Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Owner's Lounge

Anyone figure out how to lower the TDP of the nvidia GPU? (for some games it is more demanding on the CPU side, so in that case it would make sense to give more TDP to the CPU and take away some from the GPU. Or just to lower the temps)

 

I always lock framerates to my display refresh rate in any case.

And yes, single core bottleneck is the main thing that affects performance here. A better solution would be to lock tdp to a lower value rather than lock clocks.

 

Yes, but that is not possible without a far bigger performance impact atm. I can cap the tdp with Ryzen adj but performance loss is huge, at 35W only 25% performance is left despite good looking clocks.

 

When gaming?

You can always fine tune the tdp cap until it hits a sweet spot.

 

35W is the standard tdp without boosting. A 75% performance loss indicates that there is something wrong.
Capping to 3GHz with free tdp leads to a powerdraw of around 25W at much higher performance as with capped tdp to 35W. So Ryzen adj does something but also something unintended.

 

What use case is this? Gaming or running cpu intensive tasks?

We need as much information as possible so that we can replicate this and hopefully fix it.

 

CPU intensive benchmarks - i stopped there with trying. 1000 points instead of 5000 points in the cpu-z bench is not an explainable result.

 

I know this thread is for troubleshooting issues and answering questions, but I thought I'd inject a bit of positivity in here.

I've had my machine for about 4 days right now and I've been having NO issues whatsoever. Absolutely loving the computer!

Mr. Mysterious

 

Gotta rave more about benchmarks scores

Alienware and msi threads are full of those

 

Hey, if raving about benchmark scores is what makes them happy, then all the more power to them.

I'm just enjoying the experience so far. I wish others didn't have issues with this product cause it's a really good one.

Mr. Mysterious

 

So no issues like the ones reported in this thread, high CPU temps, loud fans when gaming, or random black screens?

 

None for me, no. Earlier in the beginning (i.e. first couple of days) there were random disconnects to my wifi, but that seems to have settled down.

Besides that, sometimes chrome freezes up for a few seconds, until I alt+tab out, and then it's back to normal. If I were to really nitpick, I'd want to improve the battery life just a little more and lower the weight by just a half pound, then it would really be perfect. But once again, that's very, very nitpicky.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Have you tried disabling the dGPU and lowering the refresh rate to 60Hz? That usually bumps battery considerably.

Very difficult to lower 1/2lb, the chassis is already magnesium, and you can't make components like the screen and electronics lighter. The only place to cut weight would be from the cooling system, but that would severely impact performance.

 

I can confirm this works.
Working on new benchmarks, I'll try to have them done by the end of the week (currently reviewing the GS66).

 

Well that’s encouraging, still waiting for the space gray model to come out but this is very good .

 

Thanks! I'm looking forward to seeing the differences in the benchmarks. More info is better!

Right, as I had mentioned before, those are nitpicks. I have actually done both simultaneously and observed the power draw with BatteryBar Pro app; doing so did not seem to affect the power draw any differently than having the dGPU disabled + 120Hz.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Intrigued by Ryzen's performance, I decided to pick one of these up from Best Buy. It's honestly been a decade since I've used any system with an AMD chip. It should be here Tuesday at the latest.

Funny comment on Hardware Canucks' review:

"After seeing AMD benchmarks - What did jesus say when he switched from Intel to AMD = Do not mourn me for i have Ryzen....."

 

Nice one!

BIOS 212 released.
Fixed manual fan speed mode.
GPU fan now stops in manual mode and only activates if dGPU gets activated.
Fans will wakeup from 0rpm if temps are rising - frying the laptop seems now impossible. Silent manual profiling is now posible,
No slower idle fan speeds in auto modes for now,

 

Copied from the subreddit post on this topic:

"I'm seeing some really odd behavior from my unit.

First of all, idle temps (when I'm web browsing on Silent mode) were originally 35C for the CPU.

Then, after doing the BIOS update, my idle temps for my CPU are now 42C, and in manual mode, I'm seeing slower/no fans after I made the changes you can see in these images: https://imgur.com/a/n8Ah23Z

Thoughts?"

Mr. Mysterious

 

I responded already. Don't know what he wants to tell us.

 

I saw that, thank you Wertzius.

I posted because I was concerned about the slightly higher temperatures without seeing an increase in the CPU utilization. I went back to the default settings and my temps calmed back down.

I guess what was confusing me was that in the subreddit, you mentioned that the GPU fan stopped, but in the screenshot I took, the CPU fan stopped. Just comparing results, trying to see why there are discrepancies.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Returning mine. Benches were amazing, love the look and feel - but in actual practice I had a number of issues with both thermals (cpu riding at 95), black screens, straight dumps to sleep mode during game play and some artifacting issues during gameplay. It's possible I got a defective gpu I suppose - I may exchange for a new one, try again and see and then return for good.

 

Thermals are normal but black screens and artifacting are definitely not normal.

Are you overclocking the gpu? Probably not right?

 

Nope. In fact, I even went into armory crate, completely readjusted the fan curves for both GPU and CPU and took the factory OC on the GPU down to 0.

 

Black scrren problem is soled and linked here (I also recommend the subreddit) an temps are normal.

 

Except my black screen was happening while gaming, not browsing, and would occasionally force the machine into sleep mode even though every trigger for sleep (aside from manually forcing it) was turned off.

 

@Melarn Any chance this was happening with the laptop lid closed (like with an external display, kb, mouse, dock, etc)? I recall reading in the manual about a specific overheat protection mode when the lid was closed.

 

Yes... the forced sleep. But it did happen (though less frequently) with the lid partially open.

 

Yeah, you cannot use this laptop with closed lid. It will shutdown because of overheating. You have to use some kind of elevation or a cooling pad.

 

ASUS, is it really so hard to program the laptop to use a lower power state instead of sleeping it off? Some people use the thing docked for office work.

Enviado desde mi HTC One M9 mediante Tapatalk

 

With the current design of the ergolift, without opening the lid, the intakes are blocked off so cooling isn't possible at all.

 

In my instance, even closed, the laptop was elevated at an angle using an angled laptop riser to ensure proper ventilation. Still forced sleep mode, still black screened and artifacted while gaming.

 

The heat still gets trapped between screen and keyboard. Feel the area left of the power button and you will know what i mean.
This laptop is not made to be used when closed.

 

Seems like a lot of people have recently gotten their G14s. How has the experience been for you guys?

Mr. Mysterious

 

Absolutely great but you should be able to solve driver problems at the moment. It is a a brand new device on a brand new platform so there are typical early adaptor problems to solve.
At the moment it is nothing for anyone without basic PC knowledge.

 

I returned mine. While the build quality was great, the thermals and the fan noise were awful. Constant high pitch fan noise, even on idle, was a deal breaker for me. I started a game and played 10 minutes, the CPU went to 103 degrees Celsius and was throttling constantly, the fans were noisier than my real car, the keyboard started to be uncomfortable warm. This laptop is a big disappointment, the CPU is very powerful but runs hot and the chassis is too thin, so it is impossible to cool it down. Through Armoury Crate you can reduce the fan speed, but this works only when your laptop is connected to AC. When on battery, noisy and annoying fans when idling.

 

That really sucks. I'm sorry you had such an unpleasant experience. I gotta say, I agree that it's really unprofessional of Asus to release a product that clearly wasn't ready for the mainstream.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Yes, the machine runs hot, as every other gaming laptop also does.

Fan controlling on battery is now possible, including stopping the fans completely.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG1...less_completely_silent_on_battery_manual_fan/

 

Do the latest chipset drivers posted on the product page (Version V26.20.14048.2) fix the whole having to mickey-mouse to get the blackscreen issue to go away?

 

A little bit early to draw conclusions but until now, it seems so, yes.

 

great to hear, let us know updates on this, if this holds true after the windows 2004 officially releases next week I will probably grab one of these next month (I hope it has a recovery image with 2004 on it)

 

Fan Control, Boost Control and TDP Control is now possible - i think every "my laptop is so hot and noisy" (spoiler: all gaming laptops are) complaints can find an end.
My summary post to this on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG14/comments/gpx549/summary_about_controlling_fansboosttdp_all_is/

 

Anyone know when the GTX 1660ti model is released? Not a fan of the White laptop version with silver keyboard .

 

First ones come up on reddit just today.

 

Link?

 

Ha, so I tried browsing for the availability of the G14 in Spain, and came with the reviews of Chapuzas Informatico. Turns out the 4800HS might be the better option for the G14 since there is barely no performance hit from the 4900HS, and the laptop runs cooler. Also, decent €€ savings.

 

No surprise. What difference should 100MHz make?

Grey ones arriving:
https://i.redd.it/e3wpltxmew051.jpg
https://i.redd.it/nu5021i9uw051.jpg
https://i.redd.it/szkgwdbemu051.jpg

https://reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG14/comments/gq5b5x/gray_g14_safety_buckled_in_aus/

 

Updated my blog with new benchmarks for my Optimized Profile which is the 3GHz base clock tweak.

https://www.theeverydayenthusiast.com/post/review-2020-asus-g14

Also added Red Dead Redemption II numbers for both the dGPU and iGPU.

TLDR: 3GHz will perform very close to (if not exactly) as well as Turbo and Performance mode.

I'll be returning the G14 this week and I'm honestly really sad to let it go. It's the perfect laptop for me and I love it more than my GS65 with a 2080MQ (90W).

The 2 reasons why I'm returning it are:

• Cyberpunk 2077. After playing Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Control, all with RTX on, I doubt this laptop will be able to play the game fully maxed out with good FPS. CPR may add DLSS 2.0 which will make the game playable but I don't want to take the risk.

• 2021 Zephyrus G14 - I have a big feeling that the 2021 G14 will have a Zen 3 refresh (Cezanne) now that desktop Zen 3 is releasing this year. Rumor is a 15% IPC increase with RDNA2/Vega++ iGPU. On top of that, if they upgrade the dGPU to an RTX 3060 Max-Q, performance should match an RTX 2070 Max-P, but at 65W, and with greatly improved Ray Tracing performance. This is all my opinion though based on Nvidia's track record of laptop GPUs over the past 3 years. They may also use an RDNA2 dGPU which will take full advantage of AMDs Smartshift Tech. I'm banking on this really hard and I'm willing to wait until next year.

 

Anyone tried using hdmi out and can't control brightness of the laptop? I just ordered this laptop and this will be a very annoying issue since I frequently dock my laptop and connect it through hdmi

 

Yep, still a problem, reported it to ASUS. Via USB-C i had no issues if i remember correctly.