ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 – AMD and Nvidia in sweet harmony

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15

Let’s dig a bit deeper into the specifications.  As mentioned on page 1 this is a laptop that combines the latest mobile CPU from AMD, the Ryzen 4800HS with a (pretty) high-end Nvidia graphics card.

The AMD Ryzen 7 4800H and 4800HS are mobile SoC based on the Renoir architecture. Both  integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. They are clocked at 2.9 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.2 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). Manufactured in a modern 7 nm process at TSMC AMD says their have a 2x improved performance per Watt. The difference between the 4800H and the 4800HS is that the 4800H is a 45W part and the 4800HS a 35W part. They should still perform similarly.

In addition to the eight CPU cores, the APU also integrates a Radeon RX Vega 7 integrated graphics card with 7 CUs and up to 1600 MHz. The dual channel memory controller supports DDR4-3200 and energy efficient LPDDR4-4266 RAM. Furthermore, 8 MB level 3 cache can be found on the chip.  More info can be read on AMD’s page about the Ryzen 7 4800H.  For example we can see there that the max temp on the CPU is 105 C.

It should be noted that even though the name is “Ryzen 4000” this is actually the same generation as the Ryzen 3000-series on the desktop just as the mobile Ryzen 3000 was based on the second desktop-generation (Ryzen 2000). Confusing, yeah a bit.

While the Ryzen 7 4800HS has a pretty competent graphics-chip built in the main interest for a gaming laptop is the discrete graphics. This is handled by a Nvidia RTX 2060 Max-Q . This is a low-power variant of the mobile RTX 2060 which itself was a reduced clock-rate and more power-efficient variant of the desktop RTX 2060.  The power consumption is rated at 65Watt TGP by Nvidia compared to 80 – 90 W of the mobile RTX 2060. The boost clock is 1285MHz. This makes it a card that should be good for 1080p-gaming at high settings. RTX-features like ray tracing though might be to much for this card.

The screen on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 I am testing is a 15.6″ 1080p IPS-screen that has a max refresh rate of 240 Hz. It also has support for adaptive sync, 100% sRGB and is Pantone® Validated.

The storage is handled by a 1 TB Intel 660p (Intel SSDPEKNW010T8) which has a theoretical max speed of  1800 MB/s (both write and read). This is a QLC-based SSD and while it needs less power and is offers a good price/performance-ratio it has a disadvantage that the Endurance-rating is just 200 TBW meaning 200 Terabyte of writing over its life. For an OS-drive it should be ok but if you write a lot (and much data) every day you might have to add another SSD with an higher endurance.

One thing this laptops does not have is a webcam so if you plan on using it for video-meetings you need a separate webcam. There are two microphones on it though.

WIFI is handled by the Intel WIFI6 X200. This is a 2×2 network card with support for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz (160Hz).