Asus ROG Zephyrus G15-GA503 ( New 2021)

Well all I do is game - I got meme'd into it by a friend - now I am less enthusiastic than I was. Actually about the whole laptop. He kind of implied there wouldn't be a serious loss to performance, but I kept seeing notes online about it and went and made him clarify and he was like 'oh yeah only 16 of it will be dual channel lol' He was running 40gb of ram in his non gaming non work laptop for lolz and kept memeing at me to do it in this one and now i'm a bit butthurt.

Not even sure I'll keep the damn thing if it really does have only 8 soldered. I guess 16 is enough for gaming these days but I also keep like 500 chrome tabs open and a half dozen other apps all the time for lulz.

blah this kind of sucks.

and despite pre-ordering on the 26th, Bestbuy has mine in limbo between "Item Unavailable" and "Picked and ready to ship" so that's real great too.

And of course to make matters worse, every other AMD based system across the whole world is sold out every where too. I was seriously considering going for the G15 Strix Scar but like good luck even buying it.

 

Now my local Best Buy says I can get it Friday if shipped or Saturday if picked up. I'm leaning towards not getting it but I will wait until at least March when Best Buy gives me my birthday discount.

 

Just got mine it a few minutes ago and in the process of setting it up now.

First thing I am surprised at is that the keyboard lighting is multi colored. Only single zone though. I was thinking t was just a simple white color like my Zephyrus 14 was.

 

What of the RAM situation?

 

Unfortunately it looks like 8 soldered and 8 module. At least thats what HWINFO app is telling me. Ill know for sure when I take it apart in a few to install 2X2TB NVME drives

 

Quickly quickly we are all dying to know lol and upload a pic too so this debate is settled for good.

 

Well, if it's strictly for gaming then you should get by with 16GB total, but I wouldn't "upgrade". 2933 vs 3200 is not such a big deal, but single channel can be a big hit. Very strange design decision by Asus - either drop all the pretence and solder all RAM and provide 16 or 32 GB options, or don't solder at all, and you'll win users who like to have fastest RAM, need 64GB or just don't want to be locked into the soldered RAM for any other reason (e.g. out of warranty repairability)..

 

What's the CL of that Samsung RAM?

 

CL22, same AW uses. Not sure if there is slower RAM on the market. At least it's 3200.

 

Still no webcam on these?

 

So just picked up my unit from Best Buy this morning and it is indeed 8gb onboard and 8gb in a dimm.

Initial impressions are the laptop is really nice. The screen is absolutely gorgeous.

 

Coming from a OLED laptop, how's the backlight bleed? Are you able to take a photo? I was thinking of grabbing this and giving my current laptop to my son.

 

I agree! Much better than I had anticipated.

I have a 2020 4K Razer Blade Stealth and this thing blows it away. Brighter and clearer.

I have also had a 4k OLED laptop and while this isn't quite up to par with that, it comes pretty close.

I would say this is easily the best none OLED panel I have ever seen on a notebook.

 

If you don't have time that's fine, but I was wondering if you can post a photo of what it looks like with a pure black screen. Much appreciated.

 

If we all chant moon-light-white-moon-light-white perhaps we'll get what we want

 

Unfortunately I am in my office for the day and cant make it very dark, but nonetheless here is what I got. The picture doesn't do it justice. The screen is fully dark BUT for the bottom right comer, there is definitely noticeable light bleed. Had I not use a screen tester I would likely not have ever noticed.

Not sure if I should thank you for this test as even though I don't notice it with normal use, my OCD might drive me nuts over time.

Going to have to keep a check on the return window now

 

Yeah, I mean, I would classify myself as a little OCD, so we're completely in the same ballpark. I totally accept that any non-OLED screen is going to have some IPS glow to a certain extent and perhaps some minor backlight bleed. The question for me becomes, where is the threshold between price/performance/visuals/"imperfections"? IPS glow is not as much of an issue for me as actual screen pinching that leads to areas of bleed.

I have seen a non-OLED panel in the Dell Inspiron 17 7000 that literally has zero backlight bleed or IPS glow. It uses an LG panel and it was the first time I really saw an IPS panel that's near flawless.

All that being said, there is a measure of new toy syndrome, which is to say, the expectation for perfection is at its peak in the early stages, but begins to wear off after a few days.

 

Good thing there were pre-orders available lol. /s

 

Oh yeah

Do they have windows 10 Home or Pro???

 

In case you can still cancel , how about this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-gigabyte-aero-15-owners-lounge.804575/page-422

 

I was looking hard at that one but the power port on the right side is a no go for me.

 

https://imgur.com/a/bK0Bbx4

Cinebench R23 run with max CPU fan. Forgot to max out GPU fan as they're not connected lol. The fans are super loud though so I wouldn't use them for other than benching.

 

Well you knew this one was coming. But ya gotta show off the fire strike scores and some temp readings.

 

That's JDEC spec, so literally as slow as it goes. Heck, even 2400 cl16 ram is faster.

 

Home.

 

I caved and ordered this version, really want the moonlight white but I'll take this one for now so if anyone wants me to run any tests or has questions I should have it in hand later today!

 

Gross.

Thanks for responding.

Guess a reload is first up after I get mine.

 

When playing a game, especially Cyberpunk if you have it, what are the temps and how loud is the fan without putting it in jet engine mode.

 

k so i got tired of waiting and ordered next day pickup like everybody else. Bestbuy unit

5k Multi, 550 single in CBR20

9500 over all score in Timespy

Fans are pretty loud.

Lid passes one handed check

Echoing others sentiments, screen is GORGEOUS.

Coming from the razerblade 2018 base, the keyboard is a massive upgrade.

SSD is pretty fast. 3500 read 3k write (Definitely not the most amazing, but you know)

still tinkering around with it but this is what i got so far.


Getting cyberpunk next

 

How's the backlight bleed on your unit?

 

Not too bad - went into a pitch dark room and took some pictures but I don't think they're indicative of that product so I'm not going to post them. For some reason my s10 camera seems to bring the bleed out REALLY bad - much worse than it appears to my eyes.

To my eyes it does not look that bad but I'm not extremely sensitive to this kind of thing.

 

Alright well Cyberpunk runs pretty good on it

Fully maxed all bells and whistles on "Ray Tracing Ultra" is about 45 FPS - which is extremely playable, at 1440p

I have a custom setting list I use that disables a few things like chromatic abberation, lens flare, etc, Disables the Ray tracing tech which I don't think adds a huge amount to the games visuals, but keeping DLSS on "Medium" it gets about 60-70FPS while still looking good, to me.

So I'm thinking that's a win.

May wind up keeping this system after all.

Can't get over how pretty this screen is.

 

Thanks, what kind of temps do you get?

 

I completely spaced it and did not check

reloading win10 pro on it now - so it's gonna be awhile before stuff is back up for testing.

 

No rush. Have fun!

 

The lack of dGPU mode is killing it for me right now. I don't understand why they included "adaptive-sync" when it still routes everything through the AMD iGPU. That thing is killing performance of this beast. I did some testing in Warzone last night and with the internal display I got 80fps on 1440p maxed out without ray tracing on the internal display. Once I switched over to dGPU mode by switching to a 1440p G-Sync extrenal screen the fps shot right up to 96fps. That is a pretty disappointing loss in performance all because they cheaped out and decided to not include a MUX. The laptop even has GPU switching in the Armory Crate software where you can select iGPU to ON, Auto or OFF. But it never really turns it off since it's still routing through.

I'm going to do a TimeSpy test and check results as I'm not sure it's showing the true loss as tested by others.

GPU under gaming loads in Warzone were around 73c with a small OC and CPU hitting peak of 90c. The fans go like crazy in Turbo mode but the laptop doesn't become uncomfortably hot to use.

Testing last night with just battery and in performance mode the laptop can hit 12,000 in CB23 multi and the fans like never kick on, it's silent. CPU maxed at 71c. Pretty incredible performance for anyone that needs that kind of CPU rendering power.

 

Update: finally got it up and running, unfortunately I don't have Cyberpunk but I did get Warzone playing and with everything totally maxed out and armoury set to turbo mode I'm getting a solid 60FPS in open world combat and even more inside buildings. Very impressed especially with the screen as others have said you don't really appreciate it at first until you load up a game then it's like WOW.

So far it's got my mark of approval although it does seem to run a bit hot after a few matches with it on my lap. It isn't burning but my crotch is nice and toasty to say the least

Edit: That Ryzen9 is running 85C sometimes a couple degrees over that when doing hardcore warzone on max everything and turbo fans, thats pretty warm but I'm also not on a desk, it's in my lap but in a position that allows the fans to circulate

 

With 3200mhz cl22 or slower, laptops are bottlenecked to 60-70hz. You can probably turn up some settings and set dlss to quality without losing any fps.

Slow ram is a big problem in laptops. I'm getting higher fps than 3080M laptops even though I only have a 2080 simply because I have overclocked and optimised my ram timings.

 

That's a real bummer. How many laptops really let you do that though?

Ah well, the 3070 seems like it aught to tide me over for the next couple years- so RAM problem or not, I may just keep this system. Like I seriously have a choice either way - Ryzen's sold out every where else.

 

That’s an absolute shame it doesn’t have a MUX switch. Hopefully they add that to the next gen of this machine. They have it on they’re higher end models and it really should be a standard feature on any laptop that has a dedicated gpu. Honestly add that and this really would be a great all around package.

That being said I still see this being a super popular laptop for a lot of people. Decent price with great features and specs.

 

MSI, Razer, Tongfang and clevo laptops have access to memory overclocking.

I'm surprised they didn't put a mux switch in the zephyrus G to be honest. Now that the zephyrus S series is discontinued, only the zephyrus G and Zephyrus duo series remain so now Asus doesn't have any laptops with mux switches.

 

Anybody else feel like the fingerprint reader is a bit **** on this one?

 

They're probably still using the one from the Zephyrus G14 that only worked for me once out of every 10 times I booted the laptop.

 

I thought the strix had a mux switch? Might have read that wrong somewhere. Atleast they’re starting to become more common. It’s just a same so many drag their feet on adding such features. I was kinda surprised the zephyrus s line got discontinued. I thought that was the high end brand?

 

No the srix never had a mux switch. And yeah, the Zephyrus S was the high end intel line, that price category got replaced by the zephyrus duo

 

The Asus zephyrus S15’s bios was just a locked up Asus branded American Megatrends bios. I used a programmer to modify it to unlock options that would allow greater than -150mV undervolt after they put the plundervolt protection in place. I think ram timing modifications have some motherboard dependencies, but I wonder if it’s worth attempting to add those bios options. They’re probably there, just Disabled at the owner level. I’m still holding out for the moonlight, but if I give that a shot I’ll let you guys know. Wonder what the chance is that the 32gb ram versions come with something faster than CL22. Probably slim.

 

No chance of anything better than 3200 cl22, because there is nothing above 3200 cl22 in JEDEC specifications and manufacturers never use anything but JEDEC.

Did you see any memory overclocking options while searching through the zephyrus bios btw?

 

I don’t remember off hand. If I link you to the ami programmer that was posted up (I have to find it again, but it’s free), you can use it to read out a copy of the bios and look through the available options if you’d like. I wouldn’t try to flash the modified one though, there’s a whole bunch of risk involved there, but at least you can check what’s available but hidden. I’d do it myself but haven’t snagged that model yet (in fact I’ve been completely without a laptop for the last month and a half).