The ASUS ROG Strix G15 (G513QY) Review: Embracing AMD's Advantage
by Brett Howse on May 31, 2021 11:00 PM ESTBattery Life
Although generally less of a hinderance for gaming systems, which are most often used on a desk and connected to power, AMD has stated that the Radeon RX 6800M is able to go into a “Near 0 Watt Idle” state, meaning despite having a massive 150-Watt TDP GPU inside, battery life should not be compromised as severely as it is on other gaming systems.
ASUS outfits the G513QY with a 90 Wh battery, which is near the limit of what is allowed in a laptop, so that, coupled with the 7 nm CPU, and a power-gated GPU, should provide good results.
Web Battery Life
As much as the performance has been amazing on the AMD CPU and GPU combination, perhaps the battery life result is even more impressive. Typically, gaming systems are not very efficient, as even the systems that do allow the GPU to be disabled during light tasks still have a high base power draw, but AMD has really done amazing work to power gate the GPU when it is not needed. When coupled with the very large battery, the ASUS Strix G513QY dominates the battery life charts compared to other gaming-focused systems.
Looking at the platform efficiency with the battery size removed, the ASUS G513QY proves that the amazing battery life is not just down to the 90 Wh battery either. AMD has really done a fantastic job with system power with the Ryzen 9 5900HX and Radeon RX 6800M combination.
PCMark 10 Modern Office Battery
One of the newer tests to our laptop suite is the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery test, which leverages the same workloads in the PCMark 10 benchmarking suite, and then runs them in 10-minute loops. If the system gets the work done quicker, it is able to idle for a larger portion of the 10-minute window, so that more performant systems are not disadvantaged. Once again, the battery life is really astounding for a system of this type.
Movie Playback
On thin and light laptops, movie playback is generally the most efficient task, since the media decode is offloaded to the media block. On the ASUS, the battery life was actually slightly less than the other tests, but still well ahead of most other gaming systems.
The Tesseract score divides the movie playback runtime by the length of The Avengers movie, and the ASUS G513QY can almost get through four complete viewings before needing to be recharged.
Charge Time
Thanks to a 280-Watt AC adapter, there is plenty of power available to charge the battery quickly, even if the device is in use. Interestingly, the ASUS G513QY also includes a USB-C port on the rear which supports up to 100 Watts of power delivery, and that can go both directions. You can charge something from the port if needed, but the power delivery also allows the laptop to be recharged from external battery packs if needed, or from a USB Type-C charging cord. It will not be able to delivery the full power for when the system is under load, but still makes for a nice backup power source if needed.
The charge rate is very quick on this system. Despite the large 90 Wh battery size, the system recharged the quickest of the sampled systems. ASUS claims 0-50% in less than 30 minutes and we measured 31 minutes to 50%.
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WaltC - Friday, June 4, 2021 - link
I'm almost positive I read the laptop offers an HDMI and DP (USB-C) output, for external monitors/TVs one would presume--too bad the reviewer here forgot to test a 1440P external monitor--which is likely considering the target market for this monitor. The reviewer kept talking about the absence of a web cam and a limit of 1080P (which doesn't exist) as if either was an insurmountable design flaw--oh, gee, I guess thinking just a little bit out of the box is difficult for people these days. He could have tested with an external monitor at > 1080P--and if he looked hard enough he might even have found one with a built-in web cam. Do tell. But that would have prevented the negative observations, I guess--so we can't have that, eh? BTW, 1080P is nice indeed when you are running on batteries--but I guess that was a bit too obvious to get his attention. Many, many people with laptops plug them into the wall at home and attach monitors/TVs/ whatever else they might want. No sense in writing a review which pretends otherwise.bejito81 - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - link
why is this not compared with a RTX G15 (3070 or 3080 (the one matching the price the closet)) ?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - link
AMD only sampled the AMD system. They did not sample the NVIDIA systems.Spunjji - Monday, June 7, 2021 - link
It matches a 3070 most closely in pricing, performance sits in the range of high-TDP 3070 models and low-to-medium-TDP 3080 models. Apparently it's held back a little by RAM that has slow timings - with that resolved, it's right up there with the 3080.yeeeeman - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - link
Nice review, but I would have liked to see a bit more details on the GPU side of things, that is some 4k comparisons with rtx 3080, since that is the target competitor.I look forward to see how the 6600m fares. If that is similar or better than 3060, I could give it a shot.
Alistair - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - link
actually the AMD laptop is cheaper than the 3070 version, it beats all in performance per dollarET - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - link
Nice to see AMD back in the game. For the keyboard, I have one of these ASUS laptops (with a 3080) for work, and the position of the F keys really annoys me. As a programmer I use them quite a bit, and because they're shifted by 1 for the first four (F1 is above 2, F2 above 3, etc.) and half for the next four, I keep hitting the wrong one.Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing what the 6600M brings to the table, and if it could provide reasonable gaming performance on battery with a bit of battery life. A smaller gaming laptop that's still reasonably capable would be very nice.
ads295 - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - link
I love this thing to bits.I wish there was a way to control the charge rate though, since pushing that crazy amount of power through the battery cannot be good for the long term. I guess you can limit the charge rate by using USB-PD but 100W means you can only slow down the discharge of the battery rather than actually charge it...
Amazing product. ASUS' work on the cooling system is commendable too. Up till now I've seen that they do not compromise on size if they feel it will affect the cooling performance. Now they've delivered cooling performance even after downsizing.
As an aside, my sisters' ASUS FX553VD suffered two major hardware issues during her ownership for which the authorised service outlet asked for INR50k+ to fix. I luckily found a guy who does low level repair and we managed to avoid buying a new laptop. Hopefully that was a solitary incident...
supdawgwtfd - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - link
Get a 65w charger.No more worries about "to faster charging"..
You know that technology improves over time right?
It might be strange but things get better over time...
What used to be "oh my this is really bad" is now "it's fine".
ads295 - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - link
Using a 65W charger on a system that draws over 230W at the wall?