Intel, what HAPPENED? Core i5 vs i7 Laptop Performance - Related to does, worth, core, 6700, intel,

AMD RX 6700 XT Roundup – Are these cards worth it!

The GPU market is a mess, I’m sure you are frustrated, I’m frustrated, and you are probably tired of hearing people how frustrated they are. Even the RX 6700 XT, which was promised to have a bit more availability was grabbed up in no time. Knowing that Mike, Eber, and I decided to give something back to the community and also give you all a chance to win a custom RX 6700 XT card.

The first part of this article is to really give back to the amazing charity Able Gamers that supports gamers with disabilities, because video games allow us to escape into different worlds, connect with other people. And just have a good time right? Many of us take for granted the fact that we can just sit in front of the computer or console or even mobile gaming and. Just enjoy where millions of gamers in North America alone can’t do that because of their disabilities. And it’s those members of the community that might need that gaming escape the most.

So that is where the Able Gamers charity comes in. It’s been around for over a decade, and in that time it’s helped countless disabled gamers get access to things like specialized controllers, custom setups, accessible furniture. And assistive technologies. They are using the power of gaming to bring everyone together, and that is something we can get behind. They are right in the middle of a $1 million funding drive that we want to help support so we have teamed up with XFX, Sapphire. And Gigabyte to give you guys a chance to win one of those custom cards while also helping to support this great cause with Able Gamers. Think of this as a graphics card roundup with a nice positive spin for a good cause.

Now that the critical portion is done let’s talk about the custom cards, talk about their performance, design, overclocking. And price, because that my friend is going to be a huge deal. I think we have a pretty good selection here with a Gigabyte Gaming OC 12G, the Sapphire Nitro+, and the XFX Merc 319. Just the size difference between these is pretty darn epic, especially compared to the reference model from AMD. All of these models are also listed as OC versions, but like with all custom GPU’s these days they are all just only a few megahertz higher than AMD’s reference version. From a performance standpoint there probably won’t be much of a difference, and also either AMD is not giving them a lot of flexibility in terms of boost clocks and frequencies in general. Or board partners are not willing to push that envelope. Instead more emphasis is being put on cooling potential and maybe sometime down the road more overclocking headroom if AMD gets around to unlocking the power limits a bit more.

Now the main problem here is that some board partners seem to be completely in space when it comes to pricing. Sure, some of this is due to tariffs, but we have seen a lot of these custom cards go way above what’s normal. Luckily XFX seems to have kept things in check a little bit, but then again the retailers ended up marking up those cards too. This opens up the conversation about how realistic these suggested retail prices are, and even if the GPU craze was not going on in the world right now all the board partners tells us that it’s very difficult and. Almost impossible to hit that AMD the starting price some form of compromise in building the card. Instead of cutting corners board partners are focusing on upgrading custom designs with a ton of elements to justify the higher prices.

I want to get the easiest card out of the way first. So say hello to the Gigabyte RX 6700 XT Gaming OC. Other than the reference design it’s the most compact of the bunch of just over 11 inches long versus AMD’s reference inches. However, it also takes up slots and it’s quite a bit wider than your regular GPU. So fitting it in some compact SFF cases will still be a challenge. Other than that it’s a pretty basic overall card with the triple fan design, standard black and gray colours. A pretty clean back plate, and a small bit of RGB on the side. Gigabyte has not changed anything with the connectors either, so power is with the 8-pin + 6-pin layout and the I/O area gets 3 display ports and a single HDMI, which is what every card in this roundup has since that is AMD’s standard I/O layout.

Moving on to the big boys. And here we have the monster XFX Merc 319 Black Edition. If you are just looking at it without any context it might seem sleek and compact, but it is absolutely ginormous at slots. Over 12 inches in length, and over 5 inches wide. Don’t expect to be put this thing in the vertical orientation in most cases, unless you are water cooling. Otherwise it will bump into the CPU heatsink. There is some tasteful lighting without any RGB, just white and red, which actually looks quite tasteful, and build quality is awesome. Flip the card over and you will see a solid backplate with a passthrough cooler design that seems to be everywhere these days, but. That also means the actual PCB is small compared to the rest of the card.

For power there are two 8-pin power inputs. Basically it feels like XFX took the design meant for a much hotter running GPU and slapped it onto this one. That is a good thing for thermals, but it might be overkill and it does add to the overall cost. They also added a BIOS switch, but right now both spots have the same settings. At least this gives you some BIOS experimentation in the future when those custom BIOSes do roll out.

And then we have the Sapphire Nitro+, which is the most expensive. But also the most feature rich card here. Size-wise is a bit more compact than the XFX at slots, and like all of the cards and this video it has a full coverage backplate and. The same tiny PCB as the XFX Merc 319. I have to give some credit to Sapphire though because they added some aspects I wish we would see on more GPUs. For example, the ARGB lighting looks incredible if you overlook the weird Fox face from the Nitro brand. Also while you can control the addressable RGB from their TRIXX software, there is also an addressable RGB header for direct motherboard control. There is also a triple BIOS switch where the position furthest from the backplate has a performance oriented setting and. The one closest cuts the card to 186W. The middle position allows the software to determine which BIOS.

Now even though all of these 3 custom cards claim to have higher clock speeds than the reference card. They have to be really careful in how they handle frequencies when it comes to AMD GPUs because there are many factors that go into contributing that certain frequency. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how they perform versus our AMD reference card with their out-of-the-box default settings and. All the BIOS switches set to performance modes.

Every one of these cards has absolutely no trouble keeping their average temperatures below the reference design. As a matter of fact, that crazy XFX card never even broke above 67°C mark and it was followed pretty close by Gigabyte too. The GPU hotspot temperatures actually play a huge role in determining on-the-fly clock speeds provided there is enough power and voltage to go around. So technically if these custom cards are allowed enough overhead they should boost to higher frequencies more often. Every one of these cards is pretty much inaudible when you put it into a case, but the Sapphire and XFX take the crown. Gigabyte does trail behind and that is probably because they sacrificed a bit of noise to get those incredibly low temperatures. So how does all this translate into clock speeds? And this is where things get interesting, but not in a good way. As I go through this you can see one huge significant point, and that is the pretty pathetic increase these so-called overclocked versions give you. There is only 56MHz separating the fastest and slowest cards. The reason for this is pretty simple, since new GPUs are tuned to deliver near maximum frequencies there is very little room for board partners to play with. The Sapphire and XFX cards were marginally faster than the others, but not by an appreciable amount. Thankfully, the Merc 319 actually ended the test at higher speeds than it began. The biggest shock was probably the Gigabyte card, it might have the lowest overall temperature and the highest fan speeds. But there it was technically the slowest from a clock speed standpoint.

But why? So this is pretty key because it kind of plagues all the modern GPU’s right? Many factors go into increasing clock speeds, temperature, power, voltage, and other secondary functions. Increasing the power limit alone doesn’t necessarily increase your clock speeds if the voltage is limited or locked. In simple terms, if there is not enough voltage AMD’s algorithm will step in and the clock things back down. And that is exactly what is happening here, Gigabyte is using the reference , but. Even then power consumption ended up being higher than a stock RX 6800. Our sample is pretty power hungry as a result, and it gets slapped down. This might be a bad luck of the draw, but I’m surprised Gigabyte is not binning their cores a bit more carefully for their flagship RX 6700 XT. The other cards behave like you would expect slightly higher power for a bit improved performance than the reference version.

Now it’s so easy to criticize something as simple as a less efficient core, but. When it comes to performance well it really doesn’t matter. None of these cards were able to offer any noticeable difference versus a bone stock RX 6700 XT from AMD. Making these some of the most boring charts I think I have ever seen. Just remember these cards from Gigabyte, Sapphire, and XFX cost about $100 more than AMD’s MSRP.

Now what about overclocking right? We have these massive heatsinks and excellent cooling, so can we expect anything more than the reference design? Nope! A lot of the blame for this lands firmly on AMD’s shoulders because they are not letting their board partners flex their cards muscles by opening up higher power, voltage. Or clock speed limits. That is a shame since until that is done the amazing cooling, power upgrades, and whatnot is all pretty much useless versus the reference design. The only exception was Gigabyte, not by much, but due to its core limitations it just did not want to overclock all that well and was out done by the reference card.

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Intel, what HAPPENED? Core i5 vs i7 Laptop Performance

If you are currently in the market looking to buy a thin-and-light laptop chances you are just bombarded with a lot of options from different manufacturers with both Intel and. AMD processors. AMD just in recent times unveiled their Ryzen 5000 H-series of CPU’s for gaming laptops and the 5000 U-series for thin-and-light devices. But the problem is that there isn’t a single laptop that ships with a Ryzen 5 U-series or a Ryzen 7 U-series CPU. At least at the time I’m writing this article. On the other hand, the 4000 U-series are still really awesome options that pretty much dominate everything that Intel has to offer in their CPU lineup for thin-and-light devices.

Now their latest offering is Tiger Lake, and. We have covered a few laptops with those already. At this point, the Core i5-1135G7 and the Core i7-1165G7 are by far the most popular options, but. With both being based on a 4-core/8-thread layout you might be asking yourselves, which one should I pick? And is there a benefit going with one or the other? Well that question is what this article is all about. I have two identical Razer Book 13’s, one of which has the Core i5 processor and the other one sporting the Core i7, and. We are basically going to put them against each other to see performance differences, and most importantly battery life. I won’t spoil the ending, but let me tell you the results are certainly worth checking out and they might actually have you second guessing your purchasing decisions.

Before we get to the benchmarks let’s take a quick look at the spec differences between the Core i5-1135G7 and. The Core i7-1165 G7. The naming scheme is ridiculous, but I had to like train myself to not make a mistake. First and foremost, they are both 4 core CPUs with 8 threads, but their base and boosts frequencies are different. The Core i5 starts at and aspects a single core boost up to , while the Core i7 starts at and boost all the way up to . Which is a good 500MHz higher than the i5 on single core. Then there is the cache size, you are looking at 8MB on the Core i5 versus 12MB on the Core i7. The number of execution units for the integrated XE graphics are different as well, you get 80 on the Core i5 and. 96 on the Core i7. The rest of the specs are pretty much the same, which includes the power operating range and the graphics frequency, which is at .

Aside from that, both of these laptops are practically identical in terms of design capabilities and. Even the battery capacity, except for the memory. The Core i7 model comes with 16GB versus 8GB on the Core i5 model, and storage is also the same at 256GB. If you look at the price difference the Core i7 model is $400 more than the Core i5 model, and. This isn’t even the Razer Tax a lot of you mentioned. This kind of jump is something that we have seen on other Tiger Lake laptops, so yes say hello to the Intel Tax. There is also one other small difference and that is in weight. This is not a huge deal breaker, but the Core i7 model is actually 60 grams heavier than the Core i5. You might be wondering what’s causing that, it’s not like one CPU is heavier than the other one, but I think it might be because of the additional memory soldered onto the PCB or maybe a little extra cooling.

Now coming back to this article, some of you might be thinking to yourselves that there are hundreds of laptops out there with Tiger Lake CPU’s operating at different power levels. Why does one comparison matter? While I do agree with you on that it’s just impossible for me to go out and purchase every one of them in order to give you a complete analysis. So this is probably the best apples to apples comparison that you will be getting considering they are both rocking the same identical specs right down to the interior design. So let’s kick things off with frequencies over time, and under a full multi-core workload you can see that the Core i7 starts pretty strong at just a tad over 4GHz, but a few minutes into the test it reduces down between and. That is pretty much expected due to Intel’s PL1 and PL2 power limits. However, when we switch gears to the Core i5 CPU, it starts at for a few seconds, which is a lot lower than the Core i7. But it actually maintains a higher average frequency throughout this 10 minute test. It isn’t much at an average of just over 75MHz, but it’s still certainly there. What that means is in quicker synthetic tests, the Core i7 CPU will definitely be faster because of it’s slightly higher and slightly longer burst speed. But in longer tests like rendering these two CPUs could be very evenly matched. The Core i5 might actually come out ahead of the i7, even in cases where there aren’t any memory or cache bottlenecks.

Let’s dive in a bit further into this. At first I thought higher temperatures might have been causing the Core i7 to settle on lower speeds, but that wasn’t the case at all. It was running above 70°C compared to the Core i5, which was averaging around 68°C to 69°C. But both of those are super low compared to the 90°C+ on other thin-and-light laptops that we have been seeing. Thermal throttling isn’t playing a factor here. Looking at overall power gives a superior understanding about what’s happening, and. That is Razer has capped both of these chips at a long duration power limit of 20 watts. That causes a bit of an issue for the Core i7 since it obviously needed to fluctuate its clock speeds a bit more than the Core i5 to avoid chugging down more than 20W. As a result, it’s overall average speeds end up being lower.

Intel has struggled to move their low power chips beyond a quad-core architecture, so both the Core i5 and. The Core i7 have the same layout with 4 cores and 8 threads. However, the Core i7 has more cache and a larger GPU, both of which need more power. That means the more efficient CPU, which is the Core i5 processor in this case. We will hit higher average frequencies when both have identical power limits like Razer implemented on the Book 13. Some of that could have been fixed Razer had just given the Core i7 a little bit more juice to play around with, and. I just don’t know why they haven’t since there is obviously thermal headroom despair. Looking back this is actually something that we have seen from Intel CPU’s, especially in the laptop market. It isn’t Razer specific either, and it would impact other laptops as well. Razer was actually the only brand who was willing to let us test these on two identical laptops. Now if you look on the desktop side, we can see something similar with the Core i7-10850K, which can manage to beat the Core i9-10900K in a lot of situations.

To hammer this home just a bit more, let’s take a look at Handbrake Transcode. Which absolutely pounds the cores and local cache. Here you can see that the Core i5 is actually quite a bit faster than the Core i7 to the tune of about 100MHz. Though in some cases it is above 150MHz. Meanwhile, temperatures are kept really well in check with Razer’s Vapor Chamber Cooling system. Seeing a max of just over 70°C is pretty incredible, and yes that power limit sticks to 20W so you can see how that Core i7 is just craving for a bit more juice so it can stretch its legs. Since every application needs are different, especially when it comes to all-core loads, expect some really interesting results. I also noticed that as I was testing the Book 13 with the Core i7 CPU, the fans just kept ramping up, even when I was doing lightly thread tasks compared to the Core i5 which was dead silent, so if acoustic performance is something that you value choosing the Core i5 might be a enhanced option.

Now that you are aware of how these CPUs behave. Let’s take a look at some numbers. We ran our usual suite of tests, and I also made sure to run both these laptops on the highest performance mode to get the best results. Starting off with Cinebench, and I need to explain this one right away. You see every run had a huge amount of variance, which is normal for Cinebench. But the Core i7 was just really all over the place. On average, it was still slower than the Core i5. In blender things were neck and neck with very little difference between the two CPUs, but in Handbrake that 100-150MHz ends up really paying some benefits over a longer test. So much so that the Core i5 is the clear winner here. Even in Adobe Premiere Pro I was expecting the Core i7’s extra Execution Units (EUs) along with hardware encoding to favor the Core i7, but. Once again clock speeds are key. I should also mention that even though the Core i7 does have more EUs, unlike CUDA course they aren’t used here. Rather it’s the QuickSync stage that is used, and that is the same on both the Core i7 and the Core i5.

If we switch over to single core performance, the Core i7 takes the lead in all of our lightly threaded benchmarks. But to be honest with you it isn’t a noticeable difference. On paper it’s a few seconds faster here and there, but. In reality when you are handling these machines on a day-to-day basis they both feel equally responsive. I was hoping that the extra 500MHz Turbo clock on the Core i7 would make a bit of a difference, but. I was wrong, that Core i5 is still putting up a really good fight. And yes, the Core i7 is faster, but is that extra money worth it? Not the way I see it.

Gaming performance is another matter altogether. Keep in mind, both of these laptops aren’t geared to deliver high frame rates, but rather acceptable performance for casual gaming in some basic titles. Either way, I was just curious to find out if there was a difference, and you know what? There was! In 1080P you can get some playable frame rates with both these laptops, but. The XE graphics engine with 96 execution units on the Core i7 CPU delivers a noticeable improvement in performance compared to the Core i5. We also can’t forget that the Core i5 has less cache and system memory to pull from, so at least in this situation the Core i7 is the clear winner right across the board.

The last thing that we have to look at is battery life, and. It’s pretty much the same since both have the same number of cores and same operating wattage. The Core i5 does have a slight lead, but it’s not enough to make a huge difference. To sum this all up, both the Core i5 and the Core i7 have their strengths and weaknesses. The Core i5 takes the edge in multi-core performance and price, while the Core i7 runs away with gaming and it delivers really good lightly threaded performance. Which is super essential for a lot of general use cases. But again, that higher-end chip costs a whole lot more.

The main problem is that a lot of these Core i5 laptops compared with just 8GB of memory. Which can’t be upgraded. While I didn’t encounter any issues when I was testing it, it’s actually a pretty big limitation, and. You can’t ignore that factor in 2021, because everything just seems to be taking up a lot of memory. If you can find a Core i5-1135G7 with 16GB of RAM, that is the configuration that I would personally get because A) The performance is pretty good and. B) You are probably gonna end up saving a lot of money instead of going with the Core i7. So on that note, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you were able to take away something from this article.

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This Gaming Laptop Does EVERYTHING!

You’ve seen a 2-in-1 laptop before, you know the one that switches between laptop mode and. Tablet mode when you tilt the screen 180 degrees around. Well what happens when you add a little bit of gaming DNA to that? That is the ROG Flow X13, a device that takes everything about portable gaming to a whole new level.

ASUS was able to do this by introducing an ecosystem that basically allows you to expand your performance profile to something unique that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to achieve with a traditional ultrabook and. A GPU dock via Thunderbolt. In fact, we have made a separate video discussing that setup and its complexities, which you can check out right over here.

Now the Flow X13 has one of the fastest processors on the planet, a GPU that is good enough to game wherever you go. And if you need a lot of power you can hook up an RTX 3080 via this portable mobile dock called the XG Mobile. The best part is that it’s so seamless to a point where you don’t have to worry about drivers or restarting the system. Or just fiddling around with different issues that you might experience with a Thunderbolt dock. It just works, and I’m super excited to talk about my experience, but. Also mention some of the concerns.

Let’s start off with the Flow X13 portable gaming ultrabook. It is meant to compete against something like the Razer Blade Stealth 13. The specs inside this device might give the Blade a run for its money, because it has AMD’s Ryzen 9 5980HS processor with 8 cores and. 16 threads. Keep in mind that we have the SuperNova Edition that unfortunately you can’t actually buy at the moment, but. The standard edition comes with the 5900HS CPU. The rest of the specs are pretty much identical: 16GB of RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD, 120Hz 1200P display, GTX 1650, all for $1,500 USD. Now the sample that we have over here has twice the memory, and a 60Hz 4K display. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what pricing is for this particular variant, but something to keep in mind is that this device just goes out of stock every time and. ASUS is trying to restock it every other day. I did check it this morning and it was in stock, but when you are probably watching this it might be out of stock. It’s just the current scarcity situation that makes it really tough to buy this device. Make sure you constantly check the website and you might get lucky.

As for the XG Mobile, with the RTX 3080 GPU you are looking at an additional $1500 USD, which in total would cost you about $3000 USD with the Flow X13 and. That’s a lot of money. But if you do plan on buying them as a bundle you will save about $200, which is a pretty good deal in my opinion… if you do find them in stock.

Now if you look at the overall design of the X13, ASUS has done a nice job keeping it stealth with the exterior and. Interior. The top lid comes with these textured lines across a surface that gives the user a little bit of grip to hold onto when traveling. It also does a great job resisting fingerprints, and the hinge is pretty strong for a 2-in-1 device. It exhibits a little bit of wobble, but it’s nothing to be worried about.

The interior space follows the same design language as the exterior. I like the matte black texture and the keyboard layout is pretty standard given the size. You get extra buttons to access Armoury Crate, control the volume levels, and mute the microphone. The keys themselves are excellent, it actually reminded me of the Zephyrus G15 that I looked at in the recent past. Key travel is adequate for those who type a lot and it’s just a very satisfying feel when you bottom out. They are LED backlit in white, which is an odd choice to be honest. Because typically with ROG laptops ASUS just loves to throw in AURA RGB lighting. However, I do wish it got brighter.

The trackpad is decent, it’s not the smoothest surface that I worked on especially compared to the Razer Blade Stealth 13, and it’s pretty small too, but. I will say that the integrated primary left/right buttons sound excellent, nice and tactile. Something else that I should mention is that this trackpad picks up finger oil easily, so you will have to constantly remind yourself to clean it once in a while if you like to keep your devices clean.

Overall from a build quality standpoint. ASUS has done a really good job with the Flow X13. There were no signs of creaking within the chassis given that it is made out of magnesium alloy instead of an all aluminium construction. It’s also lighter than the Blade Stealth 13 coming in at just under 3 pounds. And it’s only inches thick so it’s very convenient to travel with.

This is the webcam test on the Flow X13 by ROG. What is really interesting is that this one of the first laptops from ROG in a really long time to feature a webcam. The video quality is pretty good, and the microphone sounds pretty good as well. The fact that we get a webcam at all is kind of nice. The speakers are located at the bottom, so naturally you will compromise on audio fidelity, especially with the trebles. There is a little bit of bass, but it’s nothing mind blowing. Overall it gets the job done for the form factor.

The X13 comes with a 4K IPS 60Hz display, and. Given that it has a 16×10 aspect ratio you get some more vertical screen real estate to work. The quality of this panel is great. From my display analysis tests it covers 99% sRGB, 80% Adobe RGB, and 86% DCI-P3, so it’s great for editing photos and. Maybe a little bit of content creation given that it has a discrete GPU. Brightness levels are respectable, but it only peaks to about 390 nits. This display is covered with Corning Gorilla Glass, which interestingly does a pretty good job cutting out a lot of the reflections, especially in extremely bright environments. Which is really cool.

Let’s not forget this is a 2-in-1 device so you can use this in tablet mode and interact with the content in a more lively manner. Plus it also functions touch support, so you can use the included stylus to jot down notes or doodle around if that’s something that you’re into. One thing I would strongly recommend is that you pick the 120Hz 1200P display over the 4K 60Hz option simply because gaming at 60Hz is an eyesore. Especially in 2021. Also the GTX 1650 inside this laptop isn’t powerful enough to drive modern games at that 4K resolution, and. You save a lot of money too.

Port selection unfortunately is very limited on the X13. As you can see on the right-hand side there is a USB Type-C Gen2 port that supports PD charging and it supports DisplayPort output. There is also a full-size USB Type-A Gen2 port and a power button, which also acts as a fingerprint reader. Switching over to the other side you will see another USB-C port and. A little silicone cover that covers the proprietary jack for the XG Mobile. This cover can be easily misplaced, so it’s something to keep track of. Next to that is an HDMI port and an audio jack. Now it’s not the worst setup that I have come across, but if you need to connect other peripherals or external accessories you will need to invest in a hub.

However, if you do end up picking up the XG Mobile you just automatically get access to a bunch of ports, four USB Type-A ports, one extra HDMI port. A full-size DisplayPort, an RJ45 jack, and a UHS-III full-sized card reader. Bravo ASUS, you really have thought about implementing the best ports in a device that is a lot smaller than external GPU docks.

Speaking of the XG Mobile. It’s a pretty compact module that can easily carried over from one place to another. The build quality is not the greatest and it’s mostly made of plastic components. It stands up on the desk through a built-in kickstand that is integrated within the unit. Keep in mind that once you have this plugged into the Flow X13 it actually passes power to the laptops. So there is no need to connect the power cable that comes with the laptop separately. That clears an extra USB Type-C port on the side, which is nice.

It’s just crazy to think how much power you can get from such a compact setup. Because it’s significantly smaller in size compared to some of the other external GPU docks that I have taken a look at. However, there are a few issues that I did run into. First up randomly my external drives just won’t be recognized, especially storage devices. Other times the video output wouldn’t be detected if the peripheral is plugged in. Then there is the magnet for the kickstand that got pushed out of the chassis and it’s now sitting on the inside flap. And finally, I noticed that the laptop just wouldn’t go to sleep when you have this thing plugged in. To be honest, I was expecting some quirks to come with this first generation product, so all of this is not unexpected.

I do want to spend some time and talk about the future of this ecosystem. Because this is a cool product and it’s a great start. It’s very unique, but I’m not sure if ASUS is going to support this in the future. Are they going to roll out an updated Flow X13 with faster CPU or faster specs? Are they going to roll out an XG Mobile with the RTX 4080 if NVIDIA launches that later on? These are some of the questions that are up in the air, and. Like I expressed I really hope they take this idea and build upon that foundation. I wouldn’t invest in this ecosystem in the hopes of upgrading down the future because there is just no guarantee, and. That is just something to keep note of.

Upgradability on the Flow X13 is pretty restricted. As you can see the memory is soldered onto the PCB, and the only component that is user upgradable is the NVMe SSD. This drive is an 2230 spec, so you can’t actually swap it out for the standard 2280 spec. The drive speeds are okay, it’s not the fastest that I’ve seen, but it will get the job done.

Now what about battery life? Well remember the Flow 13 is a slim-and-light laptop, but it also houses one of the most powerful mobile processors, but. It also has a pretty small battery compared to a lot of the other laptops we have seen from ASUS at just 60Wh so there has definitely been some tradeoffs. As you can see while about hours is pretty good, it doesn’t actually come anywhere close to what some of the other modern gaming laptops are able to deliver. It’s also pretty low for a thin-and-light notebook as well. Under a heavier load this laptop only lasts just a little over 2 hours. Even though the Ryzen 9 5980HS gets down clocked to a much lower power level. It would be really interesting to see how these standard 5900HS model does here, since that one is supposed to be operating at a bit lower power.

And speaking of power levels. I need to set the stage for you a little bit because this one’s going to be an odd one. But it also highlights the problems that we are facing with the laptop market right now. The main issue is that performance isn’t necessarily determined by the name of the CPU anymore, because it all comes down to how much power a laptop funnels to the processor and. How it’s cooled. For example, a Ryzen 9 5900HS running at 45W will typically be able to sustain enhanced frequencies than a 5980HS running at just 40W. You might pay a little bit more for the faster/ the higher spec CPU, but that won’t necessarily give you enhanced performance. So let’s see how this all translates into the Flow X13 and compare it to the 5900HS in ASUS’s own Zephyrus G15.

Temperatures are actually quite well managed here. At least in Performance Mode where the CPU barely gets above 80°C. However, there is a dip at the 6 minute Mark and you will see why soon. On the other hand Turbo Mode sees a gradual increase to the point where things get pretty toasty, but. Still very short of AMD’s throttle temperature of 105°C. Adding the G15 here really gives another perspective since it’s Performance Mode pegs temperatures above 90°C for a few minutes, and. Then normalized down to a more reasonable point. You can actually see how power modulation in all 3 modes pretty much directly lines up with the dips in temperature. Performance Mode only pushes the 5980HS to 42W after which it gets tugged all the way back down to 35W. While Turbo Mode gives it a bit more juice to work with. And when you add the G15’s 5900HS you will see what I was talking about just a few seconds ago. Even in performance mode it’s allowed to chug down a lot more power than the Flow X13’s 5900HS and it keeps a really, really constant level all the way towards the end of the test.

And all of that translates into some really interesting clock speed comparisons. Where we can literally see the effect of power on the Flow X13’s overall performance. A dip in power means lower clocks, it’s just as simple as that, but. With the G15 it basically just overtakes the Flow when it comes to frequencies during an all-core load. That leads the 5900HS walking all over the 5980HS in many situations. Look I know I’m comparing a thin-and-light laptop to something that is thicker, but it’s an critical element when it comes to making that purchasing decision, because it highlights why you shouldn’t assume a higher end CPU or GPU will get you improved performance. Especially on laptops. There are just a lot more variables than that.

Now let’s just see how all of these overtime results translate to real-world benchmarks. And as we go through these, you will notice that just like the clock speeds suggested, the 5980HS in the Flow X13 just can’t keep up with the 5900HS G15 in multi-core loads. But then again it isn’t meant to either. As a matter of fact this is the fastest thin-and-light laptop we have tested by a long shot. I should also mention that the 5900HS version will probably be just as fast since ASUS is running it at the same power limits.

Moving on to programs that use the CPU and GPU for acceleration. And of course the X13 with its external dock is seriously powerful. Not only that, but the CPU’s strong single-threaded performance can flex its muscles here as well. Now what isn’t being flexed is the GTX 1650, especially in DaVinci Resolve. It just doesn’t have the horsepower to keep up with the faster GPU’s here, but. It still gets the job done.

But I think the biggest selling point of this laptop is the external GPU dock. It just allows the X13 to be super mobile, but also have access to that extra horsepower with the ability to game at super high levels when you have this thing plugged in. Not only that, but the space within the XG dock allows ASUS to run the RTX 3080 mobile GPU near its maximum power limit in Turbo Mode and. All the way up to 120W in Performance Mode. Clock speeds are right up there too, and are way higher than any other notebook-based 3080 I’ve seen so far. I just wish we could control the Performance Mode of the external dock separately from the laptops. Since it would allow for a much more adaptable experience. The only exception is Silent Mode, which starts off pretty well, but then it gets pounded as it starts to throttle. Temperatures are really well managed too, without anything to worry about, but I guess that is expected since ASUS didn’t need to work within the typical laptop thermal constraints here.

As for gaming performance, well first of all the GTX 1650 really isn’t designed for this type of gaming. But it still delivers some playable frame rates. The only reason it fails in some games is its 4GB of memory just isn’t enough for our settings. The RTX 3080 external card results need a bit of explanation since those results are a bit all over the place. At least at 1080P a lot of the variations seem to be due to CPU bottlenecks. Because in the games where GPU horsepower matters it just flies. You can actually see this in the 1440P results where the Flow X13 + external dock walks all over the Zephyrus G15. This is getting near high-end desktop performance levels. 4K pushes things even further, and just to give you a little bit of an idea some of these results are within just 15% of our main test system with a Ryzen 9 5900X and an RTX 3070, that’s just crazy.

As for acoustic performance, the X13 by itself is pretty silent. But when you factor in the XG Mobile with the RTX 3080 it does tend to get really loud and surface temperatures on both units are tolerable. Just watch out for the exhaust area on the XG mobile since it’s practically a mini-heater when you put it under load.

So here are my final thoughts for the ROG Flow X13. For $1500 this laptop by itself is a great value, especially when you consider what you’re getting and what you’re up against. While our sample has the Ryzen 5980HS, even you got one with the 5900HS it still has one of the fastest mobile processors on the market for this form factor.

You also get great build quality, decent battery life. And it gets a job done for gaming. In a lot of ways this is like the Razer Blade Stealth 13, but with a much advanced CPU and a lower price. This is a really good thin-and-light laptop itself, but when you link it up to the external RTX 3080 it just flies. At high resolutions this things just flies. I mean when you connect this thing to a secondary display you just get incredible frame rates, and. The fact that you get additional I/O is just the icing on top of the cake.

But here’s a question? Would I buy the ROG Flow X13 alone when you factor out the XG Mobile? Well I’m still on the fence about that. I mean sure this thing is a really good thin-and-light laptop, but it does have some connectivity limitations, especially when it comes to ports. And there are some serious questions about how long would ASUS actually end up supporting this ecosystem because it’s a proprietary connector and I’m not exactly sure if they’re going to discontinue this after this year or maybe they might modification it. It’s just a big question mark and I don’t know where to take it from there. So like I stated it’s a great start, it’s very unique, and you know when you spend about $3000 for this entire year setup it’s pricey, but. It is geared towards a very specific niche market. I really respect ASUS for trying something new.

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