900HX is the most powerful CPU from the Ryzen 5000 Series. It's built with 7nm technology and has eight cores and 16 threads.
AMD's SmartShift and Smart Access Memory technologies allow the high-end CPU and GPU to work closely together. SmartShift dynamically shifts power between the CPU and GPU depending on workload. The feature is said to boost performance by up to 15%. Smart Access Memory improves data transfer between the CPU and CPU, minimizing bottlenecking.
The Strix G15 and G17 Advantage Edition laptops also have 32GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and up to 1TB of NVMe SSD storage.
The internals in the new laptops should be enough to handle the best PC games. You can enjoy games on either a 300Hz FHD display with a 3ms response time or a WQHD 165Hz panel with a 3ms response time. Both displays support FreeSync Premium for smooth gameplay output.
With the pairing of the RX 6800M and Ryzen 9 5900HX, keeping the laptops cool is especially important. To keep temperatures down, both the Strix G15 and G17 Advantage Edition laptops use liquid metal thermal compound on the CPU and GPU. ROG states that this compound lowers temperatures by as much as 14 °C (25.2 °F).
They also each have a vapor chamber that covers components, including the CPU, GPU, and 16-phase VRM. The Strix G15 and G17 Advantage Edition laptops each feature self-cleaning cooling systems.
In addition to reducing heat overall, ROG specifically designed a CoolZone on the laptops to keep heat away from their keyboards.
With all the power in the laptops, people should be able to draw power rather quickly. To help them last longer, ASUS included a 90Wh battery in each laptop that supports quick charging to 50% in 33 minutes. The laptops can charge with USB-C up to 100W.
On the audio side of things, the Strix G15 and G17 Advantage Edition laptops have twin speakers that fire directly at you from behind the keyboard. They're tuned with Dolby Atmos, which supports virtual 5.1.2-channel surround sound. The laptops also have two-way AI noise cancelation to reduce background noise on their microphones.
On the outside, the laptops have Customizable Armor Caps and Aura Sync lighting. These work together to help people get a personalized look for the powerful gaming laptops.
ASUS hasn't shared pricing or availability at this time, but the Strix G15 and G17 Advantage Edition laptops should be available later this year.
