Asus ROG Zephyrus G15-GA503 ( New 2021)

It becomes less impressive when you know what it could have been.

There are users who have undervolted their desktop 3080s to 120w and get desktop 3070/2080ti performance. At 150w or more it would have been faster than the desktop 3070 and 2080ti.

The current 3080M performance is what the laptop 3070 should have been.

Laptop 3000 series is a disappointment, that's a fact.

 

Depends from what side of the arguement you’re looking at it. From the laptop side of things it is a modest bump over the 2080S laptops. Or from what I can tell can perform darn close if not better than the 200w 2080s. But if you compare it even to a desktop 3070? Forget it. Doesn’t remotely stack up. Sadly some people don’t see the harm in calling it an RTX 3080 when it’s not even a RTX 3070.

 

From my point of view, it all depends on your expectation. Talking specifically about the 3080 version of the G15, it gives better than desktop 1080Ti performance (plus ray tracing and AI gubbins) in a package that is as slim as two mobile phones stacked on top of each other. Obviously the 1080Ti is coming up to 4 years old, but that means that we could/should see desktop 3080Ti/3090 performance in our slimmest gaming laptops in the not too distand future. That's pretty exciting to me.

 

Well I picked mine up before work. So I’ll have some opinions tomorrow after I get off work. I’ll definitely share what I can and hopefully this checks all the marks I think it will. If there is anything specific anyone wants to know feel free to ask.

 

Just a small update.

Running Timespy with an external display (LG OLED TV) connected directly to the 3080 via USB C, graphics score of over 10,800 which is a very minor increase. However, the CPU score has increased from 9330 to 10,400! Which gives an overall score approaching 11,000.

Average temp of the GPU was 65 degrees.

 

Man I am tempted to snag one of these but keep thinking of how much I plan to use my laptop. Should I look for this as a long term mobile solution or go with the last gen stuff?

 

I plan to keep my G15 for a couple of years, and as I'm not running a desktop gaming rig, those are the reasons that I justified the extra cost of the 3080 version (not that its much faster than the 3070.

If I had a decent gaming desktop, then the G15 with the 3060/3070 would make a fantastic and pretty affordable mobile gaming PC (and daily driver for everything else).

 

So I have been playing around with mine for the last couple hours. And for one the 5900HS is blazing fast. Intel better step their game up if they want to compete again. The 3070 is a bit of a mixed bag, but at $1800 I don't see any other laptop on the market with these kind of specs. I can play games at 1440p high on most of the games I play and get 80 or above fps. That's solid for such a small and thin laptop. I do hope they stop soldering Ram to the motherboard as it would be nice to upgrade that. I was thinking of adding an Optane Drive in here but remembered AMD and Intel don't get along. So you are stuck with what you buy. Members have told me you can add more and you would only lose dual channel memory if you go over 16gb. But if that's the case I don't see the point.

Keyboard is solid. Nice firm feel and the keys are pretty nicely spaced. It's alot nicer than many machines I have used that are this thin. So if you type alot this is definitely worth a look.

Now speakers. . .dang. I've heard DTR laptops with worse speakers. This machine gets it right. They're loud and have alot of bass. In games it sounds great. But, watching youtube it's a bit much. So you might have to mess with them if you don't like alot of bass.

Overall as this being my first day using it I'm enjoying it. I haven't tried using it long off of a charger so I'l have to get back to you all on battery life.

 

Any owners notice the screen occasionally flash with black and white lines(maybe static)? I can't tell if there's a trigger that causes it but it's happened 3 times in 2 days now.

 

Never saw this exactly but i ran into a lot of other weird little problems like Type-C charging throwing up an error like "Its plugged in wrong, try again" and then the system would literally slow to a crawl like a pentium running off a hard drive for a few seconds or sometimes until i unplugged and replugged the charger in and this was very random, it went entire days without doing this, then sometimes would do it a couple times in an hour. Fingerprint reader only worked 2/5 times and the RAM situation kinda lead me to return it.

ROG Strix Scar (G533QR) arrived today and I must say, it is a superior machine for not a whole lot more (Bulk/cost). Noticable improvement in GPU performance, maxq vs maxp. Fans are quieter too.

Any ways - This years Zephyrus is an amazing machine, i'm sure all the minor bugs will be sorted out. For people who can make it work for them, it's a dream!

 

Not that I have seen. The screen goes black for a moment when I connect and disconnect the power brick. Kinda odd, but oh well. Is it just during normal use or during gaming?

Can you do some size comparisons since you have both? I really wanted something small so I steered away from the strix. I kinda figured it was alot more powerful. 30w on top of what the G15 can do will push ya ahead.

 

I would like to but I already returned the Zephyrus. I can tell you it is not significantly bigger. The laptop slot on my backpack was designed for old school 13" laptops, but just barely fits newage bezelless gaming laptops. The Zephyrus and Razorblade 2018 Base fit comfortably, the Strix Scar fits snugly.

I'd go so far as to even say at a glance, you might not even notice they were different sizes, though the thickness is like .8" vs 1.05" or something miniscule like that, it is very noticeable when you look at it, but in every day usage, it barely feels different. Meanwhile the whole rest of the machine is an improvement.

 

Oh that’s not that different. Looks a lot thicker in pictures. Hmm. Might have to do the same exchange when they come back in stock. Btw is there a max fan button? On the Zephyrus the fan button on the number row just changes the performance profile.

 

Did you go for the QHD, 5900HX, 16gb 3080 version? It's coming into stock in the next day or two with my retailer and I might go for the swap too (it's only £100gbp more than the G15). I'm happy with the performance of my G15 but I'm thinking of sending it back as there's noticeable backlight bleed on the screen and I can't swap it for another G15 as they are out of stock until the middle of next month.

What's the mechanical keyboard like? Any other observations?

 

there are two and they both seem to do kinda the same thing. There's an f-key that does it and a dedicated key. The dedicated key swaps up to performance, then turbo, then seems to swap back to the profile you had chosen before and the f-key seems to only swap to performance, then up to turbo, then back and forth again.

lol what a waste.

I will echo with you that it does look quite damn thicc in the pics, but actually holding it in the hand, it is not extremely thicker.

I like the keyboard a lot - it's definitely the nosiest laptop keyboard i've ever used but it feels great so I'm gonna give it a shot. The only place i could see it being obnoxious is like on an airplane at night or in a library and even then, i just don't see it being that big of a deal.

The version I got was the 5800H + 3070 Version, noticeable improvement in performance in games, especially those that are not heavily dependent on the CPU. I believe it beats the 3080 in the Zephyrus in graphics performance by virtue of being 130w.

Fans are a tinge quieter - but not extremely so.

Screen passes the one handed check and the components do not seem to be thermally limited at all. I definitely watched my CPU get up to like 102c without thermally throttling during an extended test. I am tempted to open it up and re-paste it with conductonaut and MX-4 or something to see if i can see an improvement. I think the hottest I saw the GPU get during testing was 82c. Not extremely terrible but could be better

The "MyAsus" Software that automatically downloads and installs w/ windows update is kind of obnoxious, there's a bunch of firmware updates it screams about until you give it the attention it needs to install them. One for the keyboard (Which I heard had problems out of the box, so fair) one for the GPU vbios, the actual bios (A more advanced version than ASUS' website even has listed, so nice.) and something called the multi-antenna service update, which might have something to do with the sheer disgusting number of NGFF antennas the system has in it (Seriously what the hell is up with that lol).

I should go make a ROG Strix Scar G533 thread, last time I checked, one didn't even exist.

 

Oh and for some obscene reason the SSDs both seem to run cooler than they did in the zephyrus - wtf to that

Also, the Speakers are (Expletive's) AMAZING. Hands down best speakers in a laptop quite literally I have ever heard. Great highs, great lows/bass, absolutely obscene volume that doesn't bottom out or turn to crap at high or max volume.

 

It's only during normal use so far. If it happens during a game it's going straight back to the store lol. That's about my only hangup with this machine besides the pointless fingerprint reader. I still can't get that thing to work to save my life. I'm coming from a 2019 Blade 15 so it's gonna be a tough choice whether or not to commit to the upgrade.

 

I wipe my finger before I touch it. Works fairly well for me. But I’ve heard finger print on laptops being finicky for a lot of people. I’m assuming you’re all up to date in the myasus and armory crate apps? It sounds like a hardware issue, but you never know.

 

Good tip but it is a bit too late - i have returned the zephyrus hehe. I did generally make sure my fingers were clean before trying yeah.

 

Looks like its sold out at Best buy now. Sucks as I was about to buy one.

 

Looks in stock to me. Click open box and it shows in stock new

 

Yeah I just tried and it says Sold out.

 

Would any G15 owners be kind enough to share a photo of their screen, all in black with brightness at max please? I'm trying to decide whether to go through the hassle of returning/RMAing my laptop for lightbleed issues. If its a sympton of all the G15s then I'll just live with it. If mine is particulalrly bad then its decision time!

Off topic, but resizable BAR support has been added to mine since updating via Armoury Crate on the day I got it. I hadn't checked until today though.

 

I have a small spot on the left, which I can live with since most movies will be widescreen and will cover it up. If it was at the bottom, that would be a different story. I've seen far worse from others on this model so I feel kind of lucky I guess.

 

How do you know resizable BAR is supported? Is there an option for it somewhere?

 

Thanks for the photo Derek, much appreciated. The lightbleed at the top of the screen looks quite bad, I'm assuming that it's not so bad "in the flesh"?

As for resizable BAR, look at the Resources tab for your GPU in Device Manager and if "Large Memory Range" is there, you have resizable BAR.

 

You can sometimes massage out a bit of light bleed -- wrap a credit card in something like a microfiber lens cleaning cloth, and use the flat end to lightly push any air bubbles into the bezel. There's videos online.

 

The picture makes it look way worse than it is. I've definitely seen far worse on other laptops. There are some reviews on Best Buy's listing that show pictures of how bad it can get. If that was my case, I'd return it, but what I have isn't bad at all. I only notice it at boot and when the room is dark. Any other time there's something on the screen and it's' impossible to see.

Where I usually draw the line is when there's a lot of bleed on the top and bottom edges. When this happens, movies that aren't 16:9 have black bars on those edges and it's infuriating to see.

 

Couldn't wait any longer so I ordered the best buy variant for now. Arrives Tuesday. Might trade for moonlight color in March.

Interesting that the purchase price qualified me for Best Buy Elite membership. Seems like that increased my return period from 15 days to 30. Wonder if that still applies to the purchase that actually got you Elite.

 

It should yes, now that you are elite you have 30 days.

 

Once it's delivered, it'll tell you in order details on bb.com.

 

it does, can confirm - both the ones I ordered were displaying return within 30 days. Course after returning them I lost the elite status but yeah it does work like that lol.

 

I haven't experienced any of these issues. Kinda hoping this isn't a wide spread thing. I've had my fair share of laptops that just don't perform out of the box.

 

When I reloaded windows 10 pro onto my machine, the speakers had all kinds of horrible problems, but after updates and drivers, it went away. I have noticed the drivers on these systems are a bit finicky - i would imagine that's by virtue of them being new and with time, they will level out to the like standard 'all bug fixes/just works' version that will likely also be downloadable via windows update.

 

Not ideal, but you can modify your EQ settings to allow full volume without speaker popping. This reviewer shows his EQ settings.

Mine arrives tomorrow. Will report back on speaker issues and screen flicker.

 

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/58710976

Lets go full trottle baby.

 

This is an amazing graphics score - what the actual hell lol

 

Now I just need to get my BIOS unlocked for ram tuning and I will have my ultimate 4.2lb travel beast.

 

@Talon That is indeed an amazing graphics score and equals my best score with my 3080. How did you manage to maintain such a high core clock speed?

 

By using the MSI GS66 vBIOS for their 3070. I can't flash the higher TDP vBIOS from the GE or GP series. I also can't flash an Asus higher TDP either. The 3070 in the G15 won't let you cross flash since it's a low TDP card and is likely just "max-q" without the name.

I didn't bother with the MSI GS66 version before since it's 80-95w and my G15 is 80-100w. I figured what would be the point. Well I tried it out anyways to see if it would boost differently. I discovered that it doesn't read power correctly at all, and the card is effectively shunt modded. This lets the GPU run away with itself and can boost to above 1800Mhz in Time Spy and then hit above 1700Mhz most of the time. Seems like a crazy oversight. Of course this causes temps to rise, and I used max fans for protection. For gaming I just downvolted and locked the card around 1600Mhz to keep it cooler and reduce the power use and hopefully not kill the board.

Unfortunately I lose USB-C outs, but HDMI works. Either way cool discovery.

 

Wow, that's really interesting! You've got overclocked 3080 performance there so an excellent result. Shame that you lose the USB-C outs though.

So you've tried flashing higher TDP bioses from Asus and none of them worked (and from other vendors too like MSI)? Do you mind be asking where you got the bios files from? I've been keeping an eye on Techpowerup.com's vbios archive but there aren't any on there (apart from mine is which I uploaded).

 

I’ve been google “3070 laptop vbios techpowerup” and watching google drops. They don’t list the unverified directly I don’t think so I’ve managed to find a few 3070 files that way. I’ve also asked a few people on Reddit to do dumps for me so I’ve gotten a couple that way.

MSI has vbios files for some of their new laptops to add ReSizeBar support not there at launch/shipment.

https://www.msi.com/Laptop/support/GS66-Stealth-10UH#down-bios

This is the 3080 GS66. They don’t differentiate the 8gb and 16gb file so I assume it works for both. But not certain. I would be curious if it acted the same way on your 3080 G15.

Edit: to figure out the TDP of each rom I was plugging them into that old Pascal TDP Tweaker. It can still read the TDP on these files.

 

So I was wondering if you add a 32GB 3200 stick of ram into the laptop that the onboard 8 and 8 of the 32 additional then would work at dual channel right?

 

Yes that is correct.

 

Oof you lost me - i gotta have C out haha

 

Are you noticing any noticeable gains in games though? 1600Mhz is still pretty high for this thing stock.

 

Anyone else getting locked up after pausing a movie in Netflix while full screen? 3x now...

 

I could try to reproduce your issue to see if it's systemic. A few questions just so I can emulate your environment -- Using a browser or the app? What GPU mode in armory crate? What's your nvidia driver version? Does the lock up occur as soon as you hit pause, and every time? What's the lock up look like (frozen / permanently non responsive system, or bsod? Any stutter or speaker noise?)

Not a fix, but a potential workaround -- if you're watching in a web browser, try the Netflix app instead.

 

So a few things:

I ordered two of these from Best Buy.

I thought it was a single ONBOARD 16GB DIMM with an extra slot based on the specs DIRECT FROM ASUS. https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-zephyrus/2021-rog-zephyrus-g15-series/spec <- Every single configuration shows an onboard 16GB DIMM (this is wrong). So you have 1 onboard 8GB DIMM and 1 slot you can upgrade to a 16GB or 32GB (32GB I haven't tested but according to Crucial it works) bringing you up to 24GB or 40GB respectively.

I have questions regarding the "Freesync" support. Is this laptop doing any kind of video muxing sending the data from the RTX card directly to the Radeon card which displays? I am trying to understand what the purpose of Freesync is in this case. Is it actually running in any kind of G-Sync compatible mode or is this STRICTLY for the onboard Radeon?

 

The specs in your link don’t show 16gb soldered and a free slot though. All of those configurations show 16 soldered and 16 installed in the slot, for 32gb total. So unless Best Buy was opening up the packages and laptops and removing the 16gb of sodimm (which of course they’re not), none of the models in that link would match the Best Buy model.

Don’t get me wrong, Asus doesn’t make it easy to tell, especially considering the Best Buy model number doesn’t match any of those model numbers, but that’s even more reason why I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the specs on Asus’s website are wrong. The Best Buy model just isn’t any of those ones that you were looking at.

Here’s a good answer from the customer Q&A on the Best Buy model:

“Asus has a ton GA503 variants on its websites across the different regions, but virtually none of the GA503QR’s (the QR means 3070 gpu version) have a 16gb soldered and free sodimm slot configuration. They’re all either listed as 8gb soldered + 8gb sodimm, OR 16gb soldered + 16gb sodimm. In fact, Asus only lists two GA503 configurations as available at the time of this response. One is a 3060 version, and the other is a 3070 version, which matches the Best Buy specs above exactly. That’s the GA503QR-HQ115T model on Asus’s website, and it clearly says 8gb soldered on board and 8gb in sodimm slot. https://rog.asus.com/fi/laptops/rog-zephyrus/2021-rog-zephyrus-g15-series/spec “