Build Advice Powerful Non-Gamer looking Laptop - Please Advise/Suggest

That is exactly what i did I could have used the cables that came with the box, but it was quicker and grabbed an HDMI I had in the cupboard for a few years ....

 

I tried the builder, you can get really impressive specs for much less than what I spent and I would have probably done this if I was paying for it and if I had the time.
Sometimes having a retails store you can visit and receive semi-decent customer service is more valued...
My boss was not phased at all when I sent him the link for the Currys White Zephyrus. His Macbook is maxed out too, so he is used to overpriced garbage

 

Yeah it won't look or feel as cool as that Zephyrus, its got another Kilo of weight to accommodate 300w of CPU/GPU power, so a chunky boy, I fancy one myself because I am very much water cool all the things type and I want to play with a water cooled laptop.

It's too heavy for me though, anything more than 1.5kg, I'm out, my 16" Gram is < 1.2kg as is my handheld with its bits, I could carry both and they'd still be lighter than that XMG blimey the 420W PSU is almost 1kg still want it though, just because

 

I thought I would try Dota 2 on my games machine with an X3D and a 5080, uncapped it was about 550fps @ 4k all maxxed out

Though on Vulkan which was faster for my handheld, it would not do much more than 150fps weird, perhaps it has a separate cap parameter.

 

So 500+ FPS is what you get on the proper machine, I'm expecting with the restricted laptop hardware I should hit the acceptable 150+ fps. I am doing a bit of DIY work at home before going abroad, so no real time for testing and playing around, but I will definitely report once I get to enjoy it.

On my 3080 PC i get comfortable 200+ , but reduce them manually to reduce fan noise and heat in the room. In fact I have not actually tested what is the theoretical max I can get out of my hardware. There are so many things I can optimise and software tweaks to do, but I've done none of it.

 

By default it seems to max out around 225ish with the 240 cap which for whatever reason it does not hit, so I set max_fps to 1000 for more, so perhaps the 3080 is hitting the cap too.

My frames were a simple play of course, using this replay below, my numbers are more modest, 300

Benchmarking Dota 2. Benchmarking a game usually means… | by JJ “PimpmuckL” Liebig | layerth | Medium

Numbers running that taxing replay

Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with 890M APU @ 2560x1600 on battery, not bad at all.



Ryzen 9950 x3d with 5080 @ 3840x2160



Tried it at 2560x1600 and barely any change, CPU limited, GPU running at about 50% at this res as CPU can't feed it, more power needed



And for the LOLs I disabled 75% of my CPU because old games don't really like all the cores and SMT etc. making my 16/32 chip an 8/8 chip.

2.5K


4K

 

Very interesting, i guess it makes sense, this is not a competitive shooter and being frame perfect / pixel perfect is not that high of a priority. It is important however that there are no sudden spikes/drops of frames and crucially for any competitive game - lag/ping/response time.
I was broke for many years and was perfectly capable to enjoy gaming at lower resolutions... (no money for good hardware), but since I begun to spoil myself, all of a sudden I begun to notice the smallest of imperfections and feel that guilty urge to improve on it ...

 

Finally I found some time to start setting it up. I'm now syncing my Sharepoint and my Steam Library. I will test tonight how gaming is.
Edit:
Initial Testing of DOTA2 without playing around the settings - Everything to high on 4k 240hz laptop monitor I get between 80-100 fps. Not impressive, but surely I can improve on these once starting to dial the setting in.

 

Should be a bit better than that, check the optimus/mux switch stuff, not sure what's in the Zephyrus but it's a real janky setup when you run nvidia cards to get max performance on a laptop, which might require bios entry to flick the mux switch, also laptop power modes, in a slim thing like that it'll likely be set in a quieter setting, though things may have changed.

 

Oh and of course make sure you are actually using the Nvidia GPU, not all USB C ports come from the same GPU, you'll have to RTFM

 

is it normal to have that many background processes running by Asus ? wtf

 

On a separate note, I am still unable to run my monitor at max fps. Turns out no matter how many different brands USB-C Cables I get and at what cost and spec.... No matter the spec, if they are not "Thunderbolt certified" they are unable to carry Video signal, only charging and data transfer.
Although I bought 3 cables that are USB4, 100w, 40gbps (which in theory is the exact spec of a thunderbolt 4 cable) unless the cable is Thunderbolt certified, It will not carry the video data. I have now ordered a 4th cable, this time is genuine thunderbolt, fingers crossed.

Over HDMI I can get maximum 60hz.

 

Asus do like the bloat

I'd imagine you are doing things fine and the cables are good and its some other setting or bios update you have missed

you should have iGPU on left and dGPU on right USB both plenty capable of doing video, is the TB firmware on the monitor updated, or on a dock.

Perhaps get yourself a usb to hdmi cable and test if you get output that way, if so it'd rule out the ports on the laptop being dodge

60hz limit could well be software, I have this on my laptop for battery saving

 

Well I have not done much to play with settings and improve gaming performance. Been busy with setting up work stuff etc and have not done any proper gaming yet. I arrived abroad 2 days ago and still setting up my office space, reliable broadband etc... Once the new certified cable arrives, I'll test it and report if I get video out. I've read on a few places that if the cable doesn't have the official certification, it will not do video, this is something that we should Thank Apple for !
Thanks Tim, you SUCK.

If I don't get video with the new cable (expected in 1-2 days) i will explore the other options you mentioned.

 

OMG, after 1 week and 5 different cables (£120+) and hours of messing about with settings I finally found the problem...

The problem was me and my ignorance.
Long story:
- I bought the monitor from Facebook marketplace.
- Guy that works at a recycling centre advertises 8x 34inch curved monitors for £120 each ( with boxes and cables). Sends me a photo of the model number showing on the box and it shows U3425WE. I check the model and it shows 120hz with RRP of ~ £700.
- Guy tells me the monitors are not tested, but they look mint.
- I tell the guy I will buy all 8 monitors and will give them to family and friends (as they are a super good deal). I will get them all, only after individually testing them.
- I go there, monitors in the boxes and they do look brand spanking new, I'm so excited, my son too. I start testing.
- Out of 8 monitors only 1 is working properly, the rest had issues with the LCD, all 7 of them had impact damage - probably during an office relocation they got damaged.
- All monitors look identical and boxes also look identical.
- It turns out that the monitor that I was able to save from E-waste is a model U3423WE, which only supports 60hz. I was advertised a model U3425WE.
- Guy thanks me for testing all monitors for him and gives me the one working monitor for free for all the trouble.
That free monitor is now £120+ for all the cables i bought

It still ok for work, but I am so spoiled on my main 240hz OLED back in the UK...

Well at least I can sleep now, knowing what the issue is...

I can now properly evaluate the laptop itself, knowing that the problem is NOT the monitor...

 

Doh, chalk that one up to experience.