Some things go well together. Doritos and Mountain Dew. Mercy and Pharah. Paddles and Chainsaws. You get the idea.
A few days before the official launch, we had the good fortune to be invited to the Asus office in Ortigas to try another one of these amazing pairings in the form of the ROG Strix gaming laptop powered by AMD’s new Ryzen processor.
The Strix bears the kind of form we have come to expect from the ROG line of gaming laptops. A brushed metal-like lid with red accents, a backlit keyboard, and aggressive lines all put this squarely in the same category as the rest of the ROG family. What really makes this bad boy special though, is what’s under the hood. Running the AMD Ryzen R7 1700, it brings 8 cores of some real computing power, and makes it mobile.
We ran a few benchmarks, and as you can see from the numbers are quite impressive. Then again, 8 cores at 3.0 GHz isn’t going to display anything less.
Our demo unit had a massive 24 GB of RAM, and 4 GB Radeon RX580 discrete graphics to boot. All in all, it is quite an impressive package. This makes playing games on the massive 17.3-inch display all the more pleasant.
To keep tabs on all the performance-centered info, there is a dedicated Gaming Center key on the machine which you can use at any point to be able to see the system status, and change a few settings.
We had a fresh system to deal with, and the internet at the location wasn’t quite up to the task of downloading a full 16 or so GB of Overwatch, but we did have a copy of Rise of the Tomb Raider handy. With all the settings maxed out, the in-game benchmarking gave us an average of just under 45 FPS. That’s not bad, given the spec, and the kind of load this title can put on a system.
Gameplay was predictably smooth. There wasn’t the kind of tearing or V-sync problems thanks to Freesync. The speaker setup was also plenty for the environment, and while the fan did get a little loud once system temps began to rise, I was thankful they discharged to the rear of the laptop, where the hot air didn’t bother me at all.
The keys were comfortable, with satisfying travel, and just the right feel. As someone spoiled by a third-party claw-type keyboard, I’m quite happy to report that I actually found the keys on the Strix to be quite pleasant.
While it’s an impressive laptop in its own right, the best feature on the Ryzen Strix might be the price. Coming in at just PHP 99,995, I honestly have no idea how Asus has managed it. There’s a Ryzen R5 available as well for PHP 84,995. We’re working on getting our own review unit for testing and a video, so stay tuned! We will be right back with more info soon!