Testing & Methodology
To test each system or notebook, we want to stress every component of the system to check stability and performance, giving us an idea as to why those particular components were picked for this particular system. We use a wide variety of applications to gain a broad spectrum of results for comparing diverse aspects of system performance.
Games Used
All games are tested at both 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 and 2160 x 3840 (4K). Please note that for systems which do not support a particular resolution, such as 1080p laptops, we will not test the higher resolutions on those devices.
- Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam)
- DX12 Medium Preset
- Pure Hair Off
- Deus Ex (Steam)
- DX12 Medium Preset
- Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay)
- Medium Preset
- Turf Effects Off
- Far Cry Primal (Uplay)
- Normal Preset
- Final Fantasy XV Benchmark Tool (Square Enix)
- Normal Preset – Nvidia Optimisation Settings Turned Off
Software Used
- 3DMark Fire Strike (download)
- FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark
- Unigine Superposition (download)
- 1080p Extreme Benchmark
- PCMark 10 Professional (download)
- Express Benchmark
- WPrime (download)
- 32M and 1024M
- CineBench R15 (download)
- CPU Multi
- CPU Single
- Handbrake (download)
- Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below)
- AIDA64 Engineer (download)
- CPU-Z (download)
- HWMonitor (download)
Handbrake
To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the “normal” profile.
Great review, some people are complain on BSOD.
For £2,000+ in 2018, where is the Thunderbolt 3??
I bought mine from PCWorld/Currys online, price £1870. Mine did not include any gaming headset, gaming mouse, or backpack though, just a cloth bag/covering. (which I`d hardly describe as “High Quality” as this review does, its literally just a thin black cloth bag. 😉
The machine is fast, but boy oh boy, did it have a load of junkware installed… (all removed now).
There was also an issue with the RGB keyboard driver/app freezing which needed a visit to ASUS support to obtain the drivers for re-install. (their website wasn`t compatible with firefox so I could not see any download links). Performance is stellar so far, & the 144Hz display is very nice.
I bought mine ( GL703G ) from iBuyPower. I swapped out the 1tb Hdd for a Samsung 2tb 960 EVO SSD. I also Opted for the 16gb of GSkill Ripjaws RAM as that is what I use in my Desktop build. I am having second thoughts about not going for a larger M.2 Drive. Thinking I should have opted for a 1tb M.2. Total cost was $2273 USD. My Desktop build is running the i7 6700k Skylake processor and has been upgraded to a GTX 1080 GPU. When I started up the lap top, I got it set up, then proceeded to Install Steam and GoG. I installed a few games and checked them out as was totally blown away with the graphics display. My monitor on the desktop is only 1680×1050. There is a big difference between that and 1920×1080. I have since gotten a new monitor. It came with Windows 10 Home installed and I was surprised to find that the reinstallation Disk was for Windows 10 Pro. Granted there is NO Optical drive, but went and got an External Optical drive. I don’t use the touch pad on those things as I prefer a Mouse. I also bought a bag for it and whatever other accessories I have for it, so good to go. I am very happy with it. It is also good for when I do a complete Wipe and reinstall on this Desktop. I do have one with an Intel i3 that does pretty well when I am working on this desktop, but now I am giving up nothing in the interim. I do not like the GUI of Windows 10, but just install Classic Shell and take care of that.