Asus ROG Zephyrus G15-GA503 ( New 2021)

Great, thorough review!

 

Anyone who bought from Best Buy— does it come with the smaller type-c PD charging adapter?

Btw, Asus was quoted as saying they didn’t pursue advanced optimus because it’s still too buggy, which I thought was probably bs, but there’s things popping up making me think they were being honest — http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/advanced-optimus.835322/

 

If it's like previous Asus laptops, no.

 

only 200w barrel plug in the box. type c is sold separate but the 87w apple charger we have at work worked too. dunno about fast charging but i can imagine ASUS isn't going to give those things up for cheap, which like a used 96w apple charger is like 40 bucks on ebay.

edit: i mean as an option for carrying one light charger that fits your laptop, phone and w/e else type c thing you have lol

 

Thank you for the information you guys provided so far. It is extremely helpful!

Does anyone know how the dual channel works once you upgrade the RAM on it?
Searching google I saw three possible answers so far:
1. You lose dual channel.
2. You get to keep dual channel up to the first 16GB and the rest runs at single channel when you go over 16GB of memory usage.
3. You get to keep dual channel for 16GB and the rest is single channel, but it’s completely random when you use dual channel or single channel I.e. 66% chance in a 24GB scenario.

does anyone know for sure or think it’s going to cause a large impact? Debating if I should return my 16GB stick upgrade for more storage instead.

 

I didn't notice a change in performance upgrading mine to 40GB of ram actually. But my testing has been pretty minimal. I'm not the type to like, run two dozen benchmarks just cuz, i wanna see the games im gonna play are gonna play then im done.

 

That’s good news still. If it’s not a huge impact then I won’t worry about it too much.
do you mind posting a cpu-z screenshot for the memory tab?

 

https://i.imgur.com/maQt2of.png

 

Great thank you!
That means that you do keep dual channel and it’s either scenario 2 or 3 from what I listed. I’m good with that at least.

 

Hmm ... finally got around to doing some temp testing

CPU doesn't seem to throttle at all. Even during CPU heavy benchmarks.

but this GPU result confuses me a bit.... It's thermal throttling at 85c? Aren't Nvidia's GPUs capable of pushing 90c easily?

https://i.imgur.com/QPTjdJ2.png

Edit:

Saw an all core boost of around 4ghz during cb r20 - still no thermal throttling. 5k all core. 560 single.

edges out slightly ahead of my 3800x. Damn thats insane.

 

So here my question. In what scenario is having more RAM in single channel useful? I know in games it’s not good at all. And I figured having dual channel for work related tasks is ideal also?

 

hehe work related tasks.

That's funny.

Truely, it is for my 400 chrome tabs. No other reason.
I probably don't even need it. And I am quite on the fence about returning it.

 

Hey you get the idea.
I honestly like to mess around with 3D making programs so more RAM would be nice, but likely unnecessary since I just do it for fun.

What’s the main reason you’re considering sending it back?

 

Well I ordered a strix and it's got two replaceable slots. So i'd probably order some 16x2 for it.

i guess what ever laptop i get i'd like it to have at least 32gb of ram so well just see where it goes.

 

No appreciable gain by using a type-c/dp -> to external monitor on cyberpunk 2077 (So I guess Cyberpunk doesn't suffer from the issues w/ legacy optimus, not shocking, its much more GPU dependent I bet.)

Also pissing me off quite a bit? The apparent thermal throttle of this GPU is actually set to 75c.

I am disappoint.

This about an hours worth of gameplay. avg 65 fps on high-ultra, ray tracing off, DLSS set to balanced.

https://i.imgur.com/ArFOS5x.png


EDIT:
Ok I was mistaken - there is probably an appreciable benefit to using an external display - it's still only like 5%-8%. But I'm guessing when i first started messing around with it, it was lost due to the game being loaded into the single channel portion of my RAM. This morning I did not open chrome before opening the game to play a bit and noticed higher frame rates.

So this might be a problem. I think I might return this system and stick with the Strix Scar. I don't want to be playing musical memory chairs, unless there is some way to tell windows to force game exes to always load into the dual channel portion (lol doubt it).

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/removal-of-gpu-thermal-limit.830552/

Try this

 

The first 16GB (because 8GB on board plus it will use 8 GB from the upgraded RAM to operate in Dual Channel) will work in in Dual Channel but the remainder will be in Single Channel

 

Ok I was mistaken - there is probably an appreciable benefit to using an external display - it's still only like 5%-8%. But I'm guessing when i first started messing around with it, it was lost due to the game being loaded into the single channel portion of my RAM. This morning I did not open chrome before opening the game to play a bit and noticed higher frame rates.

So this might be a problem. I think I might return this system and stick with the Strix Scar. I don't want to be playing musical memory chairs, unless there is some way to tell windows to force game exes to always load into the dual channel portion (lol doubt it).

 

I've got the 32gb, 5900hs, 3080 in white on pre-order from Scan here in the UK. It's coming in stock tomorrow so hopefully I'll have it on Tuesday.

It's good to hear so much positive feedback about the screen. Although this review isn't quite so complimentary:

https://www.laptopmag.com/uk/reviews/asus-rog-zephyrus-g15-ga503q?region-switch=1613315760

 

I read that review last night. Something is off with that review. . .they were mentioning how perfect the G14 before it was. And yet this improved G15 was somehow not perfect? That’s some weird logic.

But yeah the screen test is a bit concerning. Notebookcheck has a peak of 320nits. So hopefully they got a dud and that’s not what is being shipped to buyers.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG-Zephyrus-G15-laptop-review-Eye-catcher.517789.0.html

Sounds like sticking with 16gb overall is the best way to go then. It’s a shame the only way to get more dual channel ram is to purchase the 3080 model.

 

Yeah, I'm hoping that the machine provided to laptopmag is not a retail sample or just a dud.

But, as you say, the part of the review relating to the display is a bit odd. I used to have a G14 and the display wasn't great. The reviewer for laptopmag makes out that G14 display was something special.

Has anybody overclocked the GPU in their G15 yet and gone past the 100w power threshold?

 

Yeah that’s the first time I heard anyone give it that much praise. Seemed like a good machine for the money, but it was plagued with some issues and the screen was one of them. Up to 40ms of input lag. That’s down right terrible. So that tells me the reviewer is a casual gamer. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s hard to take they're opinion on things like that.

Once a few more members get their hands on them we’ll know for sure.

You can flash another GPU’s bios onto the machine. Not sure how that’s done though. I’m sure if it can be done someone will be bragging about it soon.

 

I've been using the laptop almost a week now and I've really grown to like it. I think I'll be keeping it. The 5900HS is a really great CPU and I don't want to give it's performance up to go back to an Intel mobile chip until they get their 10nm Tiger Lake chips out. Read that will be happening Q2, but who knows. For now I am happy with the performance with my few gripes.

As I said before the lack of dGPU mode, HDMI through the iGPU, and soldered relatively slow RAM are my biggest gripes with the unit. Everything else I really like about it. The form factor, weight, screen, keyboard and typing experience, and the huge glass trackpad is top notch. The power brick is 200w and portable but after about an hour of Warzone at 1440p I noticed a 3% drop in battery.

I planned to use the laptop for some couch gaming occasionally with my LG OLED C9 that supports G-Sync Compatible over HDMI. But since it's using the AMD iGPU for out over HDMI you can't get G-Sync. Ugh... However with a bit of tweaking, you can use CRU and add a FreeSync range to the LG display at the driver level and it works flawlessly and the TV switches to FreeSync VRR mode. So I can get 1440p 120Hz FreeSync which is incredible to game on. The OLED gaming experience for Flight Sim is really something else. I also bought an adapter that allows 4K 120Hz over the USB-C type C to HDMI. I think it does some sort of HDMI/DP switching because the display is then recognized as DP in Nvidia Control Panel. This method allows for use of dGPU, max performance, 4K 120Hz, but you lose VRR. So choose your poison, but at least there are options!

I am going to try and get the BIOS unlocked via a modder and should be able to tune the memory timings down to around CL16 hopefully and that should definitely help increase gaming performance in CPU limited situations.

 

Depends if nvidia is still calling sub 114w cards max-q. Because last gen, cross flashing a max-p vbios onto a max-q was not possible and the card will just run in safe mode (0.7v 1350mhz)

 

Makes sense. An 80w gpu being flashed with a 150w bios would probably end badly. So I’m sure something like that is still in place in the bios even though they don’t refer to them as Max-q chips anymore.

 

*depends if nvidia is still calling them Max-q internally

How much you can increase the gpu tdp depends on the laptop vrms and cooling system. My GS75 easily handles 150w (shunted modded not vbios modded)

The zephyrus series are also very capable and have lots of headroom.

 

There seems to be a lot of folks with shiny modded G14 units. So that maybe the way forward in the G15 then too. Time to bust out the soldering iron then.

 

Yeah I was the one who helped them. Didn't have as large of an improvement as I had hoped though.

 

Ah so you’re the expert. Exciting.

Looking more for battery life and modest performance at this price range so I’ll probably not gonna dive into that kind of modding. Still fun to learn what can be done with a little probing though.

 

Excellent to hear that, I plan to use the laptop with my 65C9 too. Can you tell me what cable adaptors you used? I've seen a few out there.

Just heard that my G15 has been dispatched and will be here tomorrow! Apart from my work supplied Surface Pro, I've been without a PC of any kind for over 4 weeks!

Anyway, back on topic. I 'm sure that I have read that RTX 30 laptop GPUs are all pretty much identical from a hardware point of view (as in all 3060s are the same, all 3070s ar the same etc). The TGP is bios controlled, so you aren't limited by the GPU hardware, its down to cooling and power. This might just apply to lower power variants though, as in there mioght be hardware differences between an 80w 3080 and a 150w 3080. So flashing an 80w 30## with the bios of a 115w 30## might be straightforward and relatively safe. In the case of the G15, the 200w PSU might be a determining factor though as most laptops with a 115w GPU seem to come with a 230w+ PSU.

Before I think about flashing, I'll have a go at a bit of mild overclocking though. My last laptop was a GE66 Raider with a 115W RTX 2070 refresh. I put 1000Mhz on the memory and 130Mhz on the core. Temps were unaffected but power draw was 130w+. About 10% increase in performance though.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MSWMXT4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I think you can flash the 115w vBIOS for the Asus 3070 from the Scar line with Nvflash but I haven't been able to locate it yet. Nobody has uploaded it yet. You should be able to lock it in around 100w of draw by controlling the voltage/freq curve lock option in MSI Afterburner.

 

Anybody know where to buy the 100w charger that is supposed to work on all these new systems?

I'm guessing they just aren't on sale yet.

 

Please do share if you find it and try it.

I haven’t seen them yet. I have a few 65w usb c chargers that I’ll be using as my light weight charger though. Should be plenty for general use away from home.

 

Yeah I hope so.

This 87w macbook charger I'm using is struggling. Getting popups about how it's not plugged in right, and it's hot as hell, and the system is sometimes like lagging out - it is very bizarre - it was not doing this before the weekend and I'd be shocked if I was using more than 87w of power at any given moment between outlook, chrome, firefox, spotify, onedrive, etc ... panel is set to 75% brightness, kbbl is minimal brightness. The system is set to Silent so i can't imagine it's trying to turbo up too hard and hwmon suggests the cpu hasn't gone over 45w since I started monitoring.

Its quite bizarre.

 

My bad 90w. This is the one I’ve been using. I don’t have one of those tools to measure how much power it pulls from the wall to verify if they’re telling the truth. Been going strong since July though and I use it for a lot of different devices and goes with me everyday.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B083ZBXXN5?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

 

I've purchased this cable - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08P2DSYZ2/

As for flashing the GPU, once the G15 is more widely available I'm hoping that the modders will work their magic and we can up the TGP.

My only experience of using NVflash was years ago, flashing the bios of a Zotac 1080Ti mini so that the card had a 0rpm mode for the fans. From memory, NVflash was easy to use.

 

Not sure if anyone posted this review up yet. By the way, it seems some of these models come with only White backlight keyboard, from what the reviewer said in a response to someone’s comment.



Where is the moonlight white 32gb option?? Really hoped it would be on sale by now lol.

 

Mondo oof

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/229916/229916

Got someone to upload it for me. I haven't tried it out, yet... I did look at it though and it is a 3070 with 115w and 130w max dynamic. Nvflash was throwing some warnings about differing IDs which is normal but it had one about firmware as well which I thought was odd. I have a hardware programmer so I should be able to flash back if something goes wrong, but I really don't want to have to resort to that. Will let you know if I decide to give this a try.

 

New review

 

Is this your channel?

 

Oh goodness no. I haven’t had the stones to make a review video myself. Just someone I’m subbed too.

 

So, my G15 arrived about 11am (UK time). Its the 5900hs, 32gb, 3080 version in white. This isn't actually the version that I wanted, I had the 5800hs, 16GB, 3070 version in grey on pre-order but it wasn't due to arrive until 16th March and I just couldn't wait that long. The colour is actually ok, but its a little too Apple for me. Incidentally, theres no single zone RGB on my laptop just white backlighting.

Before turning it on, I opened it up and installed another 1TB Nvme in the spare slot. Other than that, first impressions are very good. It feels really solid and premium (no creaking on mine). A few reveiwers have nitpicked about the screen being wobbly, but it is no better or worse that the Asus G14, MSI GE66 or Dell XPS 15 that I've owned previously. The screen is indeed lovely and sharp and colourful.

I haven't installed any games yet, but I've run Timespy a few times. Overall score of 10382 and a graphics score of 10522 on Turbo mode. Its pretty quiet and cool too - 68 degrees celsius on the GPU. Although I do use a laptop stand, so my G15 is elevated off the desk slightly. My previous laptop was an MSI GE66 with a 115w RTX 2070. WIth a 1000Mhz overclock on the mem and 130Mhz on the core, that scored 8418 (graphics only). So this lower power 3080 scores over 2000 points more. The GE66 weighs 2.5kg and the chassis is an inch thick, so 2000+ points higher in a smaller, lighter laptop with a GPU that consumes less power is pretty impressive.

I have overclocked the GPU - 150Mhz on the core and 500Mhz on the mem. This did result in slightly increased clock and mem speed and therefore a slightly increased score in Timespy. But no matter what I do (from an overclocking point of view), I can't break that 100w power threshold. So even if I overclocked 1000Mhz on the core, the power would limit the overclock.

I'll be installing Cyberpunk shortly.

 

I remember reading last week someone took the vbios from the MSI GE66 to use on their Asus laptop. Now here is someone who used vbios from MSI GE76 to work on their 3080 Zephyrus Duo. https://wccftech.com/asus-rog-zephy...eforce-rtx-3080-vbios-swap-higher-tgp-unlock/ That could work on the G15?

 

You can try, but I don't think it will work, judging from my experience flashing vbioses last generation. The Max-q cards will not be able to be flashed to Max-p.

 

That's a similar graphics score to my shunt modded 2080 Max-q. Have you overclocked yet?

I'll be helping my friend shunt mod his 3070 zephyrus G once he gets it. We'll see if it can beat your score.

 

Flashing an 80w RTX 30## to an 115w version should work. If the vbios from the Zeph duo or Scar 15/17 RTX 3080 became available I'd certainly try it. The 115w RTX 3080 in the Duo scores 11500+ graphics in Timespy, so the increases arent massive in terms of performance. But the increase in heat and power draw wouldnt be massive either, so the G15 would (hopefully) be able to deal with it.

As for the 3080 in my G15, overclocking would work a treat if I could push the power threshold. I added 200Mhz to the core and 500Mhz to the mem, it got through Timespy scoring 10700+ but there was some artifacting. Power usage spiked to 115w several times. The core clockspeed is all over the place too, jumping between 1250Mhz and 1600Mhz constantly. I have smoothed out the core clock using afterburner so that it gives a consistent 1400Mhz to 1450Mhz. This doesn't result in any gains in benchmarks though.

If I'm honest though, despite all my tinkering I'm really happy with the performance as it is. It's such a light and thin laptop that and it does eveything so well.

 

11500+ to 13500+ is a pretty big difference considering its the same gpu.

From the same 3dmark zephyrus duo user, the gpu temp goes from 62C to 77C after flashing the 150w GE76 vbios.

 

A 150w 3080 is a pretty impressive GPU (considering the bad press that the laptop 3080 has been getting). Thats knocking on the door of desktop 3070 performance.

I'd like to get a bit more juice out of my 3080, but I'm really happy with it even with its performance out of the box.

My USB-C to HDMI 2.1 cable is coming tomorrow so I'm looking forward to connecting the G15 up to my OLED TV.